Dear Folks

I am writing in the wish-list section, but i am actually hoping that someone can point me toward existing products that might meet my need. If anyone reading this has any suggestions of either products to look at or people I should talk to, please send them my way at hoerner at redefiningprogress.org.

I am working with a project that is interested in hosting a complex, multi-year dialogue, involving dozens and ultimately hundreds of people, and we are trying to figure out if there are any web tools to help us keep track of all its sub-strands and help people move toward decisions and action. For concreteness, let’s say the subject of the dialogue is “How can the Left work together to stop losing and start winning again?” Obviously this is a question with many sub-parts. We will have differing views of ultimate goals, of the effectiveness of different tactics, etc. Many discussions will focus in on the question of empirical evidence for or against the desirability of certain outcomes or the effectiveness of certain approaches.

I have been envisioning a piece of software to support that conversation, and am writing in the hope that you can tell me if something like it exists, or know a way to find out if it exists; and if it does not exist, if you know anyone who might be able to and interested in creating it, or augmenting existing products toward it (subject to the constraint that currently my only budget is my own pocket).

 My fantasy for this software is something like this: It would have some of the aspects of a wiki, in that it should be community-created through a web-based interface. It would provide some kind of spatial representation – something more than threads, perhaps like a flow chart -- of all the various strands of the argument and how they fit together. This relationship structure would also be community-maintained. It would have a fractal-like quality, in the sense that it should allow one to easily see an overview of the major flows and branch-points of the dialogue, or to drill down to all the sub-arguments and evidence that supports or opposes a goal, outcome, or causal relationship. This would let new people enter and quickly get a handle on what has gone before and see where they are most likely to be able to make a contribution.

Finally, though this may be asking too much,  in my best of all possible worlds the software would also provide some additional assistance in helping folks keep track of what is critical to the overall outcome – perhaps by letting you assign probabilities to outcomes and strengths to causal relationships, and then explore the result as a decision tree, or maybe something more like a project management software, helping you to identify things that have to happen in sequence and then finding the critical path or limiting factor.

Have you ever heard of anything resembling the software I am describing? Some kind of strategic planning or management systems software, maybe, but one that lets you have goals besides maximum profit? Are there any other people or institutions that you would recommend that I contact in this quest? If I can not get exactly the functionality described above, as I probably can’t, do you know of anything that might work better than, say, a regular wiki or a Yahoo Group for the purpose I describe? Any assistance that you could give me would be greatly appreciated.  

Sincerely,

J. Andrew Hoerner