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08/01/2019 | Pressemitteilung

Participate. Vote. Shape Kassel: Awaken the Hercules in you - the City of Kassel's ideas platform.

Kassel is dynamic, innovative, creative and social - thanks to the people who live here. Under the title "Awaken the Hercules in You," the city has created a new ideas platform together with the University of Kassel. The platform is for anyone who wants to contribute ideas for Kassel, implement projects or start an initiative and needs support from others to do so. This could be, for example, a new sports or cultural initiative, an idea from environmentalists, animal lovers or district residents.

"Join in, vote, help us discover potential and help shape Kassel," calls on Lord Mayor Christian Geselle. Because the title of the website "Awaken the Hercules in you" is to be taken literally. "Everyone can awaken the Hercules in themselves and contribute to the best home," says Geselle. "The future viability of a city is measured by its innovative strength, and Kassel has a lot of that to offer."

The portal was developed as part of the "Civitas Digitalis" research project, in which the city of Kassel is participating. A team led by Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister, Dr. Christoph Peters and Matthias Billert from the Department of Information Systems and the Scientific Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG) at the University of Kassel developed the concept and functionalities. The technical implementation was led by the competence field "Open Data & Information Management" at fortiss, Research Institute of the Free State of Bavaria for Software-Intensive Systems and Services (Munich).

"With this new offering, we hope to help people gain a voice who might not otherwise have ventured forward," said Mayor Geselle. The new citizen participation offering will initially run until the end of 2020 to gain experience.

Here's how it works: At www.weckdenherkulesindir.de, citizens can register with their email address and submit their own project or support other projects with their vote. When submitting, they are guided in a three-step process via a brief textual description (five guiding questions and spatial location of the project), a visualization (drawing environment and image upload), and a final solution presentation (video upload) to develop their idea into a concrete concern. In a two-month cycle, the project with the most votes is announced. There must be at least 100 votes.

The first voting period ends on September 30, before a new two-month rhythm begins on October 1. The longer a project is online, the greater the chance of collecting as many votes as possible. Either way, it's worth checking www.weckdenherkulesindir.de regularly and supporting the projects submitted.

About the "Civitas Digitalis" project

The city of Kassel is participating in the research project "Civitas Digitalis - Digital and Crowd-based Service Systems for the Creation of Sustainable and Livable Living Spaces 2020" of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The aim is to expand and improve citizen participation with the support of digital technology and to develop structures and opportunities for voice and participation in shaping the living environment. The project is being implemented locally in cooperation with the University of Kassel, Department of Information Systems. Supra-regionally, the University of Hamburg is involved in the project in conjunction with the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and fortiss, Research Institute of the Free State of Bavaria for Software-Intensive Systems and Services (Munich). The project started on February 1, 2017 and is expected to end on January 31, 2020.

The Department of Information Systems, headed by Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister, conducts research and teaches on topics at the interface of people, IT and organization, with a focus on collaboration engineering, crowdsourcing, digitalization of work, IT innovation management, service engineering, strategic IT management and ubiquitous computing.

In the "Civitas Digitalis" project, the team on the part of the Department of Information Systems at the University of Kassel, consisting of Prof. Dr. Jan Marco Leimeister, Prof. Dr. Christoph Peters and Matthias Billert, has set itself the goal of actively involving citizens as experts in their everyday lives in the systematic development of service ideas.

More at:

http://www.uni-kassel.de/go/civitasdigitalis

www.kassel.de/buerger/stadtgesellschaft/buergerbeteiligung/civitas-digitalis.php

Press contact:

documenta City of Kassel, Michael Schwab

City of Kassel
Communication, Press and Public Relations
City Hall / Obere Königsstraße 8
34112 Kassel

Phone: 0561 / 787-1231 or 0561 / 787-1232
Fax: 0561 / 787-87
E-mail: presse@kassel.de

Press spokesperson:
Claas Michaelis
Petra Bohnenkamp
Michael Schwab

Kassel on the Internet: www.kassel.de

Sebastian Mense
University of Kassel
Communications, Press and Public Relations
Tel.: +49 561 804-1961
E-mail: presse[at]uni-kassel[dot]de
www.uni-kassel.de