Community Call: Deliberative & Democratic Tech hosted by Metagov x CrownShy (#5)
Our Fifth Community Call - Tuesday, July 14th
Topic: Decentralized by Design: - Civic Tools connected through AT Protocol
Our online and offline lives are increasingly surveilled and controlled by global technology companies and governments. Without safe community governable tooling to direct our digital and physical lives on a global scale, it will become increasingly hard to resist the rise of technofascism. This conversation is hosted by a collaboration between Metagov, Crownshy, and the Decentralized Deliberation Standard and we’ll share the first steps towards taking collective control of our digital infrastructure and play with a prototype that demonstrates an interoperable stack of decentralized civic-tech tools (Polis, Talk to the City, Heyform, Red Dwarf and others) built on AT Protocol.
AT Protocol is the open standard that powers the social media platform "Bluesky." It is a common language that allows different apps to share data safely without any single company controlling the infrastructure.
Stuart Lynn (CrownShy) and Lee DeSota (MetaGov) will present this prototype which aims to demonstrate the ease and feasibility of sharing data across apps in a way that is safe for participants in preserving their anonymity and easy to use for process designers who want to hear from participants.
This call is part of a series of calls that will bring together people working on deliberative and digital democracy including researchers, practitioners, technology builders, academics, policymakers, and more. Our goal is to create a shared, professional space for folks to strengthen ties, cross-pollinate ideas, and reflect on how democratic infrastructure is being shaped in the real world.
What to Expect from this Series:
Featured presentations from practitioners, developers, and researchers
Open discussion through Q&A and breakout conversations
Community shout-outs - a space to share projects, ask for help, and find collaborators
A professional community focused on tangible insights and genuine connections
Duration: Each call lasts 75 minutes
Access: Free and open to the community
Recording: Sessions will be recorded and shared on the CrownShy and Metagov YouTube channels.
More about this Series:
The series is hosted by CrownShy and Metagov.
Crownshy is a U.K. and U.S. based team of recognized leaders in the domains of deliberative democracy dedicated to providing democratic tools and methods for communities of all shapes and sizes.
Metagov is a laboratory for digital governance cultivating tools, practices, and communities that enable self-governance in the digital age.
In the spirit of open-source innovation, these are free, community-first calls designed to support learning, collaboration, and critical thinking across disciplines, with a focus on how tools, platforms, and design choices affect power, inclusion, trust, and long-term democratic capacity.
We aim to:
Strengthen connections across the field, rather than within silos
Encourage collaboration and shared learning
Surface and showcase open-source tools and approaches
Support innovation and critical reflection on how democratic systems are designed and governed
Rather than focusing only on highly specialized technical or theoretical questions, the series is designed as a bridging forum - a place where people working in different domains can translate across disciplines, surface assumptions, and learn from each other’s constraints and priorities.
Who Is This For?
This series is for people working in, across, or between the following domains:
Practitioners & facilitators designing and running in-person deliberative processes
Developers & builders creating digital democracy platforms and tools
Researchers & academics studying, evaluating, and theorising democratic innovation
If you are working in any capacity to make online and offline public discourse and collective decision-making more thoughtful, inclusive, and impactful, this community is for you!