Last year I did a BoF at Wikimania 2006 about The Wiki Party, the idea to start a political party. Today Anu sent me a link to a Facebook group with this same title. I jokingly told people "when I'm 40 years old I will start this party if no one else did before then". Fortunately I won't have to, anymore. Of course, it's happenning in Finland. Olli Sirén was considering to run a campaign to the Helsinki City Council. From the main page of wikiparty.net:
Wikiparty is bringing new ways to do politics. It´s based on the idea of open politics. This site will be the international basis for this new party. The movement has started in Finland and will spread around the world in one form or another. Democracy is grown weak around the world. Voting percentages are in a steady decline. Let's put together a Wikiparty. A party that creates its political opinions in the same way that Wikipedia forms its articles. Let's try to think ways to systematically create political force. This party could vote for its representatives to different political parliaments. These "agents" of Wikiparty would interpret the ideas of Wikiparty to real voting situations and pass the ideas of the community to the parliament. This way we could challenge the traditional parties to a debate between weak and strong democracy. This kind of virtual community that aims to a real life political chance, could reach over national borders and grasp problems caused by for example globalization or climate change.And yesterday I learned about Kaltura, a social-networky video editing tool, kind-of-a crossbred between wiki, and youtube with the promise to release their software under the GNU General Public license.