Subject: Fwd: Join Howard Dean for the launch of NDI’s DemTools 2.0 -- a technology platform for democratic organizing
From: "Ken Wollack" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>, "AM CHAVEZ" <[email-masked]>, "Bren Simon" <[email-masked]>, "Frank Islam" <[email-masked]>, "Herb Klein" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Sharon Nazarian" <[email-masked]>, "William Mahoney" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:57:53 -0500

On December 9, NDI will unveil DemTools 2.0, which upgrades and expands
NDI’s existing suite of tools that promote democratic practices through the
Internet <http://dem.tools>, along with three innovative new applications
for managing government petitions, crowdsourcing community problems, and
open data, mapping and visualization. We invite you to join us for this
event at:

Carnegie Library

801 K St NW, Washington, DC 20001

December 9th, 2015

Noon - 2 PM EST

A light lunch will be served

NDI Board Member Howard Dean, the former Vermont Governor and a pioneer in
the use of technology in U.S. politics, will make remarks at the event.

The DemTools toolkit is designed to help empower civil society
organizations, political parties and legislatures around the world by
applying technology solutions to common problems:

   -

   involving citizens in government decision-making;
   -

   helping civil society groups organize in a digital world;
   -

   better connecting elected officials with constituents;
   -

   managing election data; and
   -

   fostering civic dialogue through social media.

This new open-source initiative frees organizations and institutions from
the time-consuming and costly effort of creating and developing their own
technology solutions or using expensive commercial products. The scale and
impact of DemTools project is virtually limitless.

The first generation of DemTools has been deployed by 82 organizations
around the world in the last year. For example, political parties have used
NDI’s Civi DemTool to manage contacts and improve their outreach to party
members. DemTools are delivered with comprehensive training and support
materials; and a recently published NDI guide, “Technology: A Planning
Guide for Political Parties,” supplements DemTools 2.0 by providing
practical advice on common pitfalls that political parties experience and
potential pathways for success when implementing technology projects.

The tools have been tested in a broad range of country contexts. In
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belarus and Colombia, NDI’s Issues DemTool
<https://www.demworks.org/issues-demtool> brings together the voices of
politicians and citizens to discuss pressing social and political issues
online. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Macedonia, and
Ukraine, the CiviParty DemTool
<https://nditech.org/contact-management-congo> is used to assist the
organizing effort of political parties.

We hope you will join us for the launch of this software toolkit that can
impact democratic organizing in the digital age.

You can RSVP at https://events.dem.tools.

Sincerely,

Ken

Kenneth Wollack
President
National Democratic Institute
455 Massachusetts Ave., NW, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20001
202-728-5500 (Tel)
888-875-2887 (Fax)
email: [email-masked]
website: www.ndi.or