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Yoosk engages the audience

Yoosk from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

One of the most interesting and versatile online tools for public engagement presented at 2gether08 was Yoosk, which enables people to pose questions directly to politicians and other major figures. Participants can vote on the questions to indicate those they feel really deserve an answer, which makes it all that bit more democratic.

I’ve just heard from Yoosk founder Tim Hood that Yoosk is now being used by Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell on a platform promoted by the Halifax Courier, as you can see here. More background on Yoosk here.

I talked to Yoosk founder Tim Hood before 2gether08, in the company of political blogger Mick Fealty. We had hoped to use Yoosk to pose questions to panelists in the debate that Mick organised.

As it turned out, we couldn’t manage that because of time pressures, but we did have an interesting discussion about the how Yoosk was being used by the Courier, and how it might be used more generally in at events to make sessions more interactive. Not only can the otherwise passive event audience help set the agenda by posting their questions in advance, others not able to attend can also join in. It’s a really neat way of blending online and offline.

Yoosk was shortlisted in the UK Catalyst awards and is pitching to the Ministry of Justice Building Democracy awards programme, that I wrote about the other day over here. That programme has attracted a wealth of ideas, and I hope MoJ manages to broker some collaborations as well as handing out £150,000 to ten of the projects.

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