Like voting every four years, even the most participatory models offered by our institutions fail to grasp the nature of our networked world. Today, much of the public is always-on and you can find someone talking about the issues. Participation doesn’t stop any more. One shot deals, even those that are open and inclusive, do not recognize this sea change in communications.

This is important, as is Euan's reflection.

Getting something organized and creating results, that 'becomes', out of all the constant networked 'participation', will IMO require that people acknowledge 'being' whilst 'doing' and increasingly accept or embrace (depends upon how enthusiastic or not one is about living in ongoing ambiguity) that the process is the outcome.

This in turn requires that there are real democratic principles put to work with respect to iterating through participation the objectives and values that networked groups of people can actually believe in and want to accomplish. Networks are increasingly the public places and spaces where attitudes, opinions and culture are / will be shaped, and they carry important information about attitudes and information that the still-rigid institutional stewards of our societies should not, or cannot, ignore.

It will remain a challenge as to how to reach consensus, but it seems clear that more and more our (negotiated) agreements will be our structures ... agreements about what to do, how to do it, who will do it, by when and with what kind(s) of accountability.

Welcome, once again, to the early stages of a very real paradignm shift ;-)