Today starts a three-day swing through the UK by those of us at the
Berkman Center who work on issues related to Internet &
democracy. 

* Today, we’re with our partners at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII)
with about 25 scholars and activists who work on e-Participation. 
The events officially kicked off with a public session at Said Business
School here at Oxford, when Prof. Stephen Coleman delivered an address
on “E-Participation and Power: the Copper Wire and the
Electricity.”  Zephyr Teachout represented us at the Berkman
Center as a respondent; Alex Allen, Permanent Secretary of the
Department of Constitutional Affairs in the UK, also responded.

* Tomorrow, in London, along with Human Rights Watch, we are hosting a session on Internet filtering and human rights. 

* On Saturday, we’re at the Reuters HQ in London’s Canary Wharf for
Global Voices II, the second summit for the extraordinary group of
people who have come together to create what I think is the best world
news blog out there.

These events are meant to be part of the ongoing conversation around
Internet & democracy.  Our last major effort in this regard
was the Internet & Society 2004 conference, “Votes, Bits, and
Bytes,” on which these efforts in the UK are meant to follow
up.  We are very grateful to eBay for its ongoing support of this
series, and to Omidyar Network, the MacArthur Foundation, and Reuters
for their support for the next three days.

Right now, Stephen Ward is setting the stage with a review of the scholarship on e-Participation to date.