I didn’t catch any of it live, but M2HZ is a Helsinki-based urban television project, which concluded a two-week test period. According to the website:

“The channel is being collaboratively developed by artists, developers and civil society activists. A group of people and organisations who wish to imagine what channels could be like in the current media environment, and what types of contents could be delivered through collaborative and distributed production.”

Hopefully we can add some UnConventional news to the M2HZ open channel at the time of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 2008.

m-cult, a Helsinki-based org, which produced the ISEA2004 Symposium and participated in M2HZ is also hosting a workshop on participatory democracy. They write:

“m-cult and the Democracy Unit of the Ministry of Justice realize a workshop on participatory politics and foresight on June 8, 2007. The workshop gathers researchers, decision-makers and NGO representatives to discuss experiences of participatory forums and web tools to support deliberative democracy. Visiting experts are Lars Klüver (Danish Board of Technology) and Richard Rogers (University of Amsterdam / govcom.org).

The aim of the workshop is to find new methods, processes and tools for democracy. A special challenge is to bring citizen’s views to affect the early phases of government and technology programmes.“

With the U.S. national political party conventions, we’d like to find ways to bring citizens’ participation in any phase - unscripting the conventions of the tightly scripted Convention processes.