[Winona] Possible informal WOD gathering on June 16th?

[Steven Clift]

My WSHS Class of '87 is having its 20 year - yikes! - reunion on
Saturday, June 16th.

My wife and I will be down from the cities a bit early, so who would 
like to/can meet up from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. that day?  How about at 
Sammy's Pizza?

Drop me a note if you can make it:  clift at publicus.net

E-Democracy.Org is ready to help you move to our new sophisticated open
source forum platform called GroupServer.  It works both like the e-mail
list you know and a web forum for those who want less e-mail. You can 
even share pictures and files. See:

     http://forums.e-democracy.org

We also would like to identify a handful of folks to represent your
local steering committee and have an online group in mind to support
forum management and other local e-democracy activities.

If an informal meeting doesn't work, perhaps an official conference call
in the next month or so might help build momentum to the technology upgrade.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

P.S. Some items that may of interest:

1. We now have forums in three communities in England and new regional
forum in New Zealand.

2. We are drafting a proposal for a few Issues Forums in rural Minnesota
along with some citizen media training. Perhaps Winona might be a good
site for one of the regional trainings? See draft from:
http://e-democracy.org/blog/posts/91

3. We have a project blog: http://e-democracy.org/blog

4. Winona Online Democracy was featured in a case study about
e-democracy in Bristol UK. See: http://e-democracy.org/blog/posts/93

5. I received an Ashoka Fellowship. It starts with a three year stipend
which is allowing me to work for E-Democracy.Org full-time. One of our
Board's emerging priorities is to provide more support to local efforts.
Tim Erickson is helping lead that and I am working to raise funds to
support his huge efforts into the future.