Throwback OIDP conference Valongo, Portugal

Processing all the connections, new insights and new friends that we made last week at the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy annual conference in Valongo, Portugual from 17 to 19 October 2024.

🧑‍💼 We, together with Diego Calvo Castillo from Enreda, gave a live demonstration of our platform and, with the participants, ran through a fictive process of collaboratively creating and drafting the ‘Valongo Participatory City Strategy 2025-2030. Very cool!

🌏 Big positive point about the event was the huge international line-up and speakers, coming from countries as diverse as Sweden, Iraq, Senegal, Philippines, Mexico and Colombia.

👏 Very interesting to experience a triple-venue event in action, which, in fact, is a direct learning for our own upcoming #consulcon25 in February this year.

🤲🏼 Learning from Nolitz Quilang from Ormoc city (Philippines) about two great practices for real democratic impact: 1) municipal legislation for institutionalizing participatory politics, 2) using local civil society organizations (CSOs) as the vehicle for engaging people with participatory processes.

🙋 We learned from the Portuguese experience that the existence of active regional or national networks of governments, cities and civil society, like the Oficina de Participacão in Portugal, is key for deepening and diffusing participatory processes and projects.

💥 But the greatest thing about the conference are the great number of potential actions that have resulted from it:

* Let’s bring open source participation tools to Portugal, Nelson Dias, Paulo Francisco, Isabel Xavier Canning!
* Can we bring Consul and digital participatory decision-making back to Córdoba Ciudad Global, Juan Domingo Viola?
* Let’s bring Consul to Los Angelos, Joe Mathews!
* Let’s go and add a bit of ‘punch’ to the participatory discourse and practice in Prefeitura do Município de Osasco, Felipe Tannus !
* Let’s go and explore digital forms of citizen participation in Moldavia, Armenia, Ukraine and other alda* – European Association for Local Democracy network members, Irakli Jgharkava and Lusine Aleksandryan!
* Let’s exchange practices between two different citizen participation platforms, Roel Camps!

Thank you so much for organizing and having us, Adria DUARTE GRIñO and the entire OIDP Valongo team!