PlaceSpeak is Vying for a Spot on the People’s Stage at Web Summit 2013

The Summit is a global gathering of the world’s leading thinkers and doers in technology. It’s not just a gathering of the planet’s leading startups and technology companies, but of businesses, large and small, who are being impacted by new technologies. This year over 7,000 attendees from 70+ countries. will make the trip from all corners of the globe. They will learn from over 350 speakers—including the world’s leading founders, investors, CEOs, inventors, designers and thinkers—across dozens of stages, workshops and roundtables catering to every sector.

The People’s Stage

This year, the Web Summit is hosting a ‘People’s Stage,’ an entirely crowd-sourced stage of 50 speakers from around the world chosen by YOU through a public vote. Voting will take place over 2 rounds—all nominees go through a first round of voting, and the top 30 of each pool will get put through to the final. The finalists will then submit a video of their proposed talk for the final round of voting.

Voting for this round closes Wednesday August 14. The top 30 entries will progress to the final and compete for a spot to speak at this year’s Web Summit.

PlaceSpeak’s Proposal

PlaceSpeak Founder and CEO, Colleen Hardwick hopes to be one of the 50 presentations chosen to present.  Here is a summary of her entry:

Authenticating Online Consultation: the Geo-social Paradigm Shift, Colleen Hardwick, Founder & CEO

Technology now exists to overcome some of most salient pathologies of democratic governance. The Internet offers fresh potential to reinvigorate civic engagement. Online tools can extend participation well beyond traditional bounds of public hearings. However, online consultation thus far has met with varying degrees of success and does not stand up to scrutiny. This is because online consultation has been anonymous and until consultation is tied to actual observable outcomes people and government will not take it seriously. Public policy development and decision-making needs better online engagement tools that produce defensible data. Enter the new model: Geo-social online public consultation.

You can Vote for PlaceSpeak’s proposal by ‘Liking’ her page HERE.

Voting for this round closes Wednesday August 14. The top 30 entries will progress to the final and compete for a spot to speak at this year’s Web Summit.