Workshop organizer profile: Erdem Ovacik

Lift10 is in 2 weeks time, and we are posting profiles of the workshop organizers. Don't forget to have a look at the program!

Erdem Ovacik will be running a workshop entitled: Why shall we not all get into the parliament by next elections?.

Erdem was born and raised in Istanbul, and holds a Master of Public Policy at Berkeley. He recently spent several years working at MYC4.com (P2P lending), and his current medium of interest is online democracy. Nowadays, he is working on the creation of his own company in Copenhagen.

Erdem's workshop will engage people in a simulation of online democracy. Imagine this: in the next election cycle, one independent candidate makes it to the parliament running a campaign suggesting that, s/he will act upon decisions taken on an online platform where every citizen may create an account.

There are simply two functions the platform will perform for this representative:
1- All proposed legislations will be debated and voted upon by citizens
2- New legislation (and also questions to government) will be proposed by citizens

In order to ensure decision-making is legitimate, the platform uses a proxy-voting tool, which ensures that there is 100% participation at all times, yet everyone is free to vote directly. In order to deliver strong legislation proposals, the platform incorporates an idea market, where the policy makers are betting to win credits by generating proposals, which would be legislated.

The workshop aims to create inspiration and potential future engagement opportunities along with areas for improvement for the simulated democracy process.

Sign up for his workshop here :)