i.de.a. Diagonal (2) – Lack of networking

One of the main features of the Internet, especially since the so-called Web 2.0, is the possibility of networking among its users, whether through blogs, discussion forums, instant messaging and other tools.

We must therefore, if an electronic citizen participation process, based largely on a website created specifically for that purpose, should not a place to collect feedback from citizens, beyond “The citizen question” , which contains five questions and answers raised by passers and asked by municipal technicians. This section also remains static for more than four months, namely March 16, when it published the first place: the same five people, with the same question, same answer. And is not that people do not write, who can not.

There is more freedom to participate in the group ”Upload your photos of the Diagonal“, where it can be accessed from the Flickr implementation, but it is only a photographic exhibition.

I.de.a Diagonal (1) – Presentation. Failure to use of audio-visual tools.

This entry we begin analyzing the web and its possibilities and shortcomings as a tool for participation.

The page presentation consists of four parts: a header and three columns. The header includes links to the four major sections of the site, which will consider in future entries: “The participatory process,” “All you need to know the Diagonal,” “Why we created the new Diagonal” and “What is i. de.a. Diagonal.

The content of this page is an entry in the web, so we will not elaborate on its structure. In short, the left column gives access to participatory tools, the center collects the main stories on the process (or, more often, reminders about the content of the web) and on the left gives access to pages special interest information on the web.

To date, this column offers a 57 seconds video with images of the Diagonal, which, playing with the speed of the camera seems to have claimed the transition to a daily marathon of tranquility almost relaxing: the call, vocabulary in current, urban pacification.

The link in the middle of the third column is a lost opportunity to exploit the potential of new technologies in the dissemination of knowledge. Under the title “You missed the training sessions?” … “Download here all material you access to three documents in PDF format offering the images that accompanied the presentations by the various speakers at the briefing that took place during March and April, which have already been discussed in a previous entry. The sessions are organized in four papers and end of each one opened a question and answer session. Given that the technological capabilities of the Barcelona City Council allows the live broadcasting the plenary sessions of the Municipal Council at its website, as well as viewing deferred, it is difficult to understand how “all material” of the training sessions is limited to chips, sometimes only with images without comment, which accompanied the exhibition of the speakers. For a person not initiated in the analysis of urban design, mobility and trade in the area of the Diagonal is not easy to reconstitute the discourse of the speakers, or to draw conclusions from its visual presentation, beyond curious to get some data on these issues. Would not have been more informative to allow access to a full audiovisual recording sessions?
The last section of the third column links to a Web page on the public art that can be found on the Diagonal, which will consider in due course.

The left column, for participatory tools offers direct access to the questionnaire of participation, which will discuss extensively below, and a photographic collection on the Diagonal in which readers can enter their photos via the Flickr application of Yahoo.