Hi Gregory, On 12. 03. 2010 01:47, Gregory Bourassa wrote:

Paul has made some criticisms of your idea elsewhere on the thread...and some of his points are certainly worth considering.

However, a system with some of the attributes you describe might be implemented as a "fun" tool to experiment with social communities and the outcomes of their interactions. If you take one step of abstraction away from "serious" consensus-seeking and make the tool configurable enough to support "playing at consensus seeking", it might become a runaway hit. :-)

It seems so :) Sometimes one needs to dress his idea as a toy to easier convince the people, I agree, ok, let we make a toy :) Thanks for that proposal, I'll actually start thinking in this direction! Janko

Gregory Bourassa

Janko Mivšek wrote:

...

Dear Smalltalkers,

Becasue we have quite some problems in a community with seeking a consensus on important questions, from organization ones and on, I came to idea to build a tool for help. And a GSoC project can be an ideal opportunity to build such a tool. What do you think?

Here is a description:

Brainstorming portal for better community decision process ==========================================================

Create a web portal for brainstorming sessions/meetings to get ideas and answers to important questions in Smalltalk community. Portal should allow on-line to:

1. brainstorm the ideas 2. vote to get-out the best ideas 3. seek consensus 4. analyze - report

On-line session/meeting should look like a Skype session together with a brainstorming portal, from collecting ideas to a final decision proposal. Example of such session can be a Squeak Oversight Board meeting or planning session for a new Smalltalk project. Or some broader session in the community, like on a question how to organize better.

Some important concepts:

* anonymity of idea proposers * associations: proposers see the ideas of anonymous others to facilitate an association for proposing an even better idea * seeking consensus to avoid 51/49% decisions but to come closer to 100% agreement on important ideas.

Technical details

* a web application for gathering brainstormed ideas in real-time (using Ajax and Comet technology). * voting system with appropriate algorithms * analytics with on-line graphs and reports on paper/PDF * installation on a publicly available hosting server

Benefits to the Student

* getting insight into group dynamics of Smalltalk community and in general * gaining knowledge of modern web technologies in Smalltalk and in general

Benefits to the Community

Better community decision process by getting the best ideas from the members while on the other side avoiding stalemates so frequent in Smalltalk community those days

Best regards Janko

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-- Janko Mivšek AIDA/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si