Hi Nick, can you please fix the page titles / metadata, so when sharing the link with someone the message would contain the event name instead of "smoke signals"?

It is - feel free to join our Telegram or Signal group

Stuart Lynn from CrownShy talking about some very cool digital democracy projects in Scotland and elsewhere! Nice to see Harmonica mentioned @zhiganov.bsky.social ;)

I think it's good practice to use existing platforms as MVP to test your hypothesis before building something new... but of course a Goodreads list might not be a good MVP in this case

if someone is already using Goodreads, the friction to participate in the experiment would be much lower for them

btw do you want to vote on this list or add some other "mind-space beacons" to it? www.goodreads.com/list/show/23...

Fun fact: before moving to SF Eugenia was a lifestyle journalist who reviewed chic restaurants and night clubs in Moscow

Individual preferences are meaningful within a relationship but create noise for collective sense-making, without shared context. Why doesn't Tinder allow filtering by Letterboxd/ Goodreads/ Spotify likes? Such an obvious way to increase the value. But would it help us run better citizen assemblies?

That's why some people believe Goodreads to be the best social network ever created

This project is part of Metagov's effort to build deliberative tools that can't be captured by corporations or governments. Open source, interoperable, designed so communities can choose their own path rather than being forced into someone else's vision. metagov.substack.com/p/interopera...

Our WG at @metagov.bsky.social is working on "AI facilitation primitives" that could empower communities to have better conversations. We're learning from practitioners and synthesizing patterns that can inform prompts, evals and datasets for developers of tools like Harmonica 🪗

"Facilitated by professionals from Missions Publiques, the assembly featured an AI prototype to synthesize input manually entered by students and groups at various stages of the deliberations and link summaries back to the original discussion with a search function."

6/ This vision merges collective intelligence, radical interoperability, and agentic thinking to create a pathway toward global alignment of human and more-than-human needs at every scale—from neighborhoods to cities, and beyond. 🌎🌍🌏

5/ Imagine these avatars engaging on X / Bluesky. They could:
- Share insights & perspectives with relevant audiences
- Be monitored & guided by their communities

They would dynamically update based on:
- Collective dialogues & deliberations
- Data from scientists & journalists
- Data from sensors

4/ To be legitimate representatives, these avatars must:

- Operate based on constitutional principles
- Have open-source code and opinion provenance
- Be subject to ongoing audits
- Allow real-time adjustments

Transparency ensures they would truly reflect the collective will.

3/ Double interoperability:
These digital representatives could also learn from collective dialogues in Remesh, GoVocal, Talk to the City, etc. if they agree to use a standard protocol. And the avatars wouldn't be locked into one platform. They could operate across different systems.

2/ For example, residents of a neighborhood use Harmonica to sensemake on local issues. Over time, it will gather enough data to create a community avatar.

This avatar could then participate in deliberative processes at the city level, representing the voice of the neighborhood.