8 Tools for New Possibilities

|Photo by birgerking|http://www.flickr.com/photos/birgerking/4731898939|

I’ve really appreciated recent conversations with my colleagues Melinda Weekes and Gibran Rivera about how the use of on-line technologies is not just about the technology, but the new possibilities that they reveal for interaction and creation in both in person and virtual spheres.  I’ve been impressed by stories about and personal experiences of some of the social media tools out there that show how they are able to help us supplement, extend, and innovate around collaboration for social impact. And I’m enjoying playing with some of these in my various client engagements.  Here are a few tools for new possibilities, and I’m eager to hear what experiences you have had with them, as well as other ones not mentioned here, that have helped you realize the greater potential of collaboration and collective intelligence.  Thanks to Matthew Dryhurst at Craigslist Foundation and the Working Wikily team for a number of these leads!

All Our Ideas – All Our Ideas is a platform that enables groups to collect and prioritize ideas in a transparent, democratic, and bottom-up way. They call it “a suggestion box for the digital age.”

ePulse – This is a web mining technology that monitors 40,000+ web sources, including media, company, NGO, government, blogs and other sources – ensuring extensive breadth of coverage.  The technology uses algorithms to identify, score and rank subject to ensure relevancy and avoid overload.

Give a Minute –  A new kind of public dialogue, that takes only a minute to think about improving one’s city, but as they say, “your ideas can make a world of difference.” Give a Minute is an opportunity for people to think out loud; address old problems with fresh thinking; and to enter into dialogue with change-making community leaders.

LikeMinded – LikeMinded is a tool that can be used to discover more information about resources and projects related to issues that one cares about in their community.  In addition, participants can share stories with one another.

OSQA– OSQA is an Open Source Question & Answer System. It is free software licensed.

ScoopIt – Scoop.it is a free publishing-by-curation platform. It provides a service by making curation a simple and new form of expression on the Web so that users can easily create online magazines.

Storify – Storify helps its users to tell their story by curating social media around certain topics or themes, pulling from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Fickr, RSS feeds, and the like.

UserVoice – A listening – A listening tool, user voice offers a variety of simple engagement tools to make listening to community voices “more productive and pleasurable.”