How to unite people? How to bridge divisions? How to find common ground and develop joint ideas?
No, not the US. Here's the report of our transnational digital EU Citizens' Dialogue from last week.

Plus personal thoughts in a thread. https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/de/publikationen/publikation/did/transnational-digital-citizens-dialogue-en via @BertelsmannSt

The participants: 100, randomly selected, from Lithuania, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Germany. Women and men, younger and older, different education background.
We wanted to get 90, recruited 110, started first day with 104 and ended the last day with 103.

The method: Fully online, all on Zoom. Three different groups: plenary, larger topic groups, smaller working groups. Mix of people in every group. 13 groups in total, 13 moderators.
Yes, deliberation works online. Not easily but it works.

Languages & interpretation: Simultaneous translation in all groups. 3 languages in small groups, 5 in big. Extra technical ad-on on Zoom. Special interpreter training needed. Translation makes the conversation slower. But: It works. Plus: real European feeling is amazing.

Topic & Content: Democratic, digital and green Europe. Very broad topic. Participants came up with ideas, proposals and questions to EU-Commissioners. It was a dialogue not a Citizens' Assembly.

The bottom line: The EU wonders how to connect to citizens and how to do good participation digitally and in several languages. We showed there is a method for it. But: We need more time, we need real implementation in decision making process. #CoFoE