Whether you agree with the Netroots or not, there’s no denying that the final result is a remarkably eloquent 29 pages of rhetoric, ranging from the lofty to the highly specific, that seems to capture the community’s viewpoint pretty well.  Check it out!

www.NetrootsPlatform.org

The project’s been covered in the political and tech blogosphere, including DailyKos, MyDD, and TechPresident. [UPDATE: it's also been written up at ABCNews.com and Wired!]

From Nancy Scola’s write-up at Tech President:

How do you effectively harness the wisdom of the crowds when the goal is political ideas, not pinning down the weight of an ox at a county fair? [link added]

Does MixedInk point to a way of governing that effectively harnesses the intelligence and energy of bigger groups than we’re used to? It might offer some direction to a campaign like Obama’s that claims to tap into the wisdom of, for example, more than 300 foreign policy advisors. Managing all that smarts can’t be easy.

Here’s the press release we put together with a few members of the Netroots Platform committee.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PROGRESSIVE ONLINE ACTIVISTS ENGAGE OBAMA CAMPAIGN ON POLITICAL PLATFORM

Netroots Develop Policy Platform Aimed at Influencing Obama/DNC Platform Using Participatory Online Process

WASHINGTON, DC, August 13th, 2008 – Members of the “Netroots” – a loosely affiliated group of progressive bloggers, activists and private citizens-released their political platform this week, after three weeks of online collaboration.

The Netroots Platform was first proposed by Jerome Armstrong, a prominent progressive blogger and founder of MyDD.com. “The idea was for the Netroots to speak to the Obama Campaign and the DNC with a collective voice.” The project seemed to take on a life of its own after being introduced to the progressive blogosphere, as members of the Netroots used progressive community blogs, listservs, social networking sites and the MyBarackObama site to invite greater participation and keep each other updated about the Platform’s progress.

The platform was developed entirely online at www.NetrootsPlatform.org, a site where anyone was able to participate in the process and contribute their ideas. MixedInk, an Internet startup, created the democratic, collaborative writing tool that was used for the project. The company aims to empower the public to participate meaningfully and democratically in discussions once limited only to political insiders. “The process itself was truly a metaphor for the Netroots ideals of openness, transparency and democracy,” said Armstrong.

The final Netroots Platform includes 10 different policy planks addressing everything from National Security & Foreign Policy to the Economy to Food & Agriculture, in addition to an introductory “General Principles” section. Community members contributed by writing new planks, editing existing submissions, and remixing the best ideas from different versions to create new ones. Contributors also rated planks on a scale of 1 to 10, and the version with the highest average rating within each category at the end became part of the final platform.

While the official DNC draft platform and the Netroots platform overlap significantly on some policies, including net neutrality, the patients’ bill of rights, and greater federal investment in renewable energies, other policies advocated by the Netroots – amending the recently passed FISA bill, military budget cuts, and the abolishment of the electoral college – diverge significantly from the official Democratic party line.

“The people who participated support Senator Obama overall, despite some differences in our approach and results,” said Ellen Mendlow, one of the platform’s contributors and a member of the organizing committee. “Our platform is unique because of the collaborative way it was drafted. It’s a very positive step forward that we are part of the process, and I think we are all looking forward to developing even more rigorous opportunities for two-way dialogue between citizens and our government in the future.”

According to MixedInk, over the course of the process, thousands of people visited the site, 246 registered, and 164 contributed a total of 167 planks and over 925 ratings. “The Netroots Platform covers general principles as well as very specific language advocating the expansion of “the Nunn-Lugar program to guard nuclear weapons” and “catalyzing innovation by private space entrepreneurs.” “Some really smart and well-informed people participated in the process,” said David Stern, co-founder of Mixedink.com. “The fact that the most articulate ideas rose to the top shows how wise a crowd can be.”

The platform site launched on July 18th, in tandem with two workshops held at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin to introduce the idea and discuss the process. It ended three weeks later, on August 9th, with the submission of the platform to the National Democratic Platform Committee. The committee has acknowledged receiving the document and will be holding a conference call with the activists shortly.

The Obama campaign had previously asked supporters to contribute their platform ideas through its “Listening to America” initiative. Small groups of supporters met all across the country to develop short planks to be submitted through the campaign’s website.

“This project dovetailed nicely with the Listening to America platform sessions but with a spin that’s unique and that fits the collaborative, ensemble nature of the blogosphere perfectly,” said Mendlow. “We’re fully transparent and democratic in our approach to politics.”

# # #

About the Netroots Platform Committee

Support for the Netroots Platform was loosely organized by an ad-hoc committee of citizens that formed at the Netroots Nation conference held in Austin, Texas, in late July. It initially consisted of six individuals and grew to nine members over the course of the project.

To contact the committee or schedule an interview with one of its members, please email netrootsplatformcommittee [at] gmail [dot] com.

About MixedInk

MixedInk LLC is an Internet startup that provides an online tool for democratic, collaborative writing. MixedInk enables large groups of people to brainstorm and express a collective point of view by weaving their best ideas and opinions together.

The company was founded in April 2007. After launching in September 2008, its application will be available for free at www.mixedink.com. A white-label, enterprise version of the service will also allow organizations to integrate the application within their own websites.

For more information about MixedInk, or to schedule an interview with one of the founders, email press [at] mixedink [dot] com.

Got ideas for how MixedInk could be useful to YOUR group?  Send us an email at info [at] mixedink [dot] com!

==========

Update – an fairly heated exchange about the Netroots Platform is happening on some of the leading progressive blogs:

Chris Bowers at Open Left

Natasha Chart at MyDD

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD

If you’re going to be there, come visit on Friday, July 18th and Saturday, July 19th, and stop by our exhibition booth!  These sessions are just the beginning of what will be an ongoing, public process that will continue in the weeks following the conference.  The final, collectively written platform will be presented to the DNC before the convention in Denver.

If you want to be involved from the beginning but won’t be at NN, sign up at MixedInk.com, and we’ll email you the URL as soon it’s launched.

We’d like to thank the folks at Netroots Nation and wmtriallawyer for helping to organize this!

This effort builds on a growing movement to use online tools to make our government more transparent, representative, and accountable.  Both Barack Obama’s campaign and the RNC have launched exciting initiatives allowing people to help shape their platforms.  Using the Barack Obama website, Democrats can organize “Platform Meetings” in their communities, during which they can discuss and then submit policy “planks,” or one- to two-sentence policy suggestions.  These planks will be reviewed by the team writing the Platform and some will likely be incorporated into the final document.

The Republican Party also has an exciting grassroots-driven platform development effort underway.  The site highlights a range of issues and enables people to submit policies and comments that will be considered by platform authors as they prepare for the convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Also along these lines, 21st Century Democrats wrote their own Alternative Democratic Platform, which is currently being circulated as a petition.

We are thrilled to see the platform-making process opened up to the public – and proud that MixedInk will be the platform used by the Netroots.  MixedInk was built to enable exactly this kind of participation, and we look forward to seeing the results of these incredible people-powered efforts!

Don’t forget to sign up if you want to be notified when you can help create the Netroots platform.

As we hoped, it also turned out to be a great way to introduce MixedInk within the political sphere. We believe our platform could have a major impact on politics; the people I spoke with seemed equally excited. Looking back a year from now, I think we’ll find that the seeds for several pivotal partnerships were planted in Chicago.

Not surprisingly, one of the coolest moments of the conference was the candidate forum, where 7 of the 8 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination took questions from moderators and the audience on domestic policy, foreign affairs and general personal and political philosophy. The fact that this forum attracted such a high profile group of leaders speaks to the power that the progressive netroots have accumulated.

Regardless of one’s political outlook, a presidential primary debate like this is guaranteed to be compelling theater; there’s a 50% chance (or greater, if you believe current polls) that you’re watching the next US president. But this was no ordinary presidential debate.

The moderator, Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine, opened by saying, “We do normally ask that applause and reactions be kept till the end. We’re making no such request today [laughter]. I fear it’s too late, but I’m gonna ask you to remember that we are on a tight timeline and trying to get along with the program, and to the extent that you could limit the interruptions we would appreciate it…” This narrow opening was all the crowd needed.

Bai would soon regret having given the crowd free reign, and said as much joke that he was losing control [updated based on Matt's comment - see below]. This group refused to play the role of the passive audience. People acted pretty much the same as they might while watching an event like this on TV in the comfort of their homes – only now, the candidates could actually see and hear them.

Applause, laughter, jeering, hissing and booing all flowed freely. Senator Edwards, a crowd favorite, was constantly interrupted by applause, though he didn’t seem to mind. At one point, when facing a tough question, Senator Clinton made a stalling remark as she tried to come up with the right to say, and the crowd laughed at her outright! It was the sort of the remark a candidate might slide by with in a typical debate without someone to call it out, but this crowd wouldn’t tolerate even a hint of evasion. And Senator Dodd was booed loudly when he tried to explain his vote for Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The crowd even broke into song at one point – it was announced that Senator Obama was celebrating his birthday, so the audience serenaded him with a poorly coordinated (though very affectionate) rendition of Happy Birthday.

At first, all of this struck me as highly undignified. It was like a vaudeville show instead of a presidential debate – I half expected people to start throwing rotten tomatoes! Did the audience want our candidates to be treated like entertainers? We Americans are used to debates where candidates speak in paragraphs comprised of neat little sound bites memorized in advance, moderators tightly control the conversation, and audiences are powerless to interfere. Traditionally, they are opportunities for the candidates to tell us their positions on the issues and to compare and contrast their views with each other, without any interference from voters.

Gradually, I began to see the merits of this more participatory format, as I realized it was an offline translation of the blogosphere’s core principles. This crowd of online activists rejects the model of candidate as untouchable, deity-like avatar and instead treats its candidates as real people. If there’s no TV screen between us, why must we continue to act like we are separated from them by sound-proof, one-way glass?

The existence of the political blogosphere itself is premised on the notion that citizens should have a right to express opinions that matter – beyond merely voting once every four years. Flowing from this, the crowd seemed to stake the claim that we have the right to interact with our politicians through direct conversation, whereby they observe our reactions and respond in real-time – conventional notions of debate etiquette be damned. The netroots believes we can learn more about who a candidate is in this type of interactive format than from the canned speechifying that is a conventional debate.

This re-imagining of the debate structure is part of a seismic shift in our politics (and our media, and our consumption patterns, and…) toward a technology-enabled, two-way exchange of perspectives. We envision MixedInk as another tool in citizens’ arsenal – along with participatory debates like this one, blogs, YouTube videos, and a range of other platforms – to make their voices heard and to ensure their voices matter.

You can find video from the event, along with plenty of other YearlyKos footage, here.

An edited version of this post was published as a diary on Daily Kos

UPDATED: Matt Bai was kind enough to respond with an email. He gave me permission to republish what he wrote:

Hey David, thanks for the kind words and for sending me the link. I love what you wrote. I take strong exception to only one thing, which is your assertion that I regretted my announcement to the crowd and said as much. Couldn’t be less true. I was a big proponent of letting the crowd express itself, and I thought (and still think), as you do, that it was one of the best things about the forum. I completely agree with you–this is exactly the kind of wall the Internet helps us break down, and while some of my colleagues in the media found it “creepy” (I think that’s what Ana Marie Cox quoted someone as saying), I thought it was really fun and a lot more interactive. It also made me feel more at ease on stage. I did joke that I was losing control at one point, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Thanks for writing.

In addition to being a terrific writer, Matt Bai is part of a small minority of journalists that understands the transformation that’s taking place. It’s no wonder he was selected to moderate the YearlyKos forum as a representative of the mainstream media.