Noted American activist and author, Tom Atlee opened the PCR section programme at IAMCR 2018 in Eugene, Oregon with a keynote titled, Catalyzing a society’s empowered common sense: Three instructive examples. Atlee, who is the founder and director of the Co-Intelligence Institute in Eugene focused his talk on how can high quality exchange of ideas among truly diverse people usefully impact practices and policies at a whole-society scale. To illustrate his ideas, he used examples which provided insights into his work on deepening participatory democracy in society. His first example was of Canada’s newsweekly Maclean’s and Canadian TV which in 1991 convened a deliberation among 12 citizens who were chosen for their differences, producing in-depth reporting on their final agreement dubbed ‘The People’s Verdict’ which generated both unexpected impacts and remarkable new possibilities. His second example was from the state of Vorarlberg Austria which convenes Civic Councils of randomly selected citizens using an extraordinary group process to reflect on controversial topics to consensus outcomes that are passed on to official multi-sector ‘Responder Groups’ to implement and report back to the state. His third example was from Taiwan where citizens collaborate with government officials using a mix of a mass participatory consensus-seeking software and live-streaming to ensure that stakeholder dialogues shape official regulations. Atlee’s talk was both illuminating, as well relevant to the audience who afterwards engaged in a discussion about what we know and can imagine about engaging a society's diverse perspectives to actually generate wiser outcomes for all.
The introduction of the keynote and a closing note of thanks to the speaker was given by Prof. Nico Carpentier, Chair of the PCR section of IAMCR. On the occasion, Prof. Carpentier stressed on the effort that the PCR section has been making through its events to include non-academic communities, such as activists or media practioners, to participate in a dialogue with academics to expand our knowledge base and widen our horizons of democratic possibilities.
To read more about Tom Atlee and the Co-Intelligence Instititue, see https://www.co-intelligence.org/index.html