Online climate change debates – can they influence the outcome of COP15?
On December 7th and 8th the COP15 will take place: Politicians, IGOs and NGOs will meet in the Danish capital and discuss how to reduce carbon emissions to decrease global warming. They aim to sign a new agreement for climate protection, a follow up of the Kyoto protocol. In forefront of the Copenhagen event, online debates try to influence the discussions’ outcome. The Kyoto protocol will expire in 2012. Until then, a new global agreem

eParticipation News digest November 14st - 26th 2009
In the last two weeks several important conferences and awards in the field of eparticipation and eGovernment took place some Pep-Net members already wrote about. Therefore, the following list should offer just a brief overview: Strasbourg plenary session: Green light for new EU telecoms rules Last Tuesday the European Parliament has approved a major overhaul of EU telecoms rules in order to strengthen the rights of phone users and internet surfers and boost competition among telecoms firms. The new rules which will be implemented within the next eighteen months are aiming

PEP-NET Workshop at Future-Democracy ‘09, 25 November London
Participants were provided with a range of topics to choose from: the business models for e-Participation projects, e-Voting, how to reach young citizens, the World Forum eDemocracy Awards 2010. The participants voted for a discussion about financing projects and business models. Guilermo Celata was asked to start the discussion on the basis of this project www.openparlamento.it. The project began with an investment in terms of hours of work, and has not been able to receive funding from institutions such as the Italian Camera and Senato. In Italy public or institutional funding is not always an advantage, this kind of funding may work better for projects developed in other countr

140 people have contributed to EuProfiler.eu
World e-Democracy Forum Award 2009, EuProfiler.eu help the european citizens to access to a detailed mapping of some 300 political parties. Through multiple-choice questions, an algorithm evaluates the sensitivity and determine the political affiliation of Internet users. It has been used during the last European Parliament elections in June, with around 2.5 million unique visitors who used it. At the e-Democracy awards workshop, professors Alexander Trechsel and Fabian Breuer explained their motivations. A presentation to see in video: [

PDF Europe: Geeks, Politics and the loom of digital ideologies
The beautiful city of Barcelona was a well chosen location for a conference taking place in November and it awaited us with unsurprisingly mild temperatures. Even warmer was the welcome at the pre-conference reception for the speakers. “In all beginnings dwells a magic force” (Hesse) which I caught a glimpse of when we mutually introduced ourselves by choosing three words to characterise our involvement in the cross-section of internet and politics. Hence, my personal expectations towards the personal democracy forum were quite high when I entered the Torre Agbar tower the next day. The first thing I sp