TMW Ideas

Transparency seems to be the word of the day today - while browsing technorati to see what people made of Nectar, (clue - not as nice as what bees make from nectar) I came across the Demos website.
Demos are a think tank. Think tanks make me think of two things - tanks, and the cover of the Nevermind album. Anyway -

“Demos is the think tank for everyday democracy. We believe everyone should be able to make personal choices in their daily lives that contribute to the common good. Our aim is to put this democratic idea into practice by working with organisations in ways that make them more effective and legitimate.”

What a lovely thought, but more importantly - “Our new website is designed for transparency and discussion.” - and it actually is. I think it is awesome.

Easy to navigate
Interesting
Open
Nice to look at

And they have an RSS, subscribe to podcast, email alerts, a flickr stream. Plus their publications can all be downloaded for free. Best of all, all these things are useful, and add value to your experience of using the site. Also, a personality comes through, which I think may be unintentional, but as you browse round you get the feeling of something exciting and dynamic, something actually happening, people engaged in big thinking on big projects.

I could (and will) wax lyrical about this site for ages. But all I will say is that the quality of content and openess of the process is inspiring. HM Government could learn an awful lot from this.

(By the way, the Nectar thing was attached to a project about data and freedom of information - very interesting…)