Call for Participation in the 2nd Workshop of Discontinued Civic Tech

We warmly invite you to participate in the The 2nd Workshop of Discontinued Civic Tech: What Does ‘Failure’ Mean in Civic Tech?

Upon our success in holding the CHI’23 Workshop “Failed yet successful –Learning from discontinued civic tech initiatives,” we decided not to discontinue our workshop format. This year, we are holding the workshop online and at the University of Tokyo, Japan, bridging researchers and practitioners around the world. This workshop will provide academics and practitioners with an opportunity to exchange experiences and insights on discontinued civic tech initiatives. The goal of the workshop is to develop a better understanding of why some civic tech initiatives seemingly ‘fail’ and ask whether discontinued initiatives may still somehow contribute to social change and the growth of digital civics. Further we would like to learn from long-living initiatives’ experiences. A variety of sub-questions around discontinued civic tech will be addressed in the workshop, including matters of participation, citizen science, civic design, public management, power structures and biases, and communication. Please find the workshop agenda below.

If you would like to participate, please send an abstract (~ 200 words or more) to discontinued.civictech@gmail.com until Oct 15 Oct 20, 2024. Please also indicate in to which of the three themes of the sharing circle you would like to contribute to, i.e., 1) Your ‘failure’ story, 2) Lessons learned, or 3) New questions.

If you are interested in the insights of our previous workshop, take a look at this Interactions article: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641815

This year’s workshop is connected to the Civic Tech Design Initiative (CTDI), a 5-year research project at the University of Tokyo, and will take place one day before the CTDI kick-off event (in person). Please let me know if you are interested in attending the kick-off event in person and save the date: 01 November 2024 in Tokyo (Japan). Details and agenda to follow.

Looking forward to meeting you (again)!

Date

Thursday, 2024 October 31, 17:00-20:00 JST // 9:00-12:00 CET (European winter time)

Venue

Online (We will also prepare an in-person meeting room on the Hongo campus, The University of Tokyo)

Workshop Schedule

Time Contents
17:00 JST Welcome & opening remarks
  • Andrea Hamm & Yuya Shibuya
17:15 JST Sharing circle
  • Moderation by
    • Andrea Hamm (Weizenbaum Institute, Germany; University of Tokyo, Japan)
    • Yuya Shibuya (University of Tokyo, Japan)
  • Discussants
    • Stefan Ullrich (Civic Tech Lab for Green, Germany)
    • [tbc] António Tavares (UNU-EGOV)
  1. Your ‘failure’ story
    • Matt Stempeck (Civic Tech Field Guide, USA)
    • Matthew Somerville (mySociety, United Kingdom)
  2. Lessons learned
    • Gurden Batra (Dark Matter Labs, The Netherlands)
    • Martin Bangratz (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
    • Prasad Perera (eSri Lanka, Sri Lanka)
    • Antti Knutas (LUT University, Finland) Nicolas Jullien (IMT Atlantique, France)
  3. New questions
    • Asaki Fujino (University of Tokyo)
    • [tbc] Clara Crivellaro (Newcastle University, United Kingdom)
Submitted Abstracts will be shared beforehand
18:15 JST Break
18:30 JST Group discussions
19:30 JST Sharing of discussions’ findings
20:00 JST Farewell, outlook & closing remark by Prof. Yoshihide Sekimoto (UTokyo)
Family Photo

Back to Top Page