Last week we held a new edition of Decidim Fest. After the successful 2019 edition, that was preceded by the original Metadecidim Annual Conferences (Jornades Anuals Metadecidim), this year we had to reinvent our community meeting given the restrictions to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The major change was that the conference was completely online. As a consequence, we decided to pre-record the keynote talks to make them freely available one week before the conference. This allowed us to anticipate the discussions and collect questions and comments in advance and thus spend the time of the conference on conversations with outstanding speakers like Geert Lovink, Renata Ávila, Paz Peña, Arantxa Mendiharat, Caroline Sinders, Ingrid Guardiola, Eurídice Cabañes, Javier Sánchez Monedero, Red Levadura, Gabriella Coleman or Alexandra Elbakyan.
The program also included inspiring talks from participants of the open call who covered very relevant topics for the Metadecidim community like Technopolitical participation and research, Decidim Stories, Citizen Assemblies, Refactoring Gender or Feminist Internet. In addition, we included panels with experts on current challenges of the Decidim strategic roadmap. In my case, I had the honour of moderating a panel with:
- Amy X. Zhang (Social Futures Lab – University of Washington)
- J. Nathan Matias (Citizens and Technology Lab – Cornell University)
to discuss research approaches to designing online platforms that promote safe participation, deliberation, community health and prevent harassment, disinformation and other forms of misbehaviour.
Thank you all for your contributions during this memorable edition of Decidim Fest!
Pablo Aragón 