Civic Forums, Civic Experience And Data Alignment

This article describes the value Civic Forums bring to developing entrepreneurial cultures and digital data search for robust network communications.

Thriving Regions Invest in ​CIVIC FORUMS 

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The I-Open Civic Forum process builds good civic habits of connectivity, communication and collaboration that every neighborhood, city and region needs to catalyze Open Source Economic Development.

​Forums create the open, neutral spaces for entrepreneurs to convene important new conversations that generate transformative enterprise projects. Every neighborhood should invest in a Civic Forum, and consider it as important as a public utility.

Civic Forums focus on issues that arise as a consequence of social, economic and environmental disruption. Entrepreneurs lead these important conversations in an environment tolerant of error and guided by a principles-based culture. 

​A Civic Forum is a place where people know they can practice collaborative behaviors without fear of retribution and be heard irrespective of conflicting ideas that may be presented by others at the same time.

Civic Forums create the open, neutral spaces for people to connect, build trust, hone leadership skills and practice thinking and doing together.

"It has been almost 50 years since the "War on Poverty" began, and today, we demonize the poor, wages have stagnated, fewer people have stable employment, and one in six of us suffer from food insecurity, a statistic over represented in our children and elderly.  Could it be that we have ceded control to others rather than keeping the power and ability to change within ourselves? We have bought the economics of scarcity instead of abundance making it so we have limited our potential for finding opportunity in the challenges that we all face." - Gloria Ferris, I-Open

Civic Forums Develop Engagement Experience

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I-Open ​co-hosted Civic Forums with local technology firms in Northeast Ohio from 2003 through 2009.

​From our experience, we learned:

1. about the sensory-cognitive-behavorial successively staged process of how people engage;
2. the status of people who have little to no experience engaging for the purpose of entrepreneurship;
3. that appreciatively based questions can be effective tools to reverse apathy and encourage civic engagement; and,
4. that with access to regularly scheduled Civic Forums, the volume and leadership quality of civic networks grows.

The Situation

Table No. 1 (below) reports social characteristics, and constructive intermediary actions, of a community culture that does not have a history of experience with a Civic Forum process:

Table No. 1 outlines common characteristics of people entering into a Civic Forum process. Table columns identify civic behaviors in regions without clear pathways for citizens to connect their insights and innovations to resources and capabilities. Intervening questions and action steps begin to reverse civic deterioration. © Betsey Merkel.

Civic Entrepreneurs

In addition, we noticed participants expressed three common responses when asked if they had an enterprising idea and what their next steps might be. Here's what we heard:

1. "I wouldn't know where to start."
2. "I wouldn't know how to start."
3. "I wouldn't know what to do."

Table No. 2 (below) organizes the questions above into a helpful context with therapeutic actions, such as trust building, that we found when applied, resulted in constructive outcomes.

Table No. 2 outlines intervention actions and remedial results that build trust, support emotional maturity and progressive participation over time. © Betsey Merkel.

Social Intelligence

Table No. 3 (below) organizes the relationship between a civic entrepreneur's progressive engagement in a Civic Forum process and their willingness to participate and contribute.

Table No. 3 also demonstrates the correlation between cognitive healing, or growth, and emotional maturity as it relates to the expression, focus and documentation of social intelligence in the particular Civic Forum network.

This is essential to the digitization of social intelligence for robust network communications.

Table No. 3 outlines the role of social media knowledge curation to communicate conversational insights and innovations. The proliferation of this intelligent value-based digital data supports a person's shift from apathy to participation, and organizes network knowledge as searchable data. © Betsey Merkel.

Start an I-Open Civic Forum Where You Live

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Regions that strategically invest in I-Open Civic Forum process at the level of a public utility will benefit from an experienced, informed and engaged citizenry.

Where do you and your neighbors, colleagues and friends convene for the purpose of innovation, entrepreneurship and enterprise development? Leave a story in the comment section below. Thanks!

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Betsey Merkel is Co-Founder, Director and Social Intelligence Lead at I-Open. Betsey specializes in communications for community and economic development. Follow on Twitter at @BetseyMerkel

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