Over the weekend, I came across you+me+politics, a new online dialogue research project coming out of New York University. From their about page:

For our midterm assignment, our class was tasked with creating a conversational space centered on a specific piece of content. Our group decided to focus our work around something controversial. So often, online conversations based on contentious topics are overwhelmed by ugly insults and flame wars. Our aim is to circumvent these all-too-typical cruel and circuitous debates, and, instead, to encourage intellectual and civil conversation.

[...]

Which brings us to the unique structure of our site — conversational enclosures. You’re locked into a discussion with another user on our site, so that you’re forced either to engage in a meaningful discussion, or to bow out. There isn’t a peanut gallery of support for rude comments here; 50 users can’t gang up on one person for having a different opinion. Our hope is that most users won’t be able to sling solely insults for an hour, that those who would typically become bullies in a political debate online might be forced to back up their opinions. In the short term, our goal is to force users from a variety of political creeds to develop civil discourse and to engage with each other.

This reminded me of RedBlue, a project from a few years ago, which aimed to pair US citizens from different sides on the political spectrum (red for conservative, blue for liberal) in an effort to “explore our differences and find out what we have in common.” From their sign-up page:

RedBlue will create a private, one-on-one online dialogue process by matching participants with contrasting views. “Counterparts” will learn about the ground rules of productive dialogue, then engage on a difficult issue by viewing or reading a fictional narrative scenario that frames a front-page issue in personal, rather than theoretical, terms. Their email-style discussion will be monitored by a “virtual facilitator” that will make suggestions, provide feedback, and offer to step in when the heat of the moment threatens to derail the civility of the dialogue.

And this from their about page:

Why RedBlue? Surveys consistently reveal that most Americans hold nuanced perspectives on many issues. The majority is uncomfortable with today’s online political culture, where debate over our policy differences so often ends up in polarized name-calling and demonization. In this regard, citizens are underserved and disempowered, and the integrity of the political system is undermined.

While the RedBlue project begins with the familiar labels that have so often pigeonholed Americans into uncomfortable stereotypes—“red” vs. “blue,” “conservative” vs. “liberal”—participants in the RedBlue process will be able to connect with counterparts whose contrasting views are as subtle as their own, re-introducing a middle ground of public discourse where there is room for reasonable people to disagree.

As far as I remember, RedBlue — for reasons I’m not familiar with — never evolved past the prototype stage.

I still believe that paired dialogue, whether applied stand-alone or in combination with other small and large-group processes as part of a larger consultation or deliberation, holds a lot of promise.

Paired dialogue is a feature that’s already available today on Zilino (our Roundtable module allows for large groups to be split up into smaller units of two or more participants to engage in asynchronous, text-based online dialogue).

Are you familiar with other examples of one-on-one online dialogue? Please share your notes in the comments. I’ve already added both projects to ParticipateDB (here, here).

I’ve previously written about the importance of expectation management as an essential piece to successful public participation.

With Zilino, our goal is to support the project organizers in managing participants’ expectations from beginning to end. Specifically, we want conveners and facilitators to be very transparent about the level of influence participants can reasonably expect to have on the decision making process.

As part of setting up a new project, we will ask the organizers to complete a questionnaire that covers the basic project parameters (objective, scope, timeline etc.). This information will be prominently exposed to all participants at the beginning of a consultation in an effort to set the right expectations from the get-go.

We’re still shuffling things around at this point, but here’s a list of items we’re considering (in no particular order):

Project basics

• Project name
• Project description
• Project start and (estimated) end date
• Major project phases and deliverables
• Estimated group size
• Where does this project fit on the overall timeline and how does it tie into past, present or future activities? (e.g. previous decisions, face-to-face events)

Convener profile

• Who is the convener of this consultation?
• Who is funding this project?
• Who will participate on behalf of the convener?

Participant profile

• Who is invited to participate?
• How are participants selected?
• What is your outreach plan?
• How are participants expected to contribute?
• Will participation be reimbursed/rewarded?
• What are the ground rules for participation?

Impact

• Is this consultation tied to a decision making process?
• What is the ultimate decision at stake?
• Who is in charge of making that decision?
• When will the decision be made?
• What is the scope and expected outcome of this consultation?
• What impact will this consultation have on the decision making process? (this is the “promise to the public” as per IAP2′s Spectrum of Public Participation)
• How do you define project success? (key success factors)

Follow-up

• What will happen next once the consultation is over?
• What will happen to the content generated by participants?

Risks

• What are the risks that the consultation might fail to have the intended impact?
• How are these risks being addressed?

We think that briefing the participants in a comprehensive manner will significantly reduce the risk of unrealistic expectations and the disappointment and frustration they cause.

Leave a comment if  you can think of other factors that participants should be made aware of before they join a consultation.

It took us a while, but we’re finally in the process of launching the first alpha release of Zilino, our new web application for online consultations. Zilino allows organizations (private, non-profit, government etc.) to engage their people (members, citizens, residents, other constituents etc.) in problem solving and decision making.

The prototype went live earlier in April and is functional, if still a bit rough around the edges. A first test project is currently getting under way in Seattle, WA (a three-phased budget allocation consultation that will involve 50+ people for one week).

The current feature set includes the following:

Items #1-3 can be considered basic infrastructure.  Item #4 has lots of potential with regard to collaborative learning but in this iteration is still kept to the bare minimum. Finally, items #5 & #6 are where we start to play with some of the ideas we have in the area of online dialogue and deliberation.

Despite the many obvious limitations, you should already be able to run basic online consultations with this setup.

Over the coming weeks and months, we plan run a number of test and pilot projects to help us further validate the concepts and fine-tune our implementation based on user and customer feedback. As we expand on the modules listed above and add maybe a couple of new ones, we will focus on two main challenges:

• How to bring good process to the web?
• How to deliver great participation experiences to end users?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you may have noticed we have quite a few ideas we can’t wait to try out.

Here’s how you can learn more about and follow Zilino:

• Read the blog: http://blog.zilino.com
• Read the FAQ
• Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/zilino
• Or, if you prefer, follow us on Identi.ca (an open source Twitter alternative): http://identi.ca/zilino
• Like us on Facebook
• Talk to us about our pilot program
• Subscribe to our email newsletter (from the Zilino.com homepage)

A huge “Thank you!” goes out to all the super smart people in this field we’ve had the pleasure to talk to over the past couple of years and who were so generous in their encouragement and their advice.  Needless to say, we are excited to get this thing rolling and can’t wait to show you in more detail.