 Hi, everyone. Good to see you all again. Really excited about this afternoon's program. But yeah, it's my great pleasure to introduce Holly, Holly Ruth and Gailman. She is of a huge name in civic tech, so I don't really think she needs much introduction. And it's absolutely fabulous to have her here as our kind of keynote in a kind of fireside chat. I was terribly, terribly desperate to get a fireside background, but it really, it didn't work. Basically, my face had the flames on the breast. It looked like the devil. That's scary. So I'm sorry that that little bit of novelty isn't available to us, but no, it's still, I'm so, so pleased we've got Holly. I'm a bit gutted. I would love to have actually sat in a room and had a nice glass of wine in a chat with you. But in the absence of that, yep, so Holly has just written this book, Civic Power, Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis. I thoroughly recommend it. It's a great read. And I'm pretty sure I got this off Amazon. I think that's the best place to get it, Holly. Okay, so it's available on Amazon. And so yeah, if you don't mind, Holly, do you want to, is there anything you'd like to kind of do a little bit of an intro before we dive? I just want to say good morning to everyone, and good afternoon, and thank you so much for having me. You know, big thank you to everyone joining this conversation. It's really awesome to be scrolling through the zoom and seeing so many people that I respect and admire across so many different continents. So that's a real testament to this community and a huge thank you to everyone at my society, who really pitched in and made today possible. And a reminder just of, you know, the resilience and agility of our community and the ability for us to be adaptive and to try to respond and learn and grow from this crisis. So I'm really happy to be here. As they mentioned, please add your questions to the Slido. And, you know, I should add, there was just an excerpt of the book that came out in Stanford Social Innovation Review. So you don't even need to buy it. You can just read the excerpt. I'm the worst at selling books. But I'm really delighted and I'm really honored to be a part of this. So thank you so much for having me. Well, absolute pleasure. Okay, so diving in. So the book's called Civic Power, Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis. That's a very powerful title. So can you tell us just a little bit more about the book itself and why you felt kind of compelled to write it? Absolutely. So as many of you know, who have, you know, written books, these books start a long time. This one actually started almost seven or eight years ago out of work. That's good. That's the right reaction you want. It was work I was doing as part of the Harvard Gettysburg project, which was looking to bridge academia and practice and think about what we can learn from the scholarly literature, but then how we could actually help organizations on the ground. And, you know, part of what we realized through bringing these organizations together and sort of working with people inside government was the lack of planning and bandwidth to think about these larger structural questions, because that's just the day to day of the reality. And so I think for us, this book was, it started out as a project way before we saw the rise of leaders like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump to think about where are these underlying fissures in our democracy and where are their inaccessible political power and also economic power and how they're related. And then right as we were sort of finishing up the book, we saw in the United States, you know, the rise of Donald Trump. And it really sort of crystallized for us how these sort of right-wing populist moments, they are, they're not just this sort of, you know, quick reaction. They're actually deeper symptoms of this breakdown of democracy that we were sort of already thinking about. And so I think that's why you have this provocative title, because it really, it is an era of crisis and it's so much deeper than any one of these leaders would make it seem. So that's sort of how we got to this title. It turned out to be a good zeitgeisty kind of title. You never know how things are going to go with titles. I think it's an excellent title. I like a punchy title. There are two, I think there are too many academic books out there that have, you know, titles that go all, you know, like five lines and by the time you've got... Like colon, paragraph, paragraph, paragraph. Absolutely. And yeah, one of the key themes that runs through the book is of civic or community organizing, you know, the kind of importance of that kind of strand of activity. Obviously, this is a kind of civic tech conference. So how do you see digital? What is the role of digital in that? Absolutely. So digital, for me and for my work, has always played an integral role, thinking of where we can find opportunities to really harness the power and creativity of people on the ground and then what are the roles of digital tools. You know, you see this, whether it's sort of, you know, in things like the Arab Spring or sort of movements that you see all around the globe, that when things are really successful online, they have this sort of deep backing that is sort of on the ground and sort of it's sort of the right marrying of the two. And I think, you know, we'll talk more in this fireside chat about the current moment and COVID, but I think it's a great opportunity for us to really reimagine how digital tools can be used in ways that truly build civic power. Right? We all understand because we're sort of in an inside baseball, why, you know, a Twitter hashtag is different than an E-town hall than E-participatory democracy or participatory budgeting to e-voting to any sort of number of collaborative tools. But these are not things that everyone necessarily understands. They're not things that people working inside government on the local level necessarily have a lot of experience with. And in the book, we also talk about on the government aspect, that sort of pipeline problem. And I know many of you have sort of been addressing this in various aspects, but how do you really build the next generation of public sector leaders with that dual literacy in technology and also sort of organizing civic engagement and policy, so that they're sort of integrated from the very beginning. That's I think a huge opportunity. And you're seeing it sort of trickling down in all sorts of places. But, you know, right now, if you look at this current moment, the amount of local officials, at least in the United States that I have spoken to that are just like, what do we do? How do we engage people who want to give their energy? And they want to be a part of collaborative solutions, but we don't even know how to think about it. And so I think that is sort of an opportunity that we talk about in the book. That's, yeah, and that's I think the experience of so many people in the room at the moment is totally, yeah, a very kind of different constituencies with very, very different priorities between those constituencies. You know, I think language really matters there. Different people, you know, I teach in a policy school and it's very clear when I have sort of an economist who's taking my classes and they're like, but, you know, why would you do participatory budgeting, right? It's not the most economically rational and you're like, right, but there are different reasons and different values for different kinds of norms. So you have to think about what do we value? And if you value inclusion, responsiveness, equity, those are their own set of values, but we need to be educating people. Or for example, on this question of digital tools, you know, so many of the people when I was working in the Obama administration on this stuff, you know, they wanted to do engagement, but they didn't have the institutional support, their direct superiors didn't give them enough bandwidth, they weren't given that opportunity or it was tacked on as an additional thing on an already very busy plate. And so I think we have to think about at least on the government side, and I think also on the civil society and social sector side, what are those institutional incentives that foundations, that organizations, that government are creating to really enable more creative deployment of digital tools to engage the citizenry? That's yeah, that's really, really interesting because I mean, definitely in the UK at the moment, we're seeing lots and lots of initiatives about, you know, getting people to participate, getting the kind of, you know, public intelligence into either local government or national government in the form of consultations or citizens assemblies. But then people have, is there a risk of that being hollow because that's actually not plugging into decision making properly? Absolutely. There's so many great experts on this in this, you know, meeting right now who who study this and whose work I really admire and respect. There, people know when they're being given something that is lip service, they know when it's just PR. And so we really need to think about ways that there is some power at the table and that, you know, going back to why this book is called Civic Power, there has to be something at stake. And that can be very challenging, especially what you're seeing in many of the Western democracies is what I call the two-way trust deficit, right? People inside government do not trust their citizens. They think that they are sort of going, what I call going into the restaurant and looking for the dirty rats, or I guess going into the online restaurant and looking for the virtual dirty rats. And citizens don't trust their government. And for especially vulnerable traditionally marginalized populations, there are real concerns and there are real risks here. And so when you begin with that trust deficit, it's very hard, I think, to build genuine modes of engagement that will genuinely empower people and put some decision making at the table. There has to be something up for grabs in order for this to be meaningful engagement. It doesn't have to be the whole pie, but it has to be something. It can be something as small as a park bench, you know, a rec center. I've done a bunch of research in Philadelphia where they leveraged soda tax, the money from the soda tax as part of a huge initiative called Rebuild to reinvest in public libraries and recreation spaces and to really give some of that control back to the community and to think about it through an equity and inclusion lens, how to make sure it's not just the usual suspects who are attending these meetings who tend to be, you know, more white, more affluent. How do you really think about doing engagement differently? You know, just as a sidebar this week, it's been fascinating because all these people in part of this rebuild project are saying, you know, look, we told you our parks are the most important space. And now take a look, it's the most important public space that we have. So there's sort of a lot of connective tissue here, but there has to be something at the table. And so if you do a consultation, whether it's online or in person, and it's sort of shallow and hollow, you run the risk of furthering that trust deficit that I was just talking about. And I think what we want to build is positive loops, positive cycles, not negative cycles that sort of further erode the trust that people already have. Totally. And I suppose, how is it, how do we actually encourage people then to to kind of organize in their communities and to, you know, make the effort to engage? Because participation, engagement, you know, these are things that in an ideal world, we would all do. And all of our citizens would be interested and enthusiastic about. But I mean, speaking as a private individual, I do not finish work at the end of day and log on to my local government website and think, oh, I can't wait to respond to it, to a consultation. I sit on my ass and watch Netflix, you know. So I mean, how do, especially people that are working, that have families, that lots and lots of responsibilities that don't feel like they have time necessarily to invest in this a great deal. How can we get those people involved? Because awful lot of the time, those are the people that need these kind of services the most. It's a great question. Now, it's a really important question. And it's, it's a big challenge. And I think there's a, there's a twofold answer to it. You know, one is sort of reducing the barriers to entry. And I often think about offering multiple entry points for people. So we really need to think beyond this one size fits all engagement model. Everybody has something that they could contribute, some kind of expertise, some kind of knowledge, some kind of insight, some kind of, you know, ability to be a part of the solution. So then how do you design a process that can plug into that ability? And it's been interesting sort of in this moment of crisis, seeing people who have skills, thinking about can they sort of barter those skills, either to donate, raise money for charity, you know, give 20, 30 minutes of their time in these small chunks, right? To answer your question, part of it is we have to be much more creative with how we're engaging people so that it can't be such a high, it can't just be, this is the only day and you have to come at this time, and you have to stay in this way, it's otherwise you can engage. And that's what we've done by the way in the United States with voting, right? And so it's not, it's not, it's not an accident. It's by design that it's not an inclusive process. You know, you know, God willing, maybe one of the silver linings in the US at least will be sort of a turn to mail and voting. These things don't, the way the processes run now do not have to be the way that they run, right? The way that your ward or your council is engaging you right now does not have to be the only way that they can do it, but we really need to inject creativity. And I think there has to be sort of a demand signal from the constituents that, you know, we actually want to be a part of things. Doesn't mean I can come for two hours every Thursday, but it does mean that I would give, you know, 10, 15 minutes here if I could, right? That's kind of how we have to meet people where they're at. And look, the tech companies have figured out ways to do this, to harness that kind of talent and expertise. I believe that we can do it in the civic and social sector, but it's going to create, going to require new creative solutions and new demand signals. Right. And it's interesting that you kind of mentioned the kind of tech giants as well, because obviously on an institutional level, many governments as you said earlier are massively struggling with upscaling their employees, even thinking about how, you know, in an abstract fashion about how they can do these things differently. Is there a role, do you think, for the tech industry to kind of move into this space a bit more, or is that the worst idea in the world? You know, listen, you know, obviously we're in a community where you could ask 10 people and get 50 different answers on these kind of topics. They are hot topics. You know, I believe personally that there is an opportunity for some of this cross sector collaboration. I was just reading last night, you know, some of the work that Sidewalk Labs was doing to think about how to respond to COVID and how they're now partnering. And I know we have folks from Sidewalk. I see Ariel and maybe others, you know, I think there is an opportunity. I think what at least has happened in the U.S. is that the, I keep on using these very weird analogies of food metaphors. I guess I'm sort of hungry. The pie has been very inverted, right? So it's sort of, there's so much power with these tech companies. And we haven't seen a lot enough, you know, regulation or concerns about privacy. And there aren't public options, right? That's sort of, for me, the missing piece. You know, again, I sort of know the U.S. the best. So I'll stick with what I know, but I'm sure it's relevant to many of the people around the globe here. And it's so awesome to have so many. I love seeing Croatia, Poland. It's fabulous. So, you know, we're moving to online education as schools are shuttering. So in Prince George's County, 20 minutes from, you know, the heart of Washington, D.C., a quarter of the students don't have broadband access. So they're not even giving digital online tools. They're saying we can't even do that. We already face equity challenges. We're going entirely on paper, right? And so what happens when that's one community and then you have other communities that are going to be learning all this great content on Khan Academy and have all this access? So, you know, there is a, there is a say, you know, a stopgap measure to say, you know, can we get, you know, companies to be giving free broadband, but isn't there sort of a deeper fundamental normative policy question of how do we really invest in communities? So we have public options so that we can work in concert across these sectors. So we're not so reliant on one sector that there's other sort of diversification within the ecosystem. That's sort of what I would like to see. And then I think we could really have productive partnerships across these sectors, but with a guiding principle of sort of the public policy norms. And do you think, I mean, at what level, I suppose, of government participation really should, should we be pitching at people and pitching at government? Because I think an awful lot of people tend to start getting interested in policy and engaging when it's something that immediately affects them in their personal life. But again, you know, because of that there are these layers of government, different responsibilities lie in different places. Most people have no idea, you know, where powers lie for what, for instance, which is why my society and other organizations like us primarily exist because people had no idea where to go for help. I mean, is there an ideal kind of level where you can like try and engage people? Or is it just so different that, you know, some people will always be more suited to engaging at these kind of bigger national level policy areas, whereas maybe lower level people skip, sorry, people with lower level digital skills, that might be more of a kind of local thing. It's a great question. For me, it's never an either or it's sort of a yes hand. Improv, wow. Yeah, there you go. You had to leverage all the metaphors. I think there's no doubt to me that we have an opportunity on the local level to really reconnect people to decision makers, in part because it's very visceral. There is much more connections. You're seeing these things. You're seeing your metros, your tubes, your public transportation, your schools, your parks. And, you know, at least in the United States, you're seeing sort of at this moment sort of states and cities really step up in this moment of crisis. That being said, how do you sort of, you know, leverage that power so it's building upon something? There are, of course, opportunities that cannot just be constrained to the local level and policy questions, especially when you're thinking about things like regulation, which is a real international question. These things have to be more federated. I think it needs to start local and then it needs to build. And I also have seen just in my research the sort of, you know, the mouth feel, the visceral experience of working on the local level and how satisfying that can be. And I think especially as we're thinking now, how do we leverage digital tools? How do we really engage people? Starting with what they know and who they know and how they know to do things, to me, makes a lot more sense than starting with these sort of national, hairy problems that are just a little bit further removed from the everyday of people. Cool. One last question for me before I move on to Slido because there's a lot of activity. Great question. Thank you. So you did an article a couple of days ago talking about the current coronavirus crisis. Amazing that you guys read anything I write. I'm so sure. It's like you guys are my mom. Thank you. Well, you know, it's good preparation for this, but you know, all content is good content at this point, I think. But yeah, so, you know, you had some thoughts in there about the kind of unique challenges that we're facing at the moment and, you know, the role of technology and the risks of using technology in terms of exclusion. Any more thoughts on what we can be doing, what you'd like to see us as a kind of fear doing in that? It's a great question. I mean, I think a lot of the expertise that's just in this conversation alone is super valuable for really helping people position to think about how they can be sort of agile. A lot of people don't even know the tools that they could be using, should be using, how to be using it. And I think the bigger question now, especially for this community is how we then marry that technology with the right kind of problem solving. So for example, I'm working with a community right now in the US and they are trying to think about repurposing some university spaces in this moment of crisis. So is it repurposing the food stipends that students get because the dining hall is closed and then opening up the dining hall as a kind of, you know, essentially shelter for the community, right? And that's a really, that's sort of an example where it sort of lays out the sort of, it's a little bit beyond how I usually think of civic tech. It's really connecting civic tech to local service delivery, but sort of circumventing government. So it's sort of this really interesting mix of a lot of the things that people in this room think about and talk about, but it's very actionable and it's very concrete. And then I also think we need to think big picture, you know, can we think about this moment of crisis as a way to reimagine the kind of communities that we want, the kind of spaces we want, the kind of online spaces, you know, I've done a lot of work on thinking about cities. And I think this moment is sort of showcasing, you know, some of the vulnerabilities of cities, whether it's our car based lifestyle, you're seeing some cities now opening up the car lanes for pedestrians, you know, just thinking about all of these things that we take for granted, because at the end of the day, people do not want to live isolated. They don't want to be atomized. And if this might be, you know, who knows how long social isolation is going to last, we need to think creatively and quickly with some ways to really have people feel connected. And especially for those, you know, for whom they are not digitally literate, you know, I'm thinking here across the spectrum, but I have a lot of friends who are social workers who work with elderly populations who tell them, please still come, I would rather take the risk than be isolated, you know, by myself all day. I have no family. My social worker is the only person who comes in my life. And so if that's sort of our there's a lot of different constituencies in this moment, but how can we sort of be responsive to a lot of these different groups? It's a very big question, but I do think it's an opportunity to learn from crisis to kind of rebuild the kind of civic tech, democratic infrastructure that we want. And do you think, I mean, obviously, you know, COVID-19 is a global, it's a global issue. And it's, it's, it's not a very, very short term thing that kind of in the long term, you've, you've touched on it a little bit there, you know, in terms of reimagining how we might do things. Is this the kind of almost perfect time for us as a community to be, you know, throwing all our kind of energy and all our innovation behind that so that kind of it might have a longer term impact on changing how democracy works on how institutions respond to citizens, that kind of thing. I do. I really think so. I think what you're seeing in this moment is how much people want that responsiveness, how they want to be able to trust their leaders, and they're frustrated and they're scared when they can't, you know, they want more inclusive systems. They want to be a part of the process. People really, I feel like they want to help their neighbors. They want to pitch in. There is this sort of civic spirit that has been maybe dormant, maybe, you know, I also love my Netflix, you know, maybe we sort of, you know, just, you know, we got accustomed to a lot of things. And this moment is a way to say, let's, let's break out of some of these molds. And there was so much expertise, you know, in this call alone and in our community. I do think it's an opportunity. I also want to be sensitive that people have a lot of things going on in their own personal lives that, you know, can make this moment challenging. But I think, and I'd be happy, you know, after this conference, or, you know, to keep this conversation going of how we as a community can engage, because I do think it's really important and I do think it's of value right now. Hey, just looking at some of the other questions, I've tried to build some of the Slido questions into the questions I've been asking, but there's one here, which is quite got a few votes. What can we learn about motivation and psychology when designing participation tools? So Danielle Kahneman brought psychology to economy. Should we as a community be using that too? It's a great question. You know, I think there's always sort of a push and pull. I have often had heated conversations with folks and the sort of thinking about how much we want to be pushing these behind the scenes levers versus, you know, more engaging people in a sort of participatory way. So I think it can be a yes and my own inclination is to think about what the right mixture is, sort of not only just thinking of sort of engineering in the back end, but also making things visible, because I think on a very meta level, one of the big challenges, and you sort of spoke to this is that people don't know what is public and what the public does for them. They don't know what their government does for them. They don't have a sense of where civil society or philanthropy plays a role. Don Kettle, who's a political scientist, he calls this sort of the interweaving of the public and the private. I'm using this graphic here. So it's sort of very blurred. And so my always, my always, my concern is just sort of, we want to make things more visible. We want to showcase to people. So we don't want to only be using things that are sort of hidden back end tools, we want to also show them that they can be a part of co designing, collaborating solution. So I think it is definitely a tool in the toolkit. But I also am I personally am interested in a holistic set of tools that also engage people so they can actually be deliberating and co deciding and co designing. Great. And just maybe one final one. And as we did say yesterday, there's always more questions than we have time to answer live. But if we can forward them to you afterwards and maybe in the next few days, you can get to them and we can send them around the community, that'd be great. I think yeah, just one last one here. And this was quite, I really like this question actually is working on the local level, a good way of making change while sidestepping the kind of person or people in charge at a national level. Whatever do you mean, why would someone want to do that? I think it is important at the local level, because I think you can develop these bonds sort of in three ways, right, with your community members. And that sort of is a valuable bond that has positive externalities. You can develop bonds with your elected officials and your and your public bureaucrats, which sort of can really change the way you that things operate. And you can develop new appreciation and engagement with your public spaces, with these physical spaces. So I think on those three levels, there's kind of an ability to create these sort of, you know, connective tissue and build those ties that I think are really valuable. It's always not an either or ideally you're building your civic muscles. And then those muscles can sort of, you know, help you on a variety of levels. But in my mind, it has to start and the local has to be a component of it. Great. Okay. One final thing just, you know, generally, it's been so it's been so great hearing about some of the things you've been thinking about and the work you've been doing. What's what's next for you? What's consuming you for the foreseeable future? Well, so it's a lot of this work. So I'm doing a big project right now with mayors from all around the globe, 130 mayors and their staff. It was originally about, you know, reimagining civic engagement in these cities. And it's sort of it's still going to be that, but it also is taking on a flavor of COVID-19. So really thinking about where are the digital opportunities? What are the tools? What are we learning about our cities? And how does this really affect I mean, these mayors there, I mean, I'll be, you know, in and out on that today, like these mayors are in a crisis of leadership, it's a crisis right now, and it's a leadership opportunity. And they really want to tap into their constituents and engage residents in new ways. And so this is sort of what I'll be working on and then how do you build from this crisis to really learn what the lessons are for deepening civic engagement in the day to day operations of city government and working really closely with community organizations. You know, that's and that's part of the book too, is that we have this hooks and levers, which is about, you know, civil society and government and how you create hooks and levers so that things coming from civil society actually change the way government operates. And then it sort of goes back with a feedback transparency loop. So that'll be what I'll be up to for the near and the long term, I guess. Well, sounds fascinating with the flavor. I love that with the flavor of COVID-19. The secret ingredient for this research. Right, I would happily stay and chat and ask you those more questions for the next hour, but we have we have to keep schedule. I will get. The schedule is amazing. I'm super jazzed. Thank you. This is wonderful. And these questions were great. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's a lot earlier where you are than it is here. And you already made so many difficult arrangements to get Iceland to be here in person. So we do appreciate it. Thank you so much. We'll be in touch. And yeah, we hope you can stay with us and enjoy the rest of the afternoon. Thank you very much, Holly. Thank you so much.