ParticipateDB

@stake is a multiplayer roleplaying game designed to emulate group deliberation and foster “creativity and empathy during small group deliberation” of 3-5 players. From the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation’s page on @stake: How to play @stake: What is it about? : Before the game takes place, the play group must brainstorm topics for the game. The topics selected should be important questions for whatever real world process matters most to the players and their organization (ex. “How can we get young people more involved in local issues?”). The Decider : Once the question for each round has been established, one player becomes the first “Decider,” the player who will pick from the other players’ pitches and determine which is best. It’s up to them to keep time, promote fair play, and make prompt decisions in awarding points. Role Cards : All other players are assigned roles such as Mayor, Activist, or Student. Each role card features a short bio and three agenda goals that the players try to include in their pitches for bonus points. The Pitch : Players hear the question for the round, and are then given one minute to devise an idea. Pitching occurs in two phases. Each player has one minute to give their initial pitch to the Decider, and then there is a short discussion period during which players may ask questions of one another and try to achieve compromises to attach their agenda items to others’ plans. Decider : At the end of the round, the Decider must pick a winning pitch. That winning player earns points, then every player earns bonus points based on their agenda items. The new decider is the player that won the previous round. @stake was originally developed in 2013 as a tabletop card game , but in 2015, its team received funding from the Knight Foundation to create an online version that is compatible with desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. @stake was developed by a team led by principal investigator Eric Gordon and project manager Becky Michelson as part of the Engagement Lab at Emerson College. The project page on the Engagement Lab’s website can be found here .

4INFO is an American firm that allows its clients to provide text message alerts and information to their consumers. The ad tech company claims it has a reach of over 95% of U.S. smartphone users. To do so, the platform utilizes smartphone-household location data to gain insights about its users. Essentially, 4INFO targets the desired audience by leveraging CRM data or third party segmentation or purchase data. The method is described in its patent abstract : Embodiments of the invention relate to methods and systems for associating a mobile device to a household. In various embodiments, a plurality of latitude-longitude pairs is received for a mobile device during a time period. The latitude-longitude pairs are organized into a plurality of clusters corresponding to geographic regions visited by the mobile device during the time period. For each cluster, a score is calculated that represents a likelihood that a user of the mobile device resides in a household within the cluster. The cluster with the highest score is identified as being the location of the user’s household. The computation is preferably conducted recursively over time periods. The mobile device is then associated with the user’s household. From Wikipedia : The company’s products collect data on the extent to which its clients’ customers are exposed to their advertisements. As of 2014, the company offers multi-screen functionality (mobile and desktop display). When it was founded in 2004, 4INFO began as a text-based SMS advertising company. The company is now headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices throughout the U.S.

Accela Civic Voice provides government agencies a fully hosted, cloud-based solution to involve citizens in core community discussions. It allows you to share information, collect well-timed public input, build support to improve project outcomes and let your citizens know you are listening by participating in the conversation. Accela Civic Voice offers: Forums and discussions where you can invite feedback on planned and ongoing projects Global online search capabilities to quickly find projects and initiatives your citizens care most about A simple dashboard to make it easy to track public opinion and share with elected officials before policy and project decisions are made Zip code filters to control public participation by residents and visitors Activity threshold levels to alert staff that topics or projects are “trending” Built-in content filter checks for offensive content Routing capabilities to easily direct content to staff responsible for topics or initiatives

From the website: acknowledge is the first complete consultation management solution that enables your organisation to engage effectively with citizens about the subjects they care about, at the time and place that suits them. acknowledge is uniquely designed to help you adopt a consistent corporate approach to engagement, and enables you to manage the whole consultation process – from creating a questionnaire to publishing the results – through a single, easy-to-use web interface. The platform has been discontinued by its developer ROL Solutions Ltd. However, the firm offers related software for civic engagement.

Active Citizen is an open-source machine learning software designed to lower barriers to participation through better informing community members through the use of reminders for participation opportunities, suggestions of relevant ideas and news stories, and notification on important issues. Active Citizen’s AI algorithm makes recommendations to users based on “what they have liked or disliked before, in a similar way that Facebook creates your feed." AI filtering is mobilized to analyze ideas and find news stories according to the user’s preference. DEEP -Linking Youth’s (Digital Ecosystem for E-Participation Linking Youth) dashboard , an EU-funded project encouraging young citizens to actively discuss and contribute their perspectives on decision-making processes, is built on Active Citizen. Development of the software was partly funded by the European Commission, first through CHEST FP7 and later by Erasmus+. Active Citizen is continually being developed with the implementation of additional AI and VR features in each new prototype. Read more about its progress and objectives here . The tool is being developed by the Citizens Foundation, based in Reykjavik, Iceland. The Citizens Foundation , a non-profit organization founded in 2008, is also responsible for e-democracy initiatives like Your Priorities (the crowdsourcing web app) and Better Reykjavik. The source code is on Github .

What is Adhocracy? Adhocracy is a freely usable participation software with which people can be digitally involved in decision-making processes. Implemented as a software library, Adhocracy offers various participation modules with which a wide range of process types can be implemented: From surveys and brainstorming to joint text processing. Depending on requirements, these modules can be combined to form complex participation processes. Why Adhocracy? Participation in political and social processes is essential for an active civil society and a stable democracy, because only through participation can we arrive at decisions that work for everyone. Adhocracy brings participation processes into the digital space and can, if necessary, meaningfully supplement existing analogue participation possibilities. In this way, Adhocracy diversifies the formats and ways of participation and thus offers the possibility to meet the most diverse needs. It is thus possible to involve fellow human beings, members or employees in decision-making processes simply, efficiently and independently of time and place, and ultimately to make better and more socially acceptable decisions to meet. Adhocracy is Open Source Adhocracy is released under an open source license , so that all users benefit from the progress made in each project. Thus, synergies in the areas of security, innovation and the feature set of the software are made possible that also lead to cheaper development costs. Of most importance to us is that an open source approach allows for transparency of the software solution, which is key whenever software is used for political means. The code of all projects based on Adhocracy can be downloaded free of charge at Github . Curious? Subscribe to the Newsletter and check out our Publications and Press reports

From Wikipedia (as of 11/5/2009): Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (formerly Macromedia Breeze) is software used to create information and general presentations, online training materials, web conferencing, learning modules, and user desktop sharing. The product is entirely Adobe Flash based. All meeting workspaces are organized into ‘pods’; with each pod performing a specific role (i.e. chat, whiteboard, note, etc.). The recommended database for backend support is Microsoft SQL Server. The product can be licensed as an installed product, or a hosted product. Additional features include: Collaborating, hosting and presenting directly from mobile devices Compatibility with iOS and Android devices as well as desktops (no downloads required for the latter) Personalized always-on URL and brand-able environments Templates for additional online meeting rooms Secure storage for files, documents, layouts and notes Recording, editing, and publishing of events Analytics for user engagement Example use settings of Adobe Acrobat Connect are virtual meetings , webinars , and classrooms . A video introduction of Adobe Acrobat Connect can be viewed here . Additional information Added November 15, 2009 Last updated January 30, 2018 Web http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html Country United States of America Slice & Dice Category Web conferencing Projects A list of projects that have used Adobe Acrobat Connect : Campus Conversation on Public Art Policy at Carnegie Mellon Citizen Councilor Network of King County, Washington Virtual European Parliament References Additional information and materials about Adobe Acrobat Connect : “Art of Hosting Applied Practice” 2014 & 2015 Community Harvest How engaging can a large facilitated online session be?

ColdFusion is a suite of softwares enabling users to easily create mobile and web applications" According to Wikipedia (as of 4/7/15): ColdFusion is a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995. Originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by 2.0 had become a full platform that included an IDE in addition to a full Scripting Language. Current versions of ColdFusion, sold by Adobe Systems include advanced features for enterprise integration and development of rich internet applications. ColdFusion primarily competes with PHP and ASP . For information on ColdFusion’s features, visit the Wikipedia entry’s features section . ColdFusion is developed by Adobe Systems headquartered in Mountain View, CA (US).

Agora is “an online townhall for all”. From the website: What is Agora? loudspeaker for citizens agora gives ordinary citizens a voice to speak up and ask questions town common for communities agora offers a common space for communities to discuss what matters platform for collaboration agora crowd-sources ideas from citizens and help governments listen and “join the ongoing conversation with your community and representatives about what should be done”. As of 2016, Agora Town Hall is no longer available according to the message on this webpage . An archived copy of the Agora Town Hall tool can be found here .

From the about page (now defunct): Agora Ciudadana is an innovative free software project whose aim is to create a social network for the people, allowing secure and scalable votings via Internet with just your web browser The project is being driven by Seville, Spain-based Wadobo . From their project description : Agora Ciudadana is a social web site where anyone can create or join in an agora. An agora has a set of members which can vote in the agora’s elections either by direct vote or by delegating the vote. The source code is available on GitHub . Update : Agora Voting has been discontinued, and renamed and updated as nVotes . In order to access a copy of the old Agora Voting site, view an archived copy .

From the about page : AGORA -net is a Computer-Supported Collaborative Argument Visualization ( CSCAV ) tool. An argument is defined here as a set of statements—a claim and one or more reasons—where the reasons jointly provide support for the claim, or are at least meant to support the claim. AGORA -net can be used for free by everybody. The software provides step-by-step guidance to construct arguments and networks of arguments and counter-arguments. The software is collaborative in the sense that users can work simultaneously on the same argument map via an internet connection, be it in face-to-face communication or online. They can add arguments and objections to statements, as well as references, links to resources, comments, definitions, and friendly amendments. The design of an AGORA -net argument map is based on the consideration that the main point of arguing is to provide a justification for a claim, a thesis, or a recommendation. Thus, these statements are always located on the top left of your screen. By providing reasons for your claim, you work to the right. Of course, any map can be read from any direction. Here is an example AGORA argument on the topic of millennial voting: Existing public AGORA arguments can be found in their index divided into topics. If a user is logged in, they are able to contribute to existing arguments as well as view their maps, projects, and contributions. There is also a search tool to parse through existing arguments. Below is a 5-minute introductory video on constructing an AGORA argument: Additional instructions on how to use AGORA can be found on their What You Should Know Before You Start page. AGORA -net is available in English, Russian, German, and Spanish. AGORA -net was conceptualized and designed by Michael Hoffmann, Director of the Philosophy Program in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and funded by the United States-Russia Program of FIPSE , the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, and U.S. Department of Education (Grant P116S100006). Collaborators include Bauman Moscow State Technical University (2010-2012) and the Institute of Philosophy in the Russian Academy of Science (2012 onwards).

From Airesis details page : Airesis is a free software platform, built by a team of Italian developers and contributors, to enable communities and groups to organize themselves in a productive manner according to the principles of direct democracy and participation. To achieve this goal, the application has been designed as a multifunctional system, which integrates all the tools that can help the development of a community, in particular “social” and deliberative tools. In order to gain access to Airesis, users first create an account and once logged in, can either look through the open groups or receive invitations to join closed groups. Administrators of groups are able to use permission-based membership in order to manage privileges and permissions of each member. Within the group, the user has access to social tools and deliberative tools . The first, social tools, provide users with blogs to share social messages or updates and event promotion depending on user-designated schedules. The second, deliberative tools, contain a voting system that may be anonymized for electing candidates as well as collecting and deliberating proposals and initiatives. An introduction video to Airesis (in Italian) can be found here . Airesis is developed by a team of volunteers and managed by the Tecnologie Democratichie based in Italy. The source code is available on Github .

From the website: crowdsourcing consensus We have all come across complicated issues that have so many opinions and facts that it’s hard to determine the right action to take. All Angles is a tool where everyone can come together, organize all we know and summarize the information into a consensus. Formerly known as Truth Scale .

Amplify is a tool enabling users to “clip” one or more specific portions of interest in an online article, add commentary, and share a link directly to the clip to the users’ social networks. Amplify is compatible with Facebook , Twitter , Tumblr , Friendfeed , and Delicious . Amplify was created by Clipmarks, LLC , a New York City based company that was acquired by Forbes in 2007.

From the project website : The Annotator is an open-source JavaScript library and tool that can be added to any webpage to make it annotatable. Annotations can have comments, tags, users and more. Morever, the Annotator is designed for easy extensibility so its a cinch to add a new feature or behaviour. The accompanying site AnnotateIt is a hosted web service for storing annotations. The Annotator is being developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation .

Antragsgrün is an open-source tool for document commenting. The tool was developed specifically in the context of party platforms and party conventions to handle submission, versioning and management of change requests. Antragsgrün is built in PHP . The code is available on Github .

From the website: Apache Roller is a full-featured, multi-user and group-blog server suitable for blog sites large and small. This is the project’s homepage, which provides a brief overview of the software and project as well as links to project news, downloads, user documentation, install guide, mailing-lists, bug tracker, wiki and the FAQ . Roller is a Java web application that should be able to run on any Java EE server and any relational database. Currently, Roller is best supported on Tomcat and MySQL — but users have reported success running Roller on Glassfish, Websphere, JBoss, Resin, Geronimo, Derby, PostgresSQL, Oracle, etc.). Here are some of Roller’s key features: Multi-user blogging: can support tens of thousands of users and blogs Group blogging with three permisson levels (editor, author and limited) Support for comment moderation and comment spam prevention measures Bloggers have complete control over blog layout/style via templates Built-in search engine indexes weblog entry content Pluggable cache and rendering system Support for blog clients that support MetaWeblog API All blogs have entry and comment feeds in both RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 formats

From the about section : Appgree is a web and mobile application that allows groups of dozens up to millions of people to communicate with the clarity, ease and coherence of a single person. With Appgree, a brand’s followers, members of an association and any type of community – a company’s department, a hikers club – is able to share their ideas, opinions and/or questions and reach a consensus in a matter of seconds, thanks to a simple yet extremely powerful statistics-based algorithm DemoRank. Until now, if a large group tried to understand and express its members’ will, it always came up against an insurmountable obstacle: its size. With Appgree, the obstacle becomes the solution: at Appgree, the larger the group, the more potential it has to generate ideas that can gain a consistent consensus. Appgree is being developed by Madrid, Spain-based Appgree, S.A. and is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

According to Wikipedia: ArcGIS is a suite consisting of a group of geographic information system ( GIS ) software products produced by ESRI . At the desktop GIS level, ArcGIS can include: ArcReader, which allows one to view and query maps created with the other Arc products; ArcView, which allows one to view spatial data, create layered maps, and perform basic spatial analysis; ArcEditor which, in addition to the functionality of ArcView, includes more advanced tools for manipulation of shapefiles and geodatabases; or ArcInfo which includes capabilities for data manipulation, editing, and analysis. There are also server-based ArcGIS products, as well as ArcGIS products for PDAs. Extensions can be purchased separately to increase the functionality of ArcGIS.

Argüman is an open source project developed by the community for argument analysis. Argument mapping – producing “boxes and arrows” diagrams of reasoning – is the primary mode for promoting critical thinking on the platform. Users may begin a new argument thread by posting a contention, citing the origin of the discourse and providing sources supporting the argument. For each contested statement, participants may also add one of three types of premises: but (objection), because (reason in support), and however (additional conditions). Sources associated with these premises can also be linked. Participants may support premises, attach a premise to an existing one, or report the fallacy of a premise. Arguments are assigned objection percentages or support ratings based on these votes. Arguments can be classified into channels such as politics, religion, programming, drugs, and animals (among many more). Argument mapping is available in English, Turkish, Traditional Chinese, and French. Argüman is an open source project. The source code is available on Github . Argüman is developed by a core world-wide team and developers.

Mission statement: The great potential value of e-discussions for learning, negotiation and social interaction often remains untapped, as discussions can turn out to be ineffective or chaotic when no moderator/tutor is present. Furthermore, the characteristics and demands of the role may make it hard for moderators to be fully successful in their task, especially when tackling multiple synchronous discussions. The Argunaut consortium was formed with the purpose of providing moderators with a computerized tool and its associated pedagogical methodology to support and increase their effectiveness and thereby the quality of the monitored e-discussions. Argunaut’s Moderator Interface will provide the moderator with an overall solution for awareness and feedback/intervention options. It will support the moderators’ awareness of important occurrences in ongoing e-discussions via the “shallow loop”, which provides constantly updating visualizations (“awareness displays”) summarizing important characteristics of the ongoing discussion. The design of the indicators and visualizations will incorporate feedback from experts as well as the projected end users (teachers, initially), and will cover a variety of dimensions (e.g., participation, social engagement, critical reasoning), also building on the fruits of the “deep loop” AI module. Argunaut will attempt to characterize points or aspects in the process of discussion where potential moderator/facilitator intervention might be required (even before such situations become problematic), alert the moderator of these issues, and provide the moderator with intervention/feedback tools to address these issues and in some cases with pertinent advice. Several other functionalities are also planned, including options for text search of key words, specification of and search for patterns (e.g. structural patterns) and annotation of discussion contents. These options may facilitate both the online monitoring of e-discussions and the offline post-discussion reflection and analysis of these discussions. Currently, the Moderator’s Interface is being implemented for two graphical e-discussion tools, Digalo and FreeStyler/CoolModes. Argunaut’s system architecture will be characterized by “openness” and adaptability (to a variety of different platforms, contexts and users). It will be configurable and offer a wealth of options to the moderator. We also plan on utilizing feedback from teachers and other moderators in our extensive experimentation and evaluation phase, in order to provide them with the best possible support. We, the Argunaut team, welcome you to this website and encourage you to browse and have a look around. We recommend that you first have a look at our brochure and at our project’s highlights page. Argunaut is a Research & Development project sponsored by the 6th Framework Program of the European Community, planned for 33 months from December 2005 onwards. Foreseen exploitable results include software tools, research practices, training courses, and more. From the homepage: The Argunaut project was formed with the following goals: * to develop appropriate tools to assist moderators of e-discussions (automatic detection of attacks, of racism, of subservise argumentation, recurrent discussion patterns, individual argumentation difficulties …) * to unify awareness, feedback and intervention mechanisms in e-discussion environments * to combine AI analysis module with online realtime monitoring module * to implement cross-platform: currently with Digalo and FreeStyler for education field. Later perhaps with M2T and Map-It, forum/blog platforms and, why not, Twitter. * to study the moderator’s role, especially in synchronous, graphical e-discussions As of May 8, 2014, the site is not available. An archived version is available on Archive.org.

From the about page : Assembl is an online application that enables hundreds or even thousands of people to work together effectively on the definition of new ideas. The application supports the belief that with the proper conditions, people working together can think smarter than any one member of the group could alone. Traditional collective intelligence software tends to refine ideas from one person. Assembl is different. It focuses on co-building new ideas. Assembl is being developed by Imagination For People (Canada) and bluenove (France).

From the about page : Backseat Budgeter® is a simulation tool that enables you to experience for yourself what it is like to manage a public budget. Elected officials ultimately are in charge, but with Backseat Budgeter you can see the effects of your decisions, gain a better understanding of the challenges officials face, and appreciate the complexities of the public budgeting process. Furthermore, the choices you make about the budget will be shared with public officials. You can let them know if you think they should step on the gas, put the brakes on spending or change direction altogether. Backseat Budgeter is a public service tool created by Engaged Public to help citizens understand the tradeoffs associated with spending our public dollars. It is offered as a community service by Engaged Public at cost to any public entity wishing to educate and engage its constituents. Backseat Budgeter is an earlier version of Balancing Act .

From the about page : Balancing Act is a fun and easy way for residents to learn about public budgets and the choices their elected officials face in the budgeting process. It allows participants to try allocating funds— expressing their priorities and preferences — but also requires them to balance spending and revenue. Balancing Act was designed for those individuals interested in taking an active role in making their community better by sharing their voice. Budgets are, arguably, the most direct way a community expresses what is important. Should the focus be parks and recreation? Public health? Police? Helping the homeless? If the answer is yes to all—how are we going to pay for it? Balancing Act brings people and government officials closer together in an informed conversation about what priorities are in everyone’s best interests. Because it is online it is accessible to anyone at anytime and is far more convenient than a traditional public meeting or budget hearing. Balancing Act is being developed by Denver, Colorado-based public policy strategy firm Engaged Public . Balancing Act builds on its predecessor, Backseat Budgeter .

bCisive is a Windows application allowing for a visual representation of group decisions and deliberations. From their product overview : bMaps let you organise all your thoughts and information in one place when presenting your ideas or thinking through a decision. Lay out the question, the options, their pros and cons, and your arguments for and against. Add links to supporting documents, websites and evidence for your claims. A bMap’s visual structure makes your reasoning clear and explicit, helping you analyse the problem more rigorously. Assumptions and unsupported claims are obvious, and it’s easier to spot gaps in your thinking and even new options for consideration. Be confident that you’ve addressed all relevant issues and made the best decision or proposal. For more information, visit bCisive’s tutorial pages . bCisive also has an online version, bCisive Online . To learn about the similarities and differences between the two, see this side-by-side comparison . bCisive is developed by ReasoningLab based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.