From a Council of Europe project, a new way to research social issues, giving rise to a hybrid of consultancy and consultation.

1. Meet the citizen expert: societal change seen from
the trenches
Alberto Cottica

2. Citizens as experts

3. “The future is already here.
It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
William Gibson

4. you you
MASSIVELY
A THINK TANK ISTRIBUTED
D
EXPERIENCE BASED
SELF-SELECTED
COLLABORATIVE

5. Act 1: seed

6. Campaigns Learning
Where did you Take an online
Missions learn your key lecture. Does it [...]
skills? work?
Mission
reports

7. Act 2: grow

9. 1,000 Twitter users
9,000 tweets
Citizens as a communication team:
Edgeryders on Twitter, Mar-Jun 2012

10. 1200 participants
500mission reports
4000 comments

11. Act 3: harvest

12. 1,700 pages
of high quality ethnographic data

14. The EDGERYDERS guide to the future I
THE
EDGERYDERS
GUIDE TO THE
FUTURE
A HANDBOOK FOR
POLICYMAKERS &
DESIGNERS OF
POLICY-ORIENTED
ONLINE
COMMUNITIES

16. The Edgeryders network
in December 2012
Density 0.028
Average weighted degree
10.87
Average distance 2.3

17. The Edgeryders network
with moderators
removed
Density 0.013
Average weighted degree
3.7
Average distance 3.3

18. The Edgeryders network
with moderators
removed
Modularity 0.5
Subcommunities are
clearly visible

19. What are
subcommunities talking
about?
Blue edge = more
specialization on one or
few topics, red edge = no
specialization, all topics
equally discussed

20. Topic tree
How “broad” and “deep”
are discussions?

21. Topic tree (detail)
A nice fractal pattern
between topics,
subtopics, posts and
comments

22. So, what have we built?

23. Inclusive: a space for individual citizens to be heard

24. Diverse: be everyone to engage with everyone!

25. Open: anyone can join without permission

26. Effective: highly relevant results

27. Consultancy
The future social business
self-correcting
truthful
+ consultation

28. THANK YOU
http://edgeryders.eu
Photo credits: the yes man, Medhin Paolos, Photographic Poetry, h.koppdelaney,