[projectvrm] Online Townhall Proposal: The State of VRM

[Lucas Cioffi < >]

Hi All,

I've been happily soaking in the discussion on this listserv since attending the 2008 VRM workshop in Cambridge.

I'd like to organize a 2-week asynchronous online townhall on the State of VRM for two reasons: 1) I want to create a robust knowledge-sharing opportunity for the community and 2) I want to test out the software that I've built.

I don't like the form that online townhalls take in politics-- they are mainly 1-way broadcasts of information.  So the software I'm building focuses on a many-to-many sharing of information.  Instead of broadcasting, the convener asks questions or opens up hypotheses for feedback/debate.  The format is 1) discuss relevant facts and definitions 2) brainstorm 3) deliberate and 4) summarize.

This is not to replace the listserv-- just to provide a temporary space for more in-depth discussion at scale to move some ideas forward.  Would something like this be useful to us or would it be a waste of time?

If this is to succeed, I'll need some help choosing the following:

• What are some open-ended questions that members of the VRM community may want to discuss?
• What are statements/hypotheses that members of the VRM community may want to debate?
• Additionally, if there are any words/phrases that have unclear definitions within the community and are important for the community to have a broader consensus emerge on these terms, which words would they be?

Lucas Cioffi

Board Member, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation

CEO, AthenaBridge Inc

Charlottesville, VA

917-528-1831