On 23rd June, Euclid Network and Purpose will be launching the first online discussion on the future of civil society, and we would like you to take part. The subject for this initial debate will be:

“How could civil society organisations attract more people to work and volunteer with them?”

At this stage, all we ask you to do is to click here to let us know you want to take part in the debate, and we will then contact you on Monday 23rd with a link to your debate.

The aim behind these debates is not only to gather a wide range of views on organised civil society, but to also test how new online deliberation technologies can support more robust debates and discussions than traditional platforms. In particular you will be involved in the testing of DebateHub, an innovative online debating tool developed by the Open University, which uses the Internet to harness collective intelligence.

As the tool is still in the testing stage we will be splitting participants into different testing groups, and we will present different groups with different user interfaces for online discussion. For this reason you may know someone else who is participating, but you might not be involved in the same debate group, and may not use the same debate tool.

Regardless of which test group you are in, all contributions to the debates will contribute to a unique collective picture and will be synthesized and incorporated into a report on “Imagining the Future of Civil Society”, to be published by Euclid, Purpose and the Open University. All contributors to the debates will be recognised as co-authors of the report.

In summary as a participant:

• you will be contributing to the debate of important Civil Society issues,
• you will help the research and development of innovative technologies for public deliberation,
• you will be listed as co-author of a publicly available report on “Imagining the Future of Civil Society”.

We look forward to hearing from you, and please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have.

Thanks and kind regards,

Stephen J Barnett, Euclid Network
Lee-Sean Huang, Purpose
Anna De Liddo, The Open University