It's election time, but of course the Future Salon looks beyond Swift Boats :-) One of the inspirations is the upcoming Extreme Democracy book: "Extreme democracy" is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a deliberative process that places total confidence in the people, opening the policy-making process to many centers of power through deeply networked coalitions that can be organized around local, national and international issues."
Another inspiration is The Tao of Democracy by Tom Atlee who has thought about, written and spoken for twenty years on innovations in democracy. Paul H. Ray, Ph.D co-author of The Cultural Creatives sais about his book: What Tom Atlee is writing about is just about the most important thing that's happening at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Over a year ago John Abbe pointed the Future Salon in his direction by posting links to chapers of his book. There for the first time I got introduced to the excellent concept of citizen deliberative councils.
Third inspiration are the tool makers, like the volunteers that created the DeanSpace and now are knitting CivicSpace, an open-source grassroots organizing web-application toolkit .
The beauty is, that on Thursday the 16th of September we bring these three rays of hope together and let them shine at the Future Salon.
Ross Mayfield CEO of Socialtext is well known to Future Saloners and has writting chapter ten of Extreme Democracy. He will present its overall concept.
Tom Atlee who is not only the author of Tao of Democracy but also the founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute will fly in from Eugene Oregon to talk about his lifelong quest for a better democracy.
Last but for sure not least Zack Rosen the driving force behind DeanSpace will talk about his experiances and show the current status of the reincarnation of the DeanSpace: The CivicSpace. Dan Gillmor wrote a nice article about him too.
SAP Labs has been supportive of the Future Salon for a long time, I am happy to announce that we, after all I am working for SAP Labs, have stepped up the sponsorship and there will be refreshments and some food.
To make the best out of this gracious offer, we will start at 6pm for an hour of socializing and networking. 7-9pm sharp we will do the presentations and discussion. Afterwards I assume there will still be some drinks left for all the ones that like to hang out and discuss some more which may go on until late in the night. I think that will be a huge improvement to the pizza place and I like that my employer is such good corporate citizen.
As always free and open to the public, spread the word. Please RSVP by sending an email to markfinnern at yahoo dot com, so that planning is easier regarding food.
Thursday 16th of September 6-9+pm SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map]
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