On 23-24 January 2017 Pavel travelled to Thessaloniki for a two-day #ASK project meeting which brought together partners from Bulgaria, France, Greece, the UK (four pilot locations) and Croatia. The meeting started with a demonstration of #ASK dashboard that has been under the responsibility of Croatian partner UX Passion. The dashboard is a key tool that pilots will use to engage and connect young people with policymakers on twitter. Once logged in pilots can assign relevant handles to either youth or policy camp, view contributors’ influence (Klout score), add or modify topics to the discussion lists, filter conversations by contributor type (youth or policy) and topic, track conversations using relevant hashtags, view different statistics (e.g. the total number of brokered contributions) and, most importantly, create brokered content to promote e-participation. A UXP-guided hands-on session wrapped up WP2 Dashboard Specifications part of the agenda, allowing pilots to quickly grasp the key functionalities of the tool and leaving them in a good position to start using the tool effectively on their own from February onwards.
Next item on the agenda was WP3 Broker Pilots, whose aim is to prepare and support pilot work from February 2017 until April 2018, which is when #ASK project ends. To make a success of WP3, partners from EYNCRIN (BG), Café Babel (FR), University of Macedonia (GR) and 21c (UK) have agreed to follow a strategic operations plan for the rest of the project. The plan will detail every action needed to be carried out by the partners during the pilot phase i.e. identification and engagement of key local, national and EU stakeholders, accurate representation of key policy views, creation and presentation of relevant content, provision and installation of the necessary infrastructure for the effective system operation, training of researchers and online moderators as needed, strategic PR and marketing campaign to engage the youth, as well as setting up a methodological framework for capturing of pilot results and evaluation data.
The final day of the meeting focused on the project’s administration, evaluation and dissemination. Partners responsible for each of the tasks above delivered presentations in which they summarised activities they are planning to do in the coming months. You can also find out about them by following #ASK on twitter. And if you consider yourself a young person or a policymaker don’t hesitate to jump into conversations #ASK will be brokering on immigration, Brexit, environment, health, education and employment!