A new way of thinking

By Rhona Parry

Building on the idea of an interactive executive summary - whereby each paragraph can be commented on - the Opentopersuasion blog discusses the possibility of another approach...

Debategraph takes a more radical, subject-oriented approach to the same challenge, which if followed to its logical conclusion could (we think) significantly reduce the overall time spent by the body and its stakeholders on the consultation process.

The debate map (below) is a really interesting and logical way of laying out the issues in Phase 1. It seems to be a very quick and reader-friendly way of highlighting the key issues. And it allows stakeholder reactions and input at all stages of the analysis.

The post discusses the various merits of using such an approach - such as the avoidance of duplicated effort, and acceleration of the process. It certainly seems to be a very neat mechanism, and one that could easily work for all sorts of issues. The wiki-element seems to be particularly helpful enabling collaborative analysis, although I wonder if it could realistically cope with the heavy evidence-base that Ofcom's reports demand. Now that'd be a test.

Thanks to the opentopersuasion guys for letting us know about the debategraph approach.

Comments

[david osimo]

So good to see your interest in DebateGraph, which I also like. It is indeed necessary to look at effective ways to enable large-scale conversation. There are many interesting tools showing up.Another very linear tool is being used to define the standards for GNU licence at http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gfdl-draft-1.html
Congratulations for your work.

[Russ]

I like Ofcom's interactive summary much better. The DebateGraph method seems to obscure the analysis and debate rather than contribute to it.