Who Wants to Be?

On the 18th December 2009 The People Speak, working with the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre at Aarhus University hosted a version of Who Wants to Be…? their direct-democracy game show as part of the Copenhagen Climate Forum called “The Planetary Pledge Pyramid”.

The mission: to have fun seeing if a group of people people having fun can make better decisions and raise more money than the politicians at the Copenhagen summit.

First, we set up a kickstarter project to try to gather as much money as possible from both Internet-voters and people who would come to Copenhagen for the event.

Introducing the Planetary Pledge Pyramid from The People Speak on Vimeo.

Then anyone – whether they’d paid or not – was invited to propose ideas and vote on their favourite ones via the Planetary Pledge Pyramid Facebook Application - which went through to the final game in Copenhagen.

During the Climate Summit, our Danish Talkaoke crew hosted a series of fantastic discussions in the Rådhuspladsen central square, getting input on ideas and reactions from locals, visitors, activists, politicians, children and the many different groups who found their way to COP15 to try to lobby the UN for one cause or another.

Finally, on the 18th December, Internet voters logged on to join people gathered at DGI Buyen in central Copenhagen for the grand finale of the people’s Climate Forum.

Downstairs in the foyer, Arthur hosted a feverish Talkaoke, where activists from around the world voiced their discontent about the just-announced cop-out of the politicians, whose talks had ended in no firm commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, and using the ideas harvested from Facebook, our lightning visualiser Zsolt produced some beautiful (if sometimes disturbing) visualisations of what some of the audience’s ideas might look like.

The the show kicked off! Although many were too disgusted with the official outcome (or lack of one) to muster much hope for the process, after two hours of discussion, soul searching and head-scratching about how to solve the world’s climate crisis, the audience decided to donate the $3000 raised to Camillo Arreaza to go and plant 2500 indigenous trees the Amazonian flatlands in Colombia.

This show was an experiment in adding a whole dimension of Internet voting to Who Wants to Be…?, and although it worked, and many mentioned that they had enjoyed the experience, it was not really possible to integrate remote and local players without things getting really complicated. Perhaps this is something to return to in a few years when the technology for streaming has moved on a bit!