I believe now is the time for Rotterdam to embrace the concept of co-creation and create value together with its citizens or as Chris Anderson states it: “Countries with most vibrant web communities and companies will win.”

Is it possible to change from a government that wants to be in control towards a government that provides an infrastructure (a platform) for it civilians to innovate and participate in the various challenges that the city and port is dealing with?

The current state of our information and communication technology make it possible to build strong self-organised communities. Also, organisations like Enviu have developed methodologies to facilitate collaboration amongst large groups of people to create concrete results and positive societal impact.

Imagine what could happen if you would share your problems, ambitions or data with anyone that is passionate to help you to make the city or port a better place. If you look at Rotterdam as one big source of energy, expertise and creativity that once unleashed creates a massive think and do tank.

Important conditions in my opinion for a government to be able to mobilise its civilians is to be transparent, make thing simple for people to understand, be open for learning and experimentation and be communicative. The civil servant becomes a file manager, process facilitator and a community organiser. All execution is done by the community!

As a government there could be various ways to start. You could open up your processes and data for the outside world to blend in (check the various open data initiatives), or create whole new platforms and in a later stage blend in the organisational processes. In 2009 I have co-founded R’damse Nieuwe as an experiment to introduce government as an open platform thinking in the city of Rotterdam. We have learned important lessons the past few years that I’d love to share.

One that is vital for success: if you want to transform the government towards a platform for participation it is key to not be afraid of your citizens!

Been awhile but I am back in town

Here a quick update on some of the things I am working on:

We are developing our crowd-investing platform. The aim of the platform is to provide new ways to impact-driven entrepreneurs and local energy projects to finance their ventures through the crowd. Get on the early bird list via ImpactCrowd.

Next to ImpactCrowd, we are working on a new experiment to change the energy sector in The Netherlands. The Power Generation! It feels like it can become very big and we are looking for investors to kick it off. So if you know anyone, of course we will crowd-invest it too

More updates to come. If you want to check out new interesting initiatives check out the circle-economy website, if you have time to read, this report by Willemijn Verloop about social entrepreneurship in The Netherlands could be interesting.

Check out some short videos that I made of the people I met.

Charly Kleissner former Executive Director OS NeXt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6H9iiNhG9U

Olana Khan ex-Google

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cnYWFbbxFA&feature=related

Jocelyn Wyatt IDEO.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyZLW19tg4g&feature=related

Ben Rattray CEO Change.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdFw5jHdlsw&feature=related

Nathan Waterhouse OpenIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WUMJlXyipk&feature=related

Ricardo Semler and his amazing company SEMCO are world famous for his SEMCO style. Find out the details of this great company with this video

If you would like to add or contribute to the content of the guide. You are free to do so

Check out the documentary “Inside Job” of Ferguson on what caused the crisis and why the system from within will not change. They need a hand guys

This is a rather old video of Guy Kawasaki, but it still gives me inspiration every time I watch it.