On September 26, 2009 the first WWViews meeting started at 9 am in Australia. The last one finished 36 hours later in California, USA. As the day progressed, citizens voted on alternative answers to the predefined questions and developed their own recommendations. These results were instantly reported on wwviews.org, so that anyone with Internet access could - and they still can - compare answers to the various questions across countries, regions, political and economic groupings, etc.

All meetings followed the same schedule: The 100 citizens, divided into tables of 5-8 people, were led by a head facilitator and group moderators through a programme divided into four thematic sessions and a recommendation session.

During the thematic sessions, citizens voted on alternative answers to a total of 12 questions, thus making international, quantitative comparisons possible. Each thematic session was introduced by the facilitator and an information video.

        Welcome            Information Videos            Deliberation in groups

The participants then engaged in moderated discussions at their tables, the purpose of which was to give all participants time to listen to other opinions and reflect prior to voting. Moderators were trained in advance to provide un-biased facilitation at the tables.

Each thematic session concluded with citizens casting their votes anonymously on two to four questions. Votes were counted first at the tables, then by the staff and immediately reported to wwviews.org.

Voting after sessions        New deliberations       Writing recommendations

During the recommendation session, citizens wrote in their own words what they believed to be the most important recommendation to pass on to COP15 negotiators.

Each table produced one recommendation. Afterwards all citizens voted for the one that they found most important, resulting in a prioritised list of recommendations, also reported to wwviews.org.

Most meetings were either opened or closed by a minister, COP15 negotiators or other government officials.

Here you can browse through all aspects of the world wide views day:

• Opening speech by Connie Hedegaard

• Information Videos

• Questions

• Interviews with participating citizens

• Expert panels

• Pictures from the meetings around the world

• The final results 

From the early start in Australia to the late finish

in California the many votes and recommendations

were instantly reported on wwviews.org and available

for comparisons. They still are here.