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.

As mentioned earlier on Twitter, we’ll be presenting Zilino at NCDD’s D&D Marketplace this October.

Here’s the outline I just submitted:

Zilino — Your Friendly E-participation Engine

Introduction to Zilino, a new web application for group problem solving and decision making. Highly interactive discussion of some of the key concepts behind Zilino, our roadmap for future releases as well as the ideas on everybody’s wish list.

Should be fun.