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
if if you'd like to collaborate and
on the website yields also find will
soon find the next few days a
waitlist so if you are an organizer
was interested in and using our towards
as a pilot partner right now or
as a user from may onwards sign
up to the waitlist and you will
receive other info
what launch and and yet any other
updates firsthand
don't kill getting
thank you