Lukas Salecker about deliberAIde and why generative AI makes a difference in deliberative democracy

why come on another episode of democracy

innovators podcast and our guest of today

is lucas celica co-founder and ceo of

deliberate

and thank you for your time for

being here hey alex glad to hear

i am

i see that you have cofunded deliberate

and them how would you describe is

a platform software or idea i dunno

the some before i get into the

nitty gritty of what we're building which

is our platform and the media get

give a little bit of background of

where where does idea comes from said

wasn't around two years by now and

when i woke up in the middle

of the nights and was sunday

date monday morning at four am and

i i had this idea to use

the power of these recently and publicise

new to technologies of generate of hey

i am for a lot of people

known through tattoo between and connect that

to

and democratic innovations like citizens assemblies to

help make them better make them more

accessible make them are scalable

and and

so that's that's exactly what we're doing

at deliberate to

i used these generate i had technology

think about how we can build them

into applications that are made for processes

like citizens seventies or other deliberative process

for different purposes and and the main

purpose then restarting with 'em with our

platform for the first

version of our platform that for launching

and and mart and and may is

sensemaking how can we help and organizers

or commissioners of these kind of participation

processes to gets to more easily get

insights and summaries from from the from

the discussions and and ought to get

better insights from them

and so that's exactly what we're doing

in his first version which and on

a more technical level starts with recording

and transcribing discussions and with built in

anonymization to puppet protect people's privacy then

we take that transcription data and

and in the future ultem other kinds

of data runs around the discussions like

manual notes or and pictures of of

whiteboards like whiteboard sticky notes for example

and we use that data to extracts

and contributions that participants made

and to and then make sense of

these contributions like and what what what

things that they propose what opinions that

they that they defend what what's what's

like wetware similarities across different contributions and

in the future also where our agreements

are disagreements

and so on

and once the organizers have done the

sensemaking they can then take their analyses

and summaries and also use ai assistance

to turn turn the insights into meaningful

reports that condemn be passed on to

the decision makers or the public and

yep that that's the

set of functions that we focus on

in the first platform version

the in the pasta was thinking about

the softer for civic participation and the

i taught a lot about that these

the automation of about summaries and the

ai integration and

and it's very cool that the some

tools like this one existed and i

wanted to ask you if you had

the done the some experiment with some

group of people and

he fit is there anything relevant to

sure

indeed so and since we're about to

launch our platform with been going through

quite a bit of testing in and

real-life processes over the past weeks and

months and so we have worked with

cities and municipalities in germany and or

also next week we're going to accede

to a test at a car

conference buddy european committee of regions and

and what we can say is that

that's really a lot of excitement about

but these tools can offer to to

people who organize these kind of parts

patient process to give you an example

will working with what

is called social planners and in in

the municipality of zika wittgenstein atlas a

relatively small town or municipality in and

the state of norfolk westphalia in germany

and day what the source of planners

do as they organize the series of

conferences where the involve citizens

it's and to to decide on future

social social planning social policy making and

and as the day they have tested

our software various occasions now and they

were already excited simply about the the

possibility to record and transcribe and the

discussions and but when they saw for

example and how they can even going

beyond transcriptions and can can can use

a i to extracts and the the

ideas that participants shared to to cluster

different ideas together and said to use

our tagging functionality

the to extract and even more specific

insights and all of that and on

a on a digital whiteboard so we're

actually we be developed aided to whiteboard

like mirror or mural and where they

can work with the insides and some

reason visually and interactively

they they did they had a the

feedback we got from them was that

does this exactly like what what what

what they need or it didn't know

they need it and and they they

really believed that this could help them

tremendously in the in the future and

especially speed up their documentation and reporting

processes

i'm thinking about the

the last thing you he just said

that the didn't know that to that

that they didn't know that they need

the the platform because maybe they were

not aware of that some platform like

this or that the technology cool helps

so much in the seen political processes

and the

i was reading the description of the

libor aid and resulting very interesting our

mission is to ensure that every voice

is heard

and i think this is what is

very cool about the civic tech that

could the law literally every voice to

be heard and the do you think

that the this platform or like a

similar platforms

in the future cool the

i could be not just related to

do to some experiment in a town

but really be something that people use

the every day and saw all the

political system eventually with the will change

i certainly believe so that's that's the

vision that that drives us and really

believing that and your leverage this new

information technology that generate a fe eyes

that we can create spaces and that

that extends way beyond the current political

arenas

so right now political decision-making political discussions

are very confined to you know people

who have been elected or and add

people who are members of political parties

or and the media and or social

media

but all of these current political arenas

and spaces have a lot of shortcomings

am especially when it comes to who

do they include and who do they

exclude and for example to be elected

and it's and it takes quite a

bit of time first of all but

then also you need to meet other

conditions texts to be a

acted as a representative and thus partake

in the political conversation and we believe

that and democratic innovations like citizens assemblies

and oftentimes of the the selection of

participants in this and is many public's

through random selection saw lottery and can

help overcome some of these shorts or

cummings of of excuse

asian and and but they're they're still

there still even within these new democratic

innovation processes like citizens' assembly they're still

challenges to overcome and that's it exactly

where we believe and technology this new

information technology of generate for i especially

can come in add to tackle issues

ranging from and

inclusivity to and the depth of conversation

and quality of dialogue at to scalability

and costs of these of these processes

just to give some examples in terms

of inclusivity oftentimes language is still a

barrier to participate in and citizens assemblies

and we already know that generate a

eyes real

the good at translating and and they're

actually start ups popping up that help

and with real-time translation for example so

that can help bring down the barriers

to inclusion in conversations and citizens assemblies

then depth of dialogue and currently and

and citizens' assembly set out well facilitated

and you oftentimes only scratched the surface

of underlying conflicts and when people have

disagreements our conflicting opinions you don't really

to have the time and of the

air the the insides to actually dig

deeper and and truly understand

and why certain conflicts existence society and

we believe the generate if i and

and and the and analyses that generate

a i can enable can help us

understand conflicts better and and thus mediate

better between conflicting views and the third

example related to scale would be if

if you can use like our girl

from one platform for example for summarization

sense making reporting in like very quickly

and minutes rather than days you save

a lot of costs for for and

organize us for an analyst for no

takers

and that that allows you to organize

a lot more of his assemblies and

or organize such assemblies seventies in the

first place and if you have a

very small budget and a and a

second plane relate to the scared would

also be and right now

do you to that texted organize something

like a citizen assembly like a mean

of meaningful deliberative dialogue you you need

most of the time to do it

well you need professional moderators but there's

a there's a scarcity of professional the

moderators so we believe in the future

and with a i we could empower

party

recipients to self moderate for example there

are already some experiments in that direction

underway stanford and orlando liberation platform and

person foremost and but we believe we

can do better we can help of

a can use a i to to

help and creates a i am moderation

assistance that can truly understand the convoy

recession and nudge in the right direction

to make a constructive and that will

allow for a scaling or multiplying these

kind of processes by the thousands and

thus help to include many many more

people than than current the is the

case in an average citizen assembly which

which nominees only around one hundred to

one hundred one hundred and fifty

people

i share we few the excite excitement

about the the ai agents that moderate

because i i will agree with feud

that the good the moderators are not

the there are not a lot of

good the moderators and the

and yeah agents could help a lot

to and they're thinking about the scalability

i mean about participation like is there

anything

that you were thinking cooler stimulates user

to participate like i'm thinking about some

gamification system or like people just participated

when a you did the experiments in

the

i mean with the experiment that you

have done now like in some towels

with some institutions people just participated all

day received some kind of

the

now

southern i'm actually a bit cautious with

an attempt to incentivise participation that are

more in the technical sites like gamification

for example and some not sure if

they're really dissolution i think that then

it then need to be and

other incentives that i'm more in the

process site for people to want to

participate and i think a lot of

times what actually prevents people from participating

is not that participation is boring and

therefore you need to gamify it making

more exciting but there are more structural

barriers in place like

do people just next door to job

or sometimes more than one job just

not having the time to to to

take to to go to an event

like that and in in the evening

on a work day or there too

exhausted to to go on participate in

a and then process and like the

social the planning process i just talked

about on the weekend

and they may also have other responsibilities

like caretaking that simply cans at they

simply can't afford to participate and saw

dead and and in order to tackle

dose we also need to put structural

solution that solutions in place for example

and and big citizens the seventies like

those that isn't this

family on a nutrition by the german

parliament and last year and and twenty

twenty three twenty twenty four and and

it's also the case and other assemblies

people will get paid at a small

amount but at least they get some

form of compensation so that they can

participate and and if

future of we need to go beyond

that so that they don't just need

to get paid like one hundred euros

per day or something but the actual

need to need to be able to

and gagged like at get free from

their jobs for for the time they

participate in such processes and or and

yup it if you if you think

it even if more law

long-term white why students someone who participates

in the in a citizens' assembly be

almost equally compensated to an elected representative

so

they are representatives after all that take

time to deliberate on the nation to

inform themselves it's hot work so why

should they only get like one hundred

years per day and if they do

almost the same work as elected representatives

and so i believe these are structural

solutions to structural problems that proven participate

nowadays that are more and the process

side rather than than than and then

the technical side

i agree with from your analysis and

the

i would like to ask you

and if you want to share some

of your personal but ground eventful also

starting from when you were a i

tried

so starting all the way back from

from when i was quite i think

might be a bit boring along but

i i can start at the like

quite pivotal moment or or time in

my life which was almost like half

my life a gulp around fifteen years

which is why when i was sixteen

and before i was sixteen i you

know i grew up in a small

town in germany at i've actually never

left germany until then and and so

my at you could say i grew

up in and quite the bubble and

and but when i was sixteen i

had the privilege to actually gone and

exchange here

abroad

in mexico for one year and to

go to high school there for for

your learned learn language get to know

the the culture meet meet new people

extend my heroic horizons and extending my

horizons it it truly was because it's

a literally bursts this bottle of of

privilege

and that that i grew up in

because there was the first time when

i got this outside view of of

where i grew up in germany and

europe and the global north and and

made me realize while how how unequal

the world actually is and and also

how unfair the world this and which

makes

the world so unequal and so since

them and you can say in while

retrospectively i said i call it that

the moment when i found my purpose

or the time when i found my

purpose in life because it really motivated

me since then to to keep her

to keep trying to it to to

learn and stuff

audi and educate myself and finally find

a work so that i could do

something against these inequalities and against is

ingested injustices that it had first scene

when i was in mexico for the

for that year and and this kind

of purpose only got reinforced over the

past fifteen years whilst i was studying

in white is inequalities exists am i

had other chance to live abroad and

and other countries of the so called

godless of and where we're and and

i saw a more stocker inequalities and

injustices at work and and for up

so far long time i thought

i i might want to help tackle

these problems as as a development worker

saw kind of working for the united

nations working for the world bank and

your name those institutions german development agency

and

but eventually i realized okay i don't

think while that hasn't been working for

seventy eighty years now since development corporation

started and it's probably not gonna work

because there are other bigger structural issues

and place power inequality especially

so actually we need to look at

ourselves in the global north in europe

in the west and think about okay

how are we actually preventing other countries

around the world especially in his so

called global south from pursuing their their

own visions and ideas of of a

better future

we we are we have been kind

of imposing our idea of how how

societies ought to look like which we

call it development and we've been trying

to promote that through development corporation but

i think that's that's the wrong approach

and and so let's be what i

realized eventually

around the time i was studying their

masses we need to look at our

own system that our own economic systems

and and are on political systems in

europe in the west in the global

north and think about how the day

suppress systematically and how today and takeaway

space for others to truly flourish and

pursue their own visions of the

and so i started to study and

things like like d grove ideas like

d grow of posts growth and how

can be transformed our economic systems to

make them more a lot of technological

and social and eventually then i realized

okay while we probably also need to

change our political says systems to

achieved this kind of deep economic transformation

and so then i became interested in

deliberative democracy because essentially a deliberative democracy

is about redistributing political power to ordinary

people and i i truly believe that

this is what's needed to achieve the

that profound transfer

formation said we need to make our

our economic political systems our societies more

ecological more just more more social and

yeah that's what led me to my

passion for deliberative democracy and then eventually

two years ago kind of connecting that

passion and to

how how can we use technology to

enhance these this new forms of democracy

the will to like to share some

of your a academic or professional the

ground

yep so i studied and

broadly speaking political science or political economy

and sided and a bachelor's in liberal

arts and sciences global challenges that's how

it was called and in the netherlands

at leiden university college and that it

was a very open interdisciplinary him bachelors

earth where i could really choose my

my own focus from from a lot

of options that i was given and

i decided to focus broadly on an

economics on an international development and on

governance and

and and my masters i then decided

to do development studies and cause partly

because i was still thinking about becoming

a development worker but also because i

really want to to understand this idea

of development and now and i wanted

to critically engage with it and and

added

that in in in the uk at

the university of oxford and what what

was really special about that masters was

that it takes a step back and

and critically questions this whole concept of

development and i was very glad that

that ended this mass masters because as

i just explain

and it's a really let me to

question the whole idea of development and

then vote start to focus more on

what can be actually do and europe

in the west and the global north

yeah i i also had the impression

that the

i mean the sometimes corporation

do it can be no way i

i mean corporation not as a word

not the corporation that can be done

by email you when someone else for

like a relief to ngos and i

mean sometimes it cool seems like a

sort of colonial nation in some way

saw you sure some of them

the dubbed about to a if that

is the solution and the also be

about older

you use that structure many times like

also before and i totally agree like

there are some structural problems there is

a some violence that instructor in our

society and the yeah we can try

to change it in some way with

these new tools

and the

i see also cooking with the other

guests do that there are basically two

ways one is to take a

i i mean the democracy that we

have a right now and we just

put some way i e some automation

some transcriptions to and we try to

make them more efficient or the other

ways to find new solutions completely different

from the bustle

and i think that the deliberate the

is a on this second

oh wait

so you're trying to find a new

solutions for people to be able to

the side and to talk

and the i was reading about peer

parliament's is it the

it seems connected the no way or

not

we're very good yes actually this and

i just realized that forgot to to

answer the second part of the previous

question on my professional background and thought

i mean it's it's not not a

very long professional experienced that i have

and only round and four years now

and to have that has been deliberate

and

but right after my master actually started

working in an organizing citizen participation at

a company called he fuck which has

a german company that's that's 'em now

a one and among the european market

leaders who could say and organizing citizen

seventies and other participation process and i

worked at for half a year

and during that it during those six

months i actually helped organize what's called

at pier parliament's that he just mentioned

and i was a process by her

are organized on behalf of the european

commission and to involve citizens european citizens

in you climate policy making

and what i think was was special

about this is that this was one

of the one of the first times

and not the first time that and

a high level political institution organized and

distributors and deliberative participation process and and

what does that mean

so basically european citizens were asked to

organize small scale and discussion groups or

the article and house parliament's where they

invite their friends or neighbors or colleagues

and gathered at home or at a

bar or

community center to add as discuss different

topics related to your climate politics and

at the end of their discussions they

were asked to take a decision on

what what recommendations they they want to

to make to the european commission what

the change about

odds and certain aspects of of a

you climate politics and they submitted those

were can commendations back to us and

more organized this process season total they

were i think around five hundred or

six hundred parliament's organized through the whole

of europe song till around five hundred

participants and

i thought that was that was really

knew because instead of saying like what

what has happened a lot of times

over the past ten years all years

on that participate in platform disco and

and have a dislike comment on others'

ideas on and on nine participation platform

they really locally

list is processes by us and and

decentralized the process by art asking people

to organize discussions at home like real

time face-to-face discussions and i think that's

really crucial because what's missing on and

mass online participation is this very essential

human element and and a human canal

action and and ability to look each

other in and into it and in

the face see each other's emotions and

then makes and gestures and and very

important to hear hear each other's stories

and all of that is missing an

online participation platform and it's also missing

on on social media and i i

believe lots of

part of the reason why a social

media so polarizing because people are not

looking into each other's eyes monday when

they discuss but in these peer parliaments

and they preserved as is this this

essential element by by focusing on the

small scale and interpersonal and discussions but

then they they

that they scaled stabbed by multiplying these

small scale deliberate of discussions which eventually

allowed several thousands of people to participate

and so where's the connection to what

i'm doing right now in a way

that's a part of the vision that

striving then drove me to start to

bread and that dry

having us at at the la bread

because back in the days when when

i organized the pier parliaments and i

had to manually sought through and summarize

and analyze all the submissions that'd we

got back from participants and i can

tell you it was a mess and

it was not good and was hard

work a real pain and it

not do justice to

at the new ones and motor dimensionality

that that that their discussions probably contains

and but i think with generated ai

we can really use that information technology

to the first of all and

do more justice to the complexity of

discussions that people are having and in

such distributed processes and second of all

i think there's also a possibility to

interact interconnect the different and discussions on

a pier parliament's the house parliament's they

were isolated that place isolated in isolation

from each other there was no

exchange of information between them but i

think we can use generate of the

i to cross-pollinate between them

and and that's actually what a lindlaw

more and and one of her articles

cause and multiple rotating many public's and

that's really and and and an idea

that's that's been quite them inspiring for

me and and kept kept me going

because i believe like that we can

really is scaled small scale com

conversations two thousands or even hundreds of

thousands of people and thus get back

the

the essence of what makes her good

political conversations by it but at the

same time allowing masses to participate in

the conversation

this will be ozone

and the i think about the polarization

the you know we i mean talking

with someone to someone that the that

tesla different ideas from as of it's

what is the needed to not be

polarized but some time we are used

to think like in a sort of

binary way so if if if you

think in a different way from me

at the do not talk to you

and so i see this candle software

very useful

and the

i was wondering because the about the

platform

so it can be used by different

users

saw institutions political parties i think angles

i dunno and the is there any

difference the related to the use the

i mean how they will they use

the software or like of would it

work in the same way for every

kind of

entity

so so right now and as first

burden it's really mainly targeting and we

call him organizers and as opposed to

like every every participant or like an

ordinary participant in the process and

and but for organizers like no matter

if they're part of the political institution

political party a municipality and or even

within a company and it's it's all

the same

i saw daredevil does one interface like

sure they are like different roads excess

different axes like the navy opponents the

navy facilitators and maybe product managers but

essentially it's the same and everybody has

access to and the transcription to and

the sensemaking to the reporting and

but yet participants at this point unless

they are self organizers will not interact

much with the platform itself that will

most d c

interim results like clustered ideas and or

water final reports that have been created

with the platform

i ever thought about the collectivization of

problems because they something that the

i mean there was not to think

about this question when it was preparing

the interview but the something that i

thought the about also now

because sometimes i dunno person as a

problem do i make these example i

dunno i fight though i always fight

with my brother and the i can

think that that the is an individual

problem i mean it is my fault

or my brother fault but then i

dunno knife in the town

everyone fight with his or her own

brother or sister in owais are sort

of such a problem and the i

think that nowadays is very hard the

to be aware of this kind of

problems

but using this kind of tools as

you said the week could the have

a small discussion groups and then who

have all the the problems that goes

in the summer he made by i

and so then people can be aware

of certain problem that the the were

not

so indeed them i think that has

real potential to him

and

like move move the conversations back from

kind of private spaces like i fight

with my my family at home and

everybody fights with their family at home

or and i dunno on net neighbors

fattened fighting with each other and lebanon

a more private space

and also from what has become the

the main public square these days social

media and and also more traditional media

and take take those conversations back from

these two spaces because they have to

have their issues and really try to

create a new public's public square and

are actually not not a new one

but get back the old once in

a way to called back to the

future and cause we used to be

able to have these conversations and before

social media the foreign mass media and

i think we just need to get

back to depth and and will be

really believe that and generate of i

ai and and other emerging technologies can

help with them

and the i want to ask you

what is the actual state of the

platform like

i know that these are working in

some way because you have done a

tester you know with when his policies

and other institutions but the i wondering

do right now i mean what are

you working on is there are also

or so if is that is there

any problem

mm that your stock on any skill

that you're searching for maybe someone that

listen to the podcast can say okay

it maybe i can help on that

so we are and still still working

on developing the first version so there

there are some features that are already

quite advanced and that we have tested

and especially around sensemaking and

but there are other features that we

still have to have to fully fleshed

out like like the final reporting for

example and and we also need we

are also working on making our platform

more more stable and scalable so so

far sensemaking on the on allows for

and summarizing individual

discussion sessions and but one thing that

we're actually tackling as we speak and

is to also makes sense of discussions

and across sessions saw compare different sessions

with each other and find similarities differences

in san

what are we struggling with and

i think a lot of the

the the challenges are are under and

the details and said very easy to

to produce something that works works eighty

per cent well and but to actually

make something reliable and accurate and like

summaries for example and ninety five percent

of the time and to make that

fast and secure and protected data privacy

and in the process that's the real

challenge and to anyone who knows how

to how to make llm systems reliable

and evaluate them systematically and working on

know how to do prompt optimization and

working interested in in and data protect

one and select anonymization before using a

lens yet

at at that would be very helpful

and then so please please get in

touch

was it expensive to be the such

blocked from or like out there relevant

cause to i mean i think about

the transcription they use of ai the

analysis of the of the transcription

and the

yeah was it challenging in a way

to find the found fundings money to

build the plateau i dunno also

if you're working fully full-time on this

project or if you have aside the

job and also ah how many people

are involved in the team

i like this mani said that that

the

makes everything a little bit difficult as

have heard or saw from other people

interviewed definitely and so actually the technical

side of building it was not expensive

at all and i think our our

technical costs snack at all

all llm cogs and hosting costs and

and you name them their below one

thousand dollars and saw really not expensive

that on but that doesn't figure in

all the like the human labor costs

and because my my seven co-founders and

i we have we've been working

completely for free

and for two years now

and some of us fulltime most of

us next to their phds or a

studies or a full-time jobs

i thought of had we had we

figured and all the costs a labor

costs than a for probably have been

much more expensive and and you name

the key challenge and which is to

find funding for for this kind of

project and so

in a little bit of a tricky

in between situation where

i thought so we are a startup

and may purposely decided to become like

a business and and not an ngo

and because we we wanted to be

independent me wants to be independent from

public or philanthropic funding reruns of generate

our own revenues that we could reinvest

in furthering or

our mission

and

but we are nonprofit startup saw and

that does not really attracts and big

funders because the that we with we

will structurally make it impossible to get

and

to privatize profits from what we do

we wanted to reinvest all our revenues

all profits into the mission and and

i puts as and in a very

difficult place and because

and makes it hard to apply for

public funding and my grants and and

we've been rejected from a lot of

them i can tell you and at

the same time it also makes it

hard to attract more conventional investors for

example and like vc capital while you

call it and doesn't speak

and because they are looking for more

returns on their investment that we'd just

can give them and don't want to

give them however we think my lucky

to and have half quite of his

supporters throughout am after all so despite

all the rejections got and only nice

needs like a few handful of of

of people organizations to believe in you

and as a we like from very

early on we again to support of

oxford university innovation and as startup incubator

and actually gave us a bit of

funding as bulk and that allowed us

to i dunno cover cover some costs

and and recently we got and the

german gov

them and startup called a scholarship which

is called exists and that starting from

april and that will actually allowed three

of us to to start working full

time with a monthly scholarship and also

quite a bit of additional funding to

cover other costs like like development for

example and out that that

we're really be a game changer for

us because it's been a long and

rough two years

yeah doesn't seem so easy and it

it is quite crazy i mean because

i that the this kind of solution

i mean the

in a way i dunno in the

future crew could really avoid the i

dunno

something bed

they could eventually avoid war so civil

wars i mean we for we forget

about about all that the

yeah

but it was a very common for

people in the past that the justice

sometimes kill each other and the i

think that these is one of the

most important things like politics and understand

why people participate and the yeah make

the process easier for old people to

to put

dissipate

and the

and yeah i wonder like him

collaboration in seek deck like

do you finca of you add the

collaboration we father

i dunno platforms or do you think

that these will be important to

one hundred percent for sure and very

important and we have had only good

experience so far so and

it's probably like from the perspective of

established organizations like i dunno go vocal

make dot org and desert him console

and not sure how often pro probably

more often than we think like new

lay people with new ideas come along

and and tried to do something in

the space and

and while some extent like if your

he thought about a conventionally like and

and conventional economic competition terms then

the the baker established players they probably

wouldn't welcome you with open arms and

and the them then they might be

skeptical like what are what what what

it is what what are these people

doing like are they a threat to

us that that tablet that that's what

you would would think and eventually i

guess and but in this space and

a civic

tech space i i've i've only experienced

the opposite and so really all of

them all the ones that are named

and more just really welcoming us with

open arms and being interested and curious

and would be do and not just

interests but actually also like pro support

like realizing or

okay we are really covering a new

nice we're not exactly doing the same

thing so they thought okay does can

enrich the eco-system saw that's helped them

and and that's that's transpired and invitations

and and people and added at the

has established organization to

selling their clients their partners about us

which then led to important partnerships for

us and just generally multiplication talking about

us helping helping us gain more visibility

and

and so that that has been very

helpful and for us and generally also

we couldn't very well combat a civic

tech association for example even though we

don't have any resource right now contributes

to become a member but still there

they welcomed us and and very recently

actually and two weeks ago

at the oh city co-creation boot camp

in lisbon on using emergent technologies for

civic participation and we are also cooperated

with other startups and like ourselves dem

brain harmony come and to creates a

a new solution for a consultation analysis

and and also that was only a

positive experience and you might think okay

the startups are doing very similar things

solid their our competitors and ends to

admittedly these are also thoughts that had

previously crossed my mind and because it

is is really similar but we're doing

but then just experiencing

that corporation can actually lead to new

solution and to him to to kind

of broadening the

the the markets so to speak

i was a really great experience and

i think permit out there was a

reinforcement that collaboration always wins over computation

and because at the end of the

day everybody benefits if the field growth

of the industry growth the market growth

and and ultimately what's most important and

democracy by

benefits because of the upper or here

for the up the same mission yes

we all need to make our our

revenues to sustain ourselves that of the

at the end of the day of

on to strengthen democracy and and i

think that that are only goes through

cooperation and not competing with each other

i also had the impression that the

the things that you have said that

the in some other field the someone

that does something similar to use our

competitor while the in this specific field

the he or she became a collaborator

this is ozone

and the

and

so a deliberate is a sort of

standalone plot from and i shingles for

the same about or monica

while the city is more modular

have you had any thought about these

the

because i see that the every every

one is building new platforms

that is physically different approaches

do so i wonder a few totals

about an integration with thus edema or

like sign of something like this

definitely i saw the first of all

and we are thinking mid term long-term

of deliberate also as more margaret modular

platform were getting started with one module

right now and but we want to

make it's multi modular and the future

and and that means

being

open to other towards integrating with hours

or our to integrating with other towards

especially when when they're complementary and i

think that's really the case for dessert

in for console for for harmonicas all

participation processes are very complex and multi

multi step and i think we're covering

and different where we're we're focusing on

a different step in the process then

for example the decedent and harmony car

and saw

we would really love to and have

conversations with dessert him but also provide

other providers of online participate in platforms

because i think they can be

for example of a great step before

us citizen the seventy four agenda setting

for the for instance or afterwards for

disseminating results and similar to harmonica they

take a it could serve a function

like getting a first impression of what

are the most contentious issues that could

then be deepened and something

in the assembly and and so what

does that mean concretely for us while

we're we're thinking of the design of

our platform in a long-term as modular

and were also thinking about open source

and and we still have to make

our minds up about the exact opposite

strategy that we wanted to pursue and

that's these our discussion said we're having

and i think but also often not

talked about an officer into upper upper

ability and so kind of our outputs

are output formats and integrating with other

other platforms inputs formats and the other

way round other platforms output formats integrating

with our and

put formats and saw that yep it's

a day they can seamlessly be integrated

and more different modules from different that

firms can be connected and tailored to

the exact sir uses and needs and

roulette processes

the boat to interpret ability do you

know if right now is there any

kind of protocol for a p i

related to see with that

because it's something that the i was

thinking recently that may be there should

be some kind of protocol so if

i want to build a new platform

i already know how to

how to be lit club to be

honest i haven't done a lot of

research on this yaps and so i

can't imagine that there's some attempts to

do it but i haven't come to

come across them and what i know

though is that metacafe for example which

i believe has also funded my money

cause

and some i think also a recent

go vocal project and their recent funding

call it was also about entire upper

ability and

what am i nuts and and not

not familiar with the outcomes and haven't

haven't looked into that but yeah i

i i i see people's to stop

like start talking about it i've also

had conversations about it with that civic

tech association for their attempts to like

get to that point

yeah i've also i've seen that through

some movement inside the mythical about to

your interoperability because read now there are

many tools and so will be very

cool to integrate all of them

and the you shop do some more

meals i have a couple of crystals

of him

so is if someone as an idea

related to civic deck to participation how

will you how cool that person start

the project

how it was for you how how

did you start laker

so i know it's a bit that

of a police say but it's true

i didn't believe it before i did

myself either i was more of a

planner and but the the main kind

of recommendation is to just get had

started start and start talking about it

and start doing

stop endlessly planning and then not implementing

and just get started somewhere and the

great news is that nowadays it's

because of ai it's become hundred or

a thousand times easier to get started

there are tools out there were also

using internally at deliberate that can help

you prototype in like a minute

so you have an idea go to

v zero dot death favor cell and

within a minute you have a functional

prototype of your idea

it might need fewer alterations to actually

make it nice and but an hour

later he actually have something that can

show to people and that will help

you explain your ideas better

and and if you want to take

it further their even tools nowadays for

for actual software development and web development

and and thon and i myself i

knew literally zero about ai before before

i started this

the on if the first time i

ever started engaging with a i was

touchy between before that i just like

then completely ignorant of it

and then tend to be to really

showed me the potential of it and

while i i realized the k and

this is powerful and then i started

learning more about it i started playing

around with it added a bootcamp and

machine learning and data science for three

months just to get the the basics

like understand the basic concepts how does

ai how to a neural and neural

networks work

so on

yeah

but to be honest if you don't

have access to boot bootcamp like in

my case paid by by the employment

agency in germany he could find a

wealth of resources on materials online and

are a website where you can do

courses and one great example is deep

learning that i excellent courses very beginner

friendly

to just stop familiar familiarizing yourself with

these more like tech and the tech

things at and how to say the

more tech site of of your idea

but then you can you can get

started in no time and i am

not a developer i still don't know

how to cook

note but i can use a i

right now to actually code or develop

and i think that has to lord

the entry barrier tremendously for anyone who

has it has a great idea so

start doing would be the first part

of the recombination and start talking about

it

the second one might actually be more

important than the first one because of

you don't talk about your idea and

nobody will ever know about it and

most importantly know at nobody will ever

come and help you with it so

no matter how and basic and unrefined

and flawed your your first initial ideas

star

talking about it

i know it's not easy it requires

submitted little bit of courage and but

if you don't believe in your idea

enough to talk about it then

while then then maybe you might not

want to started in the first place

but if you do believe in your

idea enough to talk about it then

go on talking about it

because then others will get inspired and

inspired so much the day that it

will actually want to join you and

help you create this and i can

tell you for me over the past

two years it has been one long

beautiful and very humbling and are and

honoring the experience of talking about it

and then people joining

and and giving support and making it

their own idea and yep

that's at the end of that every

day but occur recommend to you start

doing and start talking about it

yeah as we said the people here

are really wants to collaborate so talking

about your idea and network we the

people if think he is essential social

the ever more than in other filled

maybe because of these in specific collaborate

ocean

the

and the do you have any any

message for the people that are working

on the

this kind of tools that are experimenting

with the

in the civic tech fields the the

democracy few the

something that you would like to share

lot for for other fellow civic decors

or a deliberative packers and let's continue

collaborating and expanding our collaborating and i

think all of us can only benefit

from it and and for people are

working and more more on the and

the process sides

of democratic innovation saw people organizing citizens

assemblies people organizing a dialogue forums town

halls and so on

and

be skeptical of the dangerous of these

technologies for sure and but also don't

let the skepticism dominate the conversation cause

there's so much potential and and using

the these technologies for goods and especially

in this context and the that it

would be a shame if the only

if

all we ever kept talking about was

mustered the dangers of it and that

let's let's shift the convert let's not

forget about the dangers but let's shift

the conversation to what we can really

use these technologies for because every technology

can be used for for good and

bad for bad and good and the

other way around and that's especially the

case

this and democrat in innovation

thank you thank you are locked the

for your insight for the conversation and

the issue of any other and anything

that you will like to add the

that may be i didn't task or

otherwise i added all the questions

well thank you very much alessandro i

got our website at www dot to

the red dot com or if you

want to stay at and in the

loop on what's going on follow us

on linkedin

connects also with me on linkedin and

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on the website yields also find will

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waitlist so if you are an organizer

was interested in and using our towards

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as a user from may onwards sign

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updates firsthand

don't kill getting

thank you