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Behold! The Voicebot: bringng young people, democracy and technology together

09/11/2009 by simoncollister 4 Comments

I popped over to see Adil and Charlotte at Sidekick Studios on Tuesday and to check out the awesome power of the Voicebot.

The Voicebot is a project being developed by Sidekick and V, the youth volunteering organisation.
More importantly, it's an *actual* robot that allows young people to submit a message in 160 characters Twitter-stylee to the Voicebox website which is then written out by the robot. You can have a go here.

From October the aforementioned robot will be a central feature in the Houses of Parliament allowing young people to have their voice heard in the corridors of power.

In the spirit of community and sharing (and to prove your message is actually gets written) each message is photographed and submitted to a Flickr group.

I had a go and here's the result here's a link to the result (turns out it isn't *that* sharing – images are all rights reserved 🙁 ).

And for the geeks in the house, here's a video of the Voicebot in action.

The Voicebot pt II from sidekick studios on Vimeo.

In addition to being awestruck at a robot I partook in some fantastic discussions with V's Adam Short as well as Sidekick's Adil which were continued on ther blog.

Great ideas; great work. Look forward to seeing where this project and the passion behind it ends up.

Tags: Voicebot, Sidekick Studios, democracy, young peoplet

Filed Under: edemocracy, Politics

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. adil says

    09/11/2009 at 15:16

    hey, thanks for coming along and thanks for sharing. just noticed our authoritarian attempts to stop sharing the flick pictures. we’ll get back on it and sort out a creative commons. enjoyed our little chat about the politics of it too. Now, let’s take Parliament!

    Reply
  2. adil says

    09/11/2009 at 15:17

    PS your essential blog reading list is loooooooooong. you need an essential essential list.

    Reply
  3. Adam says

    09/11/2009 at 17:21

    Great talking with you too Simon.
    The launch of voicebox and its robot went well this week …lets see how Westminister responds!
    We will be exploring some of the big questions that voicebot raises through Anatomy of Youth – http://bit.ly/10HkwE

    Reply
  4. Shine Articles says

    02/10/2010 at 05:59

    Nice post ………he Voicebot: bringng young people, democracy and technology together

    Reply

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