For those who want to learn from "Best practices" These two sites have a wealth of information

DoWire has a huge database of "Best Practices" in the field of e-democracy.

May I introduce to you ICELE ? I was really exited about it.
ICELE is designed to serve as a 'virtual' focal point for collaborative eDemocracy initiatives both in the UK and abroad. Local authorities, community groups and citizens can use the Centre's online resources to help run projects in their local area.
ICELE is crammed full of information about eTools, examples of how others have used them, and details of projects that have been developed both nationally and internationally.

Finally, there is a very unusual example of collaboration in city-planning that comes from Melbourne / Australia
Howard Rheingold speaks with Mark Elliott about Stigmergy. Rheingold has a couple of fine Vlogs. The one about Vernacular Videos also caught my attention.

Did I miss the point when I was writing about becoming „sedentary“ ? I was not thinking about avoiding travel or exploring the world. To the contrary: with all the means at hand to have the world right where you are – where are you going to sedate? Aren’t there entire regions just outside your neighbourhood which are left behind and left in the dark? Why? I thought that this was the implicit message of Richard Florida’s message.

Alvin Toffler
I’ve added another speaker to our track. It’s an interview with Alvin Toffler conducted by Riz Khan (BBC/CNN/now he is at Al Jazeera). I name Alvin Toffler „the historian of the future“. Toffler produced books like „Future-Shock“ and „Third Wave“ in the 1970s and was considered mad. Was. Later he became advisor to Reagan, Gorbachev and the ruling Communist party of China during the transition to capitalism.
In the interview he speaks about the socio-political implications of the „knowledge-based“ society.

Christian Heise and Tobias Escher spoke with us about eGovernment, eDemocracy, eAdminstration and eVote.
Regarding e-Vote: Estonia (baltic state) is a premier example.

It’s no new thing saying that technology has changed the world and that it has openend new changes of how to live and work together.
More interesting seems this question: what changes and chances (opportunities) have technologies brought about.

Without steam-engine no industrial age, no working-class, no rail-roads that have shrivelled entire continents into just regions.

What do information-technologies do to our societes? Do you experience change in your countries? What chances (opportunities) have been opened by the information-age.Please report using the discussion panel in this track

Kurt Anderson gave a narrative about the industrial age during a conference labeled „Zeitgeist 07“ (notice: Zeitgeist 07 has nothing to do with the conspiracy-movie „Zeitgeist“). Please open the videopresentation. More video-clips from this conference outside London and hosted by Google can be viewed here

Then comes Richard Florida who came to prominence with his provocative book „The rise of the Creative Class“. He makes the point that Technology, Talent and Tolerance combined are the driving forces behind progress.
His speech was recorded during a conference in Noosa/Queensland-Australia. Go here

Richard Florida is an economist and holds a seat at the Toronto-University.
Recently he attended a conference here in Germany to give advice to a region that is plagued by the lasting consequences of the out-dated industrial age: the shut-down of heavy industries, the falling apart of cities and a high unemployment rate.

So have look what R. Floridas has to say. The entire series of his speech in Noosa are here.

And now it’s your turn to discuss the points R. Florida and K. Anderson made.
Please use our discussions forum under # 1 Technology