This week, the National Academy of Public Administration’s Collaboration Project released a resource on stakeholder engagement that I hope will be useful to Govloopers. Tools for Online Idea Generation: A Comparison of Technology Platforms for Public Managers compares ten web-based idea-generation platforms, many of which we have used for various projects, with the intent to help leaders select a technology that fits the specific needs of their stakeholder-engagement project. It complements the Online Dialogue Brainstorm Guide, which we developed several months ago to provide public managers with questions to consider when structuring an engagement project.
Each of these resources is based on a principle that has guided our work: that engagement is essentially an issue of leadership, not technology. Identifying your challenge and what you need from engagement is single most important step in “doing” opengov, and everything else should align around that.
The guide is embedded below and is also available on our website. Let me also say that the Academy and the Collaboration Project are technology-neutral: this guide is not intended as an endorsement of any particular product or vendor. We’ve based it on our first-hand experience with many of the platforms, supplemented by information available on the vendors’ websites. This field is evolving quickly, so we intend this to be a living resource that will be periodically updated to feature new tools and new functionalities. We appreciate any feedback you have, including suggestions of other technologies we’ve missed.
There’s always new ones but I thought this was cool that I just found out about last week – http://www.allourideas.org/
Some examples here – http://blog.allourideas.org/
But it’s kind of a hot or not for ideas. Which helps give later ideas more awareness and changes some of the voting/game dynamics
We actually already got an email from the folks at Brightidea, which I hadn’t seen before either. Looks like they’ve got a decently sized footprint in local gov + State Dept.
All Our Ideas looks interesting. Looks like its aim isn’t depth of discussion, but to prioritize by community. (Also reminds me of the eye doctor: “Number 1, or number 2″ Number 2 or number 3?”)
I also some some great discussion of how to use rating/ranking tools on Expertnet: http://expertnet.wikispaces.com/message/view/Facilitating+Structured+Responses/31436093
Or Wayne’s World “Camera 1” Camera 2…camera 1..camera 2
Just blogged about this here: New Guide from NAPA: Tools for Online Idea Generation
Thanks, Tim! Great points about the different approaches behind these tools. It seems to me that some vendors in this space are just copying the same models of thumbs-up/thumbs-down, without deeper thought of how that impacts participation/deliberation.
Hey Daniel, thanks for picking up this topic and including us amongst the top collaboration projects out there. I’d like to add that our product – http://bubbleideas.com is not just an ideat management tool. Handling ideas is just a small module in our app. We started off like that, but eventually found that the reason why people would more come to a website is to seek answers/support or may be just talk to someone in the company. And that talking could be a collective sentiment, a something that you & I call ideas. I would love to invite you over our platform and show you around.
Cheers,
Arvind
CEO Bubbles
Thanks, Arvind.
Thanks, Arvind. Would love a deeper tour of Bubbleideas. Are you guys on the west coast?