OneWebDay is a global event held September 22 celebrating the Web and highlighting key issues about the future of the Internet, with a focus in its third year on online political participation. To celebrate and document the recent flourishing of online political participation in what has become a new “town square,” the DC OWD Planning Committee launched the e-Democracy Time Capsule on August 22, 2008. We invited everyone, from all corners of the United States and the world, to help us make history by contributing text, images, sound, and video describing their favorite E-Democracy tools, writing letters to the future about their hopes for Web-powered politics, profiling of e-Democracy Heroes, and discussing Internet policy issues that are relevant to ensuring a Web future where the potential for online political participation can continue to flourish.  On OneWebDay 2008 we gathered to close the Time Capsule to further submissions.  We will gather again on OneWebDay 2020 to “reopen” the Capsule and take stock of whether we have fulfilled our hopes for a more participatory, Web-enabled, democracy.  Please return regularly for updates.

A team of journalists and political activists compiled facts about Chicago aldermen, Cook County board commissioners, and area congressmen. The site, just launched, is still “a work in progress,” by Deratany’s own admission (or a “labor of masochism,” by Fourcher’s). Only a handful of the entries about county board members are complete, for instance, but Fourcher and Deratany say they’re planning to fill in the blanks–and expand the site’s reach–with input from readers. “We can’t wait for people to start checking our facts,” Fourcher says. But unlike, say, wikipedia, the content on the site will be controlled pretty carefully. Submissions and suggestions are welcome, but the entries won’t be open for public editing.

Look for the #npsl tag throughout the web and check out www.nonprofitcommons.org to see our members, wiki, virtual offices and future vision for online communities.

The mission of DeepDebate is to organize a large– but simultaneously high-quality– national conversation around the 2008 US Presidential debates. We are a non-partisan organization which invites all colors of the political spectrum to participate.

While the candidates debate, the new format for online discussion at DeepDebate will allow citizens to dive deeper into the issues. The site is purposefully built so that users come into direct contact with contrasting opinions. Disconnected, partisan conversations reinforce group-think and conformity. In contrast, direct challenges to your beliefs, supported by logic and evidence, can finely tune your ideas and help you understand alternate points of view.

Our goal, among others, is to include as many people as possible in this new type of online discussion, while simultaneously emphasizing quality and content.

American citizens deserve a deeper debate.

Not that we don’t know how to celebrate in DC - the happy hour will be later this evening - but from 9 to 5 (or usually 10 to 6) it’s policy.

Sascha Meinrath welcomes the wonks and the media to One Web Day DC 2008 opening event at the New America Foundation’s headquarters and calls it a celebration of “one of the most important telecommunications innovations in history” and tells us that One Web Day (OWD) celebrations are going on all over the world at the same time.

The idea started and is still driven by Susan Crawford, who three years ago imagined a One Web Day that could at some point rival earth day.

“One Web Day may be in its infancy…but we can see the importance of Internet policy rising” in the national political landscape, Sascha says before introducing a key telecommunications policy maker, Jonathan Adelstein, from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Commissioner Adelstein follows his introduction with an introduction of his own, of Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D - Marylan, 4th congressional district).

Congresswoman Edwards is interested in how the internet can be an enabler for democratic engagement on the community level, but to start, she says, communities need access. Access to broadband is something Ms. Edwards sees lacking at the community level, even in her own houselhold.

“According to the broadband provider in my area, I can get service in the zip code I live in, and that’s true for houses just down the street from me, but at my house we can’t get broadband and are still on dial-up.” As a result, the Congresswoman has given up on utilizing the few hours of the day when’s she’s home to go online (”because it’s too much of a pain”) and she worries that students at the schools in her community are facing similar situations. “I think the Internet and access to the web is the future for the 21st Century and I connect that very closely to the future of the young people in the community.”

Ms. Edwards says she’s excited about the prospects for this digital future but also weary of the potential for some of the advantages broadband offers to be excluded. As her personal anecdote makes clear, exclusion is happening, even where we’d least expect it.

Returning to the podium, Mr. Adelstein, who was visibly frustrated by Ms. Edwards report that she does not have broadband at her home, follows-up on her inspirational speech with a focus on policy, beginning with the need for a national broadband strategy to “restore [the US] to its position as a global leader on technology.”

The elements of a national broadband strategy, according to Commissioner Adelstein, include an open and neutral internet and the goal of universal broadband penetration that facilitates empowerment.

Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation follows Mr. Adelstein and presents a good picture of the type of empowerment the web can deliver: Sunlight’s latest online transparency tool, publicmarkup.org, and One Web Day’s public mark-up release: “The Wall Street Bail-Out Bill,” open and exposed to users for discussion and comment.

Ellen highlights the power of the web as being particularly liberating, in that Sunlight has “liberated” countless documents and massive amounts of government information, but without the power of the web to publish, the information could never truly be liberated.

A prominent developer of the tools necessary for groups like Sunlight to liberate information and connect activists is John Wheeler of Democracy in Action. John introduces himself as one of the first staffers to have an email address on the Hill and talks about his difficulties in getting others in Congress to understand the power of the new medium in 1994.

“Today,” John says, “Congress is dealing with a flood of emails and I’m proud to be partly responsible for that flood.” For the rest of the online gadflies, Democracy in Action has put all the web tools for organizing and advocacy in one place at the Salsa Commons.

One group interested in utilizing John’s tools is Bread for the City, a grassroots organization with a mission of assisting those on the verge of homelessness. Bread in the City’s Greg Bloom gave the OWD audience a tour through his group’s weblog, Beyond Bread, and noted the challenge of connecting what organizers and advocates are doing at the offline grass roots level with the web community while remaining issue-focused.

Broadband Census’ own Drew Clark joins the panel and returns to Congresswoman Edwards’ eloquent opening remarks to highlight the importance of getting accurate data on broadband connectivity in order to better inform policy makers and ensure the technology’s expansion.

As a part of One Web Day, Drew (and everyone here at Broadband Census) is encouraging consumers to take the census and join in the effort to better inform consumers about their broadband service options. Much like Ellen Miller and the Sunlight Foundation, BroadbandCensus.com is an effort to enhance the transparency of publicly available information in the interest of a more engaged citizenry and more informed policy making.

“Broadband is too important,” according to Clark, and unless there is universal broadband, there will be a segment of people who are left out of a vital medium for commerce and conversation. “BroadbandCensus.com will be a place where you can find information on connectivity that is comprehensive, useful and reliable.”

Next up, Alec Ross, Barack Obama’s science adivisor reflected on the power of the Internet as an educational tool and an organizational tool and, most importantly, as a transformative personal tool.

“So much on the internet speaks to so many people directly,” Ross says, “it’s a very personal experience and one that allows people to find the information they want without the historical limitations of place and space.”

Mr. Ross believes Senator Obama’s experience as a community organizer has contributed to his acute unederstanding of the powers of this tool. He then laid out some of the principle policy goals of an Obama administration in regards to the Internet, including Universal Service Fund reform, spectrum reform, and the creation of a Chief Technologies Officer for the nation. He stressed that groups like the Sunlight Foundation would have a partner in the federal government in an Obama administration.

Wrapping up the One Web Day kick-off at New America Foundation, Nathaniel James, the Campaign Coordinator for the Media and Democracy Coalition and the lead organizer of DC’s One Web Day, drew attention to the local effort to create a Time Capsule for OWD. The goal of the Time Capsule, according to Nathaniel, will be to create “a living archive of where we were in terms of e-democracy up until One Web Day 2008.” At 5pm today, the site will be closed to further contributions (though comments will still be allowed) until One Web Day 2020, when the community will then undertake a critical re-evaluation of what has happened over the last 12 years.

Nathaniel sums up the objective of the Time Capsule: “we’ve outlined a trajectory today and we want to come back in 12 years and make sure that we’re following through on that trajectory.”

So that’s it for the live event, now it’s back to the online events of One Web Day and the DC crew will return at 6pm with a little less policy and a little more celebrating. Until then, try to be one of the last to leave your mark on the time capsule and remind yourself in 2020 what it was like today.

This form of governance, called open source governance, does not entail voting or majority-rule. Instead, people may help govern any community as much or as little as they wish by creating, discussing, and supporting resolutions. User input is weighed by other users through a scoring system and brought to the attention of other participants interested in that input.

In January 2008, OpenCongress greatly expanded to include social networking features - “My OpenCongress” - that gives people the ability to build personal profiles for tracking all the things in Congress they care about.  “My OpenCongress” also lets you build relationships with other concerned citizens across the country.  The social data being generated by “My OpenCongress” users is also used throughout the site to help people connect with bills and votes in Congress in ways that simply were not possible before.

One of the most used (and most simple) features on OpenCongress is the ability for users to leave comments on bill pages.  In the past year we’ve seen an incredibly powerful community of users develop around a mutual interest in seeing an unemployment extensions bill passed into law.  On that bill page alone, over 26,000 comments have been left by people working to organize a campaign to pressure their lawmaers into passing the bill.  Primarily, these people found the bill page through search engines, and since there was a comment forum already connected to the bill information, they had a convenient spot to self-organize and fight for the issue they care about. 

We encourage you to check out OpenCongress to find new information about Congress and new ways to interface with your political issues.  You can also subscribe to our blog’s rss feed to keep up with the site and all of the conentious issues being debate in Washington every day.

Future of Music Coalition — a Washington, DC based nonprofit that seeks a bright future for creators and listeners — celebrated One Web Day in Chicago Illinois, as part of a day-long artist education seminar called “What’’s the Future for Musicians?”

The event brought together indie musicians, labels, technologists and policy experts to discuss how artists will not only survive, but thrive in the digital future.

Net neutrality was a major part of the presentations, as the fight to preserve the open internet informs much of FMC’s work.

The Internet works because it belongs to everyone. All artists — big or small — have been able to use the web as a powerful tool to engage audiences. This all takes place without interference from gatekeepers and middlemen. But if net neutrality goes away, musicians lose an important connection, and fans lose the freedom of choice.

Imagine if you were only able to shop at the mall. If the net neutrality isn’t preserved, entire genres of music — from bluegrass to extreme metal — could be ignored in favor of manufactured hitmakers.

In 2008, artists use the web to alert their fans to live performances, special giveaways, behind-the-scenes stuff, limited edition music and more. If they’re forced to pay a toll to the big telecom companies, they might get priced right out of the emerging digital marketplace.

We can’t allow the old bottlenecks to determine the flow of creativity. Participating in a legitimate digital music marketplace is cruial to the livelihood of all musicians. It’s a right that needs to be preserved.

FMC is honored to have taken part in One Web Day, and hope that the future of the internet remains one of coneecitvity, inovation and the open exchange of ideas and information. Here’s to cullture and commerce online in 2008 and beyond!

I’ve been honored to get to know her through the Berkman Center. I hope that when this time capsule is opened, she will be in a powerful position to continue this work. Read more about her here: http://wendy.seltzer.org/