Starting a Democracy Forum / Think Tank - Is it needed? What's required for one?

Hi All Members of the Designing Open Democracy community

During the last gathering, everyone introduced themselves and a common consensus emerged on a desire to investigate the possibility of starting a officially registered organisation for democracy research and advocacy.

So this meeting we will be coming together to work out if we need to and to get things started on this idea.

Also I would like to get people to think about what it would take to get a democracy focused panel into a major event. Here is one food for thought... a discussion panel called "Politics In Moderation" where we could perhaps invite Tony from Q&A to discuss on how he moderates, along with other debate moderators.

**Also much thanks to Melbourne Business Centre for assistance in providing a quiet meeting space for us**

Date: Wednesday the 20th of March 2019
Time: Starting at 6pm
Location: Melbourne Business Centre, Level 9, 440 Collins Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000 (melbournebusinesscentre.com.au)

There will be some small teas and instant coffee available for all attendees, as well as some nibbles.

Also everyone is expected to help clean up the meeting room after the meeting has finished.

A few people outside of meetup.com have indicated that they will be attending:
* Ken Coghill - Open Government Forum
* Paul Ross - Citizen Dividend Party
* Eric Doriean - IT Governance
* Tim Falkiner - Cybernetic Governance Researcher
* Kathern Phelps - Organizer for Remake The Future
* Robert Crouch - Investigating an alternative algorithm for calculating preference flow.

A few more people who may be coming:
* Marta Poblet Balcell - Interested In Digital Democracy
* Ben Ballingal - Flux Party Media Outreach
* Tom Daly - Founder for Democratic Decay Resources

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We are currently looking for more speakers for presentation style events. Get in touch with us if interested.

# Speakers Planned For 2019 (Event Date TBA)

* Robert Crouch to talk about his idea of a better method of calculating voters intention that could replace our current way to tallying up preferences.
* Guy Kennedy from Policy Incubator to talk about his policy development platform and how it is intended to assist the public, institutions and politicians make better policies.

# Topics future speakers could touch on:

* Governance: Transparency, Corruptions, Accountability
* Structural Issues: Voting/Decision systems, Decentralisation, Cyber-security, Cognitive Security of the masses.
* Cultural: Political apathy or learned helplessness, Information
Asymmetry, Citizens engagement, Empathy deficit.

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Also don't forget about our web discussion forum at:
https://discuss.designingopendemocracy.com/