Product Update: The Digital Townhall & Crowd Sourcing
As we head into the 5th iteration of our platform since April 2019, we thought fit to share a few updates on where the product is heading.
As you may know, the problem we’re solving at PublicSquare // EverySay is an evolving problem, at the intersection of Design, Technology & Journalism. We’re focused on making political engagement in Toronto better, by an order of magnitude. Thus far, we’ve released multiple iterations of our product in an attempt to identify what works and what doesn’t. We’ve captured the interest of 1000s of users across Toronto and the country and let them vote on various policies.
In the coming months, we’re focusing on bringing live features & changes focused on the following:
1) The Digital Town Hall
The idea of digitizing the town hall came from our conversation with MPP Chris Glover (Spadina—Fort York) last year when I (Yash Paliwal) attended one of MPP Glover’s physical town halls. Upon further exploration, we realized the great potential to make a positive impact here. Our elected reps are consistently looking to engage their constituents on a variety of policy issues. They spend countless hours and a great deal of effort attempting to reach us via social media, emails, in-person events, etc. However, many of these efforts lead to sub-par results/outcomes.
On March 20th, we’ll be launching the first digital town hall on Climate/Environment with MPP Glover. This will be a 4 week process, culminating in a physical meeting on April 20th, hosted by MPP Glover’s team. During the digital town hall, constituents will be engaged through a portal on PublicSquare where they’ll be able to learn about environmental issues (waste, energy & transportation) as they apply to them and give their feedback on policies and preferences.
At the end of the month, all learnings will be shared with constituents and Torontonians as a whole.
2) Crowd sourced engagement
Along with the digital town hall format above, we’re also adding a new engagement space for trending topics. This will be a unique space for each topic (such as the Wet’suwet’en protests or the Covid-19 virus), which will include features such as:
- Links to explainers on the topic
- A section to let uses share personal stories/opinions on the topic
- A section to let users ask questions they may have (and for others to share their answers/thoughts on these questions
- A section where users can quickly give feedback on the topic
- A section where users can answer fun/educative quiz questions on the topic
The timeline for the launch of this new feature is close to the end of March 2020.
