Who writes this stuff?

Paul Evans

Paul Evans (contact) is a local democracy practitioner with a long track-record of running e-democracy projects at a local level with a particular focus upon the promotion of local representative democracy.

Paul’s current projects include a range of local UK e-democracy projects, the Slugger O’Toole Political Awards in Northern Ireland. Previously, Paul helped to establish Poptel Technology Ltd in 2002, and was a director of this successful worker co-op web development company until 2007 having. He was instrumental in establishing the original New Statesman New Media Awards back in 1998.

You can follow his Twitter feed here , and visit his Memeserver Ltd site.

Anthony Zacharzewski

Anthony Zacharzewski worked in Whitehall for ten years, including spells at the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, before leaving central government and becoming Head of Policy at an urban unitary in 2006.

He has a longstanding interest in participation and democracy, and blogs at The Democratic Society.

Halina Ward

Halina Ward has worked as a researcher on issues related to sustainable development since 1992.

She is Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, a small charity which works to find ways better to equip democracy to deliver sustainable development.

Halina has previously worked for a variety of organisations including Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the International Institute for Environment and Development. She initially qualified as a solicitor, practising commercial environment law.

Halina also blogs on www.fdsd.org

Andrew Regan

Andrew Regan is a Hove-based applications-developer with an interest in political blogging. Having established the innovative ‘Bloggers4Labour’ aggregator site in 2005, Andrew has taken his content-manipulation skills further to establish Poblish – a non-partisan weblog aggregation tool. You can show your devotion to Poblish on its Facebook fan page.

Andrew will be using the Local Democracy blog to showcase his ideas and seek feedback.

He has recently published a Bloggers4Labour iPhone application (iTunes link) to demonstrate the potential that Poblish has in creating customised feeds from selective blogs.

Mick Fealty

Mick Fealty specialises in New Media and Politics.

He is also the award winning blogger behind Slugger O’Toole, and he writes on Irish and British politics for the Telegraph’s Brassneck blog and the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

Mick also facilitates participatory events that parallel the social networking technologies that make online media so compelling.

Dave Briggs

Dave Briggs is an independent consultant working as a digital enabler for the public sector.

He blogs at DavePress and has worked in a variety of sectors advising on and evangelising for social media.

Andy Williamson

Andy Williamson has been involved in research, strategy and policy relating to online political communication, citizen engagement and the social appropriation of digital media for a long time.

What he’s really trying to do is figure out how digital media can help all of us to engage and flourish in a new era.

To try and make this happen, he has variously incarnated as an online activist and an advisor to various governments.

He also happens to be Director of the eDemocracy Programme at the Hansard Society.

This site has been set up with the aim of recruiting a number of other do-ers in the local democracy field, and Paul, Mick, Anthony and Dave are – hopefully – only the first of many posters to this site. If you are interested in getting involved, get in touch using this form:

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