ParticipateDB

From the website: What is Brainstorm Anywhere? A new way to collect and evaluate feedback from 100’s to 1000’s of people. Brainstorm Anywhere is web based software the lets large groups brainstorm and evaluate ideas in real time. Feedback can be collected in live meetings or over time. Brainstorm Anywhere is being developed by Denver, Colorado-based PlaceMatters . Update : Brainstorm Anywhere has been discontinued. Existing information on the tool from its developer, Jason Lally, can be found here .

CitizenSpigit is a collaboration and crowdsourcing platform for government entities to support citizen engagement. From the website: CitizenSpigit is more than a simple electronic suggestion box — our software empowers citizens to collaborate around a topic of interest to surface innovative and actionable ideas. Crowd sourcing allows government entities to receive suggestions, field questions and facilitate communication with the public, helping government make more informed civic decisions. Government entities have the option of launching an internal or external community, depending on their goals. Update : CitizenSpigit has been continued—please see the entry on Spigit for updated information.

CivicEvolution is a non-partisan public service that provides tools and support to help citizens organize community projects, brainstorm for new ideas, develop a plan, deliberate proposals and build consensus. CivicEvolution was the first iteration of the current tool What Do We Think? .

From the website: Codigital is a cloud-based technology for getting co-created input on business critical issues. The tool allows adding of ideas, voting and ranking of ideas (pairwise comparison), and suggesting and resolving edits.

From the about page : Cohere is a visual tool to create, connect and share Ideas. […] Cohere is an idea management tool for you to annotate URLs with ideas, and weave meaningful connections between ideas for personal, team or social use. The site lists the following key features: Annotate a URL with any number of Ideas, or vice-versa. Visualize your network as it grows Make connections between your Ideas, or Ideas that anyone else has made public or shared with you via a common Group Use Groups to organise your Ideas and Connections by project, and to manage access-rights Import your data as RSS feeds (eg. bookmarks or blog posts), to convert them to Ideas, ready for connecting Use the RESTful API services to query, edit and mashup data from other tools For tutorial videos, view Cohere’s screencast page . An example network is shown below: Cohere is being developed in the UK by Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute and is available under a LGPL open source license.

Collabco is an ideas and innovation management system that helps you “work with large groups to brainstorm, select and develop the best ideas.” Key features of the open source platform include: collaborative wikis, open discussions, centralization of documents in libraries, user dashboards, full customization, data ownership and scalability. According to its developer, Collabforge, the software is designed for non-experts and “built with the needs of the less tech-savvy user in mind.” Collabco is primarily targeted towards the public sector. The software was designed with innovation leaders from the Australian Federal Government and is a result of 7 years of Collabforge’s experience supporting government agencies. Collabco is being developed by Melbourne, Australia-based Collabforge . The source code is available on GitHub .

Feature-rich web-based e-consultation tool with ranked idea-gathering system. From the website: Collaborize™ is a unique way for your community’s members to connect and interact online so they can identify, refine and react to important questions and ideas. It is an easy-to-use, web-based solution, designed to harness the creativity of group members with an engaging and rewarding user experience. Collaborize™ provides you with quick access to structured real-time ideas and feedback that you can use to make the best decisions for your group, organization or team. A video tutorial for Collaborize can be found here . Collaborize is developed by Democrasoft Inc. based in Santa Rosa, CA ( USA ). Update : Collaborize in the context of e-consultation as been discontinued.

From the about page (no longer publicly viewable): DemocracyOS brings collaborative decision making and easy governance to communities and organizations of all sizes. In April 2012 a group of activists, entrepreneurs, students and hackers got together in the city of Buenos Aires with a simple question in mind: What is democracy for the internet era? Many of the so-called modern democracies still run the same way they did almost two centuries ago: as citizens we only get to interact with the political system once every two years. In an era where online access starts to become commonplace around the world, we are aware of how the internet changed the way we work, communicate and relate with each other. But politics and governments haven’t changed at all. So we set out to find a reliable way to hack the system. Our first step was to create a reliable open source, free software with an easy user experience for citizens to get informed, debate and vote on every single bill presented in Congress. DemocracyOS evolved to become one of the most used platforms for collaborative decision making and translated into 15 languages. But aware that in politics not everything happens online, we also created a new kind of political party: The Net Party. Its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens vote online. It’s the offline component that makes DemocracyOS compatible with a local political system. In 2015 we opened our headquarters in California. DemocracyOS uses these three mechanisms: Propose : Create your DemocracyOS in a click. Build proposals and be the change you want to see. Debate :Debate in a platform that rewards the best arguments and filters that noise that usually ends up calling the trolls. Vote :With a clear deadline, get everyone on board to reach a voted decision and avoid endless debates. (In order to ensure authenticity, users sign up using a verified government ID.) DemocracyOS is open source. The source code is available on GitHub . DemocracyOS is developed by Democracia en Red, a nonprofit organization based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Designed to allow governments to set challenges and capture ideas, comments and ratings from participants, Dialogue App is a crowd sourcing tool custom-built for deliberative discussions online. Users are able to submit their own proposals as well as comment and add support to others’ proposals. Government officials can also reply to proposals in order to facilitate conversation with users. They also have moderation tools in order to keep conversations on track and a dashboard with analytics that can be analyzed. A PDF document introduction of Dialogue App can be found here . Dialogue App is developed by Delib, a company assisting governments with public consultations based in Bristol, UK and Brisbane, Australia.

FacilitatePro is a web-based application that houses a number of tools to assist with the brainstorming and idea generating processes. Fundamental to their technology is six steps: Brainstorming: Ideas are anonymized to increase group participation. Categorization: Focuses ideas through the use of an electronic flip chart where participants can build on ideas, combine, edit, move, copy, and categorize ideas. Idea Prioritization: Using voting templates, group leaders can create a voting ballot with either single or multiple criteria and varied formats. Results are viewed in real-time and multiple rounds of voting can be held. Action Planning: Recommendations are crowdsourced from the team and used to build a graphic time chart representing an action plan. The plan also includes roles, responsibilities, and timelines for each member. Team members refer to the time chart in order to update the status of assigned actions. Surveying: Survey creation tools allow for data gathering that can be used within an organization or publicly to assess trends and issues for the industry. Automatic Documentation: Meetings produce pre-formatted and automatic reports in HTML , RTF , or ASCII formats. FacilitatePro is developed by Facilitate.com based in San Francisco, California (US).

Google Moderator is a tool that allows distributed communities to submit and vote on questions for talks, presentations and events. From its Wikipedia entry (as of 1/29/17): The service allowed the management of feedback from a large number of people, who could vote for questions they thought should be posed from a pool of questions submitted by others or submit their own to be asked and voted on. The service aimed to ensure that every question was considered, let the audience see others’ questions, and helped the moderator of a team or event address the questions that the audience most cared about. […] Google Moderator was shut down on June 30, 2015 because the usage did not match Google’s expectations. The site remained available as read-only until August 15, 2015, at which time it closed completely. Content will remain available for a minimum of two years via Google’s Takeout tool. Since the shutdown, the term has been used to refer to Google Moderators, an advanced permission given to certain accounts to allow the user to monitor certain aspects of Google and take administrative action(s) when needed. Some remaining alternatives (in alphabetical order) to Google Moderator are Kiunei, Loomio, Mentimeter, Pigeonhole Live, Poll Everywhere, and Sli.do. Information on how Google Moderator worked can be found here .

From the website: The effective way for your group to plan, brainstorm, discuss and decide. You’ve probably encountered the usual issues of group decision making… People who dominate the conversation, quiet people whose ideas never get heard and all those post-it notes you have to write up. GroupMap solves this by capturing individual thinking first, then reveal the group perspective, all in real-time. Now that’s true collaborative decision making. GroupMap is being developed by GroupMap Technology Pty Ltd, based in Victoria Park, WA (Australia).

IdeaNet is a web 2.0 idea management solution. Translated from the website: The HYVE Innovation Software enables innovation through the involvement of employees, customers and external partners. […] The HYVE IdeaNet® provides a web-based modular solution specifically designed to support collaborative community approaches in the context of innovation management. Worldwide it is successfully used by companies as the basis of their innovation processes in many different ways. Our innovation management software impresses with user-friendly interfaces in the frontend as well as easy-to-use control and analysis tools in the backend. IdeaNet is developed by Hyve Innovation Community based in Munich, Germany.

IdeaScale is a cloud-based software platform that enables organizations to leverage ideas from the community in a practice known as crowdsourcing. To participate in an IdeaScale portal, users must create a profile in order to submit ideas, comment or vote on other ideas. The most popular ideas (determined by vote count) are prioritized at the top. It combines the “wisdom of the crowds” concept with Web 2.0 models like Digg . Administrators may streamline the process by consolidating similar ideas. A system of awarding points and badges based on member participation provides incentives for contribution. Additionally, real-time, verifiable translation of all user-generated content is available in 30+ languages. Key features like group-based moderation and smart tagging aid idea refinement. In the mature stages of ideation, review and assessment tools can be used for evaluating promising ideas. The comprehensive list of features can be found on the product tour page . According to the about page , the platform has more than 4.5 million users worldwide and has worked with both public organizations and private enterprises. Notable clients include, NASA , the New York City Police Department, EA Sports, NBC and the White House. IdeaScale was launched in 2009 in tandem with President Barack Obama’s Open Government Initiative , and was quickly adopted by several federal agencies. The company is headquartered in Berkeley, CA, with offices in Washington DC, Japan, and Germany.

From the website: IdeaTorrent is what can be defined as an “open innovation software”: it lets people submit their ideas, brainstorm them, and vote on them. The most popular ideas and requests are then easily accessible. That’s a very interesting mean for a project to have an insight on the demands of his user base! What does it offer? IdeaTorrent includes multiples solutions to a single rationale support, strong community based moderation tools, theming support, and is based on Drupal. See the demo! It is a Free Open Source Software ( FOSS ) licensed under GNU General Public License, which means you can freely download it, modify it and distribute it. IdeaTorrent is open-source and its source code is on Github . Update : IdeaTorrent has been discontinued. In order to access the site, view an archived copy .

LiquidFeedback helps organizations and groups handle concurrent integrated proposition development and decision-making processes. In order to use LiquidFeedback, first, a participant creates a proposition to begin the decision-making process and assigns a timeline of events (admission of ideas, discussion, verification, voting, etc.) in which each stage lasts a specified number of hours or days. Other participants may add suggestions for improvement, give input on existing suggestions, and add competing alternatives to an initiative. Suggestions and input on those suggestions can be used to help the original participant assess and quantify support for potential changes to their initiative. In response to any initiative changes, participants are also able to update or revise their support. During the voting stage, participants may delegate their vote to other participants, given that they did not participate in the discussion or revision process beforehand. This allows participants to empower each other and means that participants do not have to participate in every group single decision-making process. For community planning initiatives, LiquidFeedback can incorporate maps, geotagging, and geospatial indexing and search capabilities. LiquidFeedback is compatible with desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. LiquidFeedback is open-source and its source code is available here . LiquidFeedback is developed by Public Software Group, a non-profit association located in Berlin, Germany.

MindMixer is a community engagement platform that works with organizations to solicit ideas and build stronger relationships with stakeholders, participants, and citizens. Each campaign has its own personalized website with a number of projects that citizens can find out information about, leave ideas, and reply to others’ comments. Afterwards, city officials and planners can then choose final ideas that citizens will be able to vote on and use input to inform further projects and plans. View an introductory video to MindMixer below: MindMixer is developed by mySidewalk based in Kansas City, Missouri (US).

OpenIDEO is an open collaborative platform for social design and innovation. The site allows for projects, called challenges on the platform, to be submitted by partnerships between leading organizations. These challenges are posed as questions in order to find solutions to better the world, such as reducing plastic waste or improving education for youth in emergency situations. In order to facilitate the innovation process, each challenge is divided into a number of phases, each lasting roughly a few weeks: Ideas : OpenIDEO launches an open call for ideas to their global community to submit proposals or current projects related to the challenge question. Each challenge question is linked to a Challenge Brief and Submission Criteria that participants can refer to in order to find out more about the question. Review : A panel of “experts and advisors review and shortlist leading ideas to move onto the Feedback stage.” The comments section is still open for participants to continue engaging with each other regarding the challenge topic. Feedback : Shortlisted contributors are asked “to get feedback from their communities and apply those learnings to their proposal. At the same time, their ideas will be reviewed by issue experts to help the ideas grow.” Refinement : “Shortlisted contributors have two weeks to incorporate learnings and strengthen their idea in advance of the final evaluation.” Anyone on the site is encouraged to submit comments and leave feedback for the contributors. Top Ideas : The earlier panel of experts and advisors will choose several ideas as the top ideas that may receive funding or partnerships from outside organizations to support the realization of the projects. Impact : The OpenIDEO Team will “capture post-challenge stories” on their blog for contributors and the community to stay updated. In addition to the social innovation process for challenges on the site, OpenIDEO also has location-based chapters in 30 cities around the world designed for interested participants to: Find Community : Connect with creatives, entrepreneurs, educators and leaders in your city and collaborate to solve meaningful local and global issues. Gain Insight :Attend local events to hear inspiring speakers, build entrepreneurial skills, and learn human-centered design. Create Solutions :Design and support projects that address issues in your local community and access resources to expand your impact. Ignite Action :Collaborate with other Chapters around the world and take collective action on social or environmental challenges. OpenIDEO is developed by design firm IDEO , headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States.

Spigit is a crowdsourcing software for “ideation management.” The platform uses “data science and algorithms to help the crowd select, predict, and advance only the best ideas – and prevent herd behavior.” On the platform, posted ideas can be discussed, rated, and reviewed by company employees. Mechanisms for risk analysis, cost projections, and profit forecasts further aid the ideation process. Spigit algorithms elevate the top ideas and comparisons can be made in a comprehensive visualization. From the about page: Using sophisticated analytics built on advanced mathematics, Spigit takes us beyond information gathering and analyses to real time decision making and meaningful prediction. Spigit’s advanced algorithms and business process allows you to capture and compute all of your employees’ unstructured published data while simultaneously filtering out the noise and discovering intelligence. By employing game theory, currency, idea trading, rewards, and rich dynamic reporting Spigit allows you to get the most out of your key assets. How does it work? Spigit was founded in 2007. As of September 2013, Spigit has been merged with San Francisco, CA-based “Mindjet”:https://www.mindjet.com/. The company also had offices in London and Sydney.

From the website: 108 Solutions or Ideas in 30 Minutes! That’s what Professor Bernd Rohrbach promised when he wrote about his “6-3-5 Method” of brainwriting in German sales magazine, Absatzwirtschaft, in 1968. 6-3-5 brainwriting is a quantity ideas and solutions generating exercise and is useful wherever you need ideas, whether it’s content marketing, web design and conversion rate, product features or solutions to common business problems. From their brainwriting guide ( PDF ): An Introduction to Brainwriting 635 Brainwriting is a creative brainstorming technique aimed at making the idea generation process more efficient and effective. Developed by Bernd Rohrbach who originally published it in a German sales magazine, in 1968. In its traditional format, a brainwriting session consists of 6 participants, with one acting as the session leader. After reviewing the project brief, all participants are required to write down 3 ideas on a worksheet within 5 minutes (6 people, 3 ideas, 5 mints = 635). After the first round is over, participants would then pass their worksheet round to the next person. Round two would then start with each person having 3 ideas to review and use as inspiration, before coming up with a further 3 ideas of their own. This process then continues for the 6 allocated rounds meaning each participant would have generated 18 ideas, resulting in 108 ideas in total for the session The technique is applied in various sectors but mainly in business, marketing, design, and writing. We use the process extensively internally at Tecmark for delivering our content marketing campaign ideas.

UserVoice is a full-service product feedback management company that develops software for gathering and analyzing customer feedback by prioritizing feature requests to drive strategic product decisions. UserVoice software has been used in a number of citizen consultations. SmartVoteTM and Net Promoter Score ( NPS ) are analytic tools for measuring a product’s performance. SmartVote gathers data from surveys to gage user experience and customer preferences. External and internal feedback can be collected through widgets, a feedback portal, contributor sidebar, or through a mobile app. The Instructions for mobile customization of UserVoice iOS SDK is available on GitHub . Feedback content can also be managed and moderated with UserVoice software. UserVoice was founded in 2006 by Richard White. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company is based in San Francisco, CA.

From the website: Agile idea generation and vision planning We at Agora wholeheartedly believe in the wisdom of crowds. We provide a framework for crowdsourcing and online collaboration where the aim is to generate ideas and form a joint vision. The tool is developed by Agora Crowdsourcing, a non-profit based in Reykjavik, Iceland. Update : Visioning Assembly has been discontinued. In order to access the site, view an archived copy .

WebIDEApro™ is a wiki-map, a tool to do fast real-time collaboration by sharing a web whiteboard and a graphic K-language. From the English demo page : WebIDEApro, A-i-A’s Collaboration Board It is a Shared WhiteBoard Co-construction / Collaborative Tool , a mean to visually communicate and share your ideas in radical real-time, a platform to invite your tribe and start changing the world, combining the power of social networking and real-time collaboration. You get powerful brainstorm, discussion and understanding, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. The 3-step process is detailed in the WebIDEApro brochure . Capture : in the virtual space, map out and organize your thoughts and ideas. Collaborate : share your space with others in your network and begin brainstorming, planning and revising with your collaborators. Innovate : as new links and associations emerge, and the ecosystem evolves into a mature system, ideas become more clearly defined. WebIDEApro is developed by Atelier d’intelligence Appliquée (A-i-A), a knowledge management consulting firm based in Montreal, Quebec (Canada).

WebStorm by Brightidea, Inc. is an idea collection and ranking portal that facilitates the innovation process by allowing organizations to: Collect ideas and feedback from employees about new work processes, cost cutting and new product / service ideas. Solicit feedback & suggestions from customers about product features, new products, marketing and more. Run open innovation contests and competitions – open to the public or existing users. WebStorm efficiently records and manages input from thousands of stakeholders. Use the power of “crowdsourcing” to rank ideas and allow the best ideas to rise to the top. Quickly establish a feedback channel with customers and partners. Solicit immediate input from employees at any level and from any organization. WebStorm offers a quick and cost-effective way to reach out to your customers, employees, or partners and establish a meaningful dialogue. Find out what your customers think of your services or products. Solicit ideas for new products and features, or on how to improve service. Encourage the generation of cost-saving or process-improvement ideas from your employees. Inform stakeholders of new developments and on the progress of promising ideas.

From the about page : WeDecide supports enterprises and institutions tap into their collective intelligence. We engage with clients to offer Group Innovation & Decision-Making platforms and services. Our clients include companies, public institutions, other civic society institutions. We connect relevant technology and process to successfully engage your stakeholders and oversee its implementation. From the tour page: What is the WeDecide platform? WeDecide platform is a proposal generation and selection facilitator that helps companies generate ideas and turn them into valuable project proposals. WeDecide was founded in 2010 and has offices in Copenhagen, Denmark and Istanbul, Turkey.