scaling up open problem solving
Scaling up open problem solving
Hassan Masum[1] and Mark Tovey[2]
What would a sustainable open infrastructure dedicated to finding solutions to the world’s toughest problems look like? It would have to lower boundaries to make more use of non-specialists. It would have to be so much fun that using it becomes a natural and widely accepted custom.
We look at two case studies that we have been involved with: developing strategies for dealing with peak oil scenarios, and contributing to the online magazine WorldChanging. Our challenge is to make a problem-solving infrastructure open to interested citizens willing to share their knowledge, connections, and commitment to confront common challenges—to evolve a combination of widely available software, open science, and open content that leads to open participation in building our common future.
Though many of the requisite tools already exist, the various modes in which we can interact and leverage them effectively are just being invented, especially as the number of people involved rises. High-performance teams dedicated to achieving Olympic-level competencies in collaboration will be needed for the meta-Manhattan Project that awaits our species this century.
Modes, Motivations, and Massive Solutions
The two experiences of open collaboration efforts we will share could be multiplied a thousandfold—the point is to think concretely about what’s involved in scaling up open collaboration. Getting involved in almost any such endeavor suggests ideas for making better use of tools, modes of interaction, and motivational strategies to rapidly accelerate what we can do together.
The first step is to understand the available tools. A home PC can now support distributed small-group collaboration in a variety of ways, such as information sharing, discussions, audio conferencing, small-scale video conferencing, and simultaneous editing. With a little organized support, such efforts can be coordinated and interlinked into larger networks of collaboration to produce sizeable outcomes.[3]
But tools are only as good as the way they’re used, leading to the idea of “modes”: design patterns for productive collaboration. Just as we are used to the idea of a debate or a lecture, we will become used to more complex interpersonal idioms, each with different functionality, “feel”, and requirements. Contributing to Wikipedia, engaging in massively parallel brainstorming, or taking part in a multi-site music education and performance session via broadband video[4] are qualitatively new ways of being productive together. Each of these modes holds the promise of radically increased effectiveness for particular tasks.
For many involved in such initiatives, a big part of the motivation to spend so much time and effort solving problems is enjoyment of “productive fun”[5]. We posit that doing something rather than nothing about the tough problems out there is natural for most people, given the right opportunities to be part of the solution. Collaboration only happens with motivation, and making collaborative activities more fun is an easy and high-impact step to take.
Tools, modes, and motivations come together in the search for practical solutions, to help bridge the “ingenuity gaps”[6] our civilization faces. These gaps might be closed by a problem-solving infrastructure at levels ranging from making one’s own habits more effective to tackling planetary emergencies. While the consequences of failure can keep any thoughtful citizen awake at night, many are inspired by the idea that positive-sum interactions could be amplified on a global basis.
Peak oil: a Crude Awakening
Given the massive reliance of modern civilization on petroleum and the short time scale to find alternatives, managing the transition to a post-petroleum economy will require vast amounts of ingenuity.[7] Many citizen-led efforts are already underway, such as Energy Bulletin (“a clearinghouse for current information regarding the peak in global energy supply”), Global Public Media (“public service broadcasting for a post-carbon world”), and World Without Oil (a game inviting participants to role-play potential effects of an oil shock).[8]
How do you start tackling a problem of this magnitude in your own neighborhood? Just start. Mark Tovey, one of the co-authors of this article, was instrumental in initiating “Crude Awakening”—a process spawned by the Environmental Advisory Committee for the City of Ottawa, Canada, seeking to develop solutions to impacts of peak oil at a local level, and to encourage other municipalities to start similar processes of their own.
The public forum process was simple but effective. Two local mayors and a city councilor spoke and underlined the message that the search for solutions was a joint effort in generating policy ideas by politicians and concerned citizens alike. The morning was then spent in professionally facilitated breakout groups of 10 to 12 people, each discussing likely regional impacts of peak oil.
Over lunch, while participants mingled and learned from each other and various organizations, their responses were analyzed to identify ten categories of impact. In the afternoon, ten more breakout groups worked on developing solutions in these ten impact areas. The results of this one-day process were written up, and made available to City Council and the public at large in a fifty page report containing many solutions[9]. An attempt was made to set up ten committees to meet regularly in person, but this foundered on the organizational challenges involved. How to carry on the conversation?
Tovey set up an open source idea generation facility, using the WhyNot engine created by Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres at Yale[10]. WhyNot invites users to contribute seed ideas motivated by the question “why not?”, as in “why not do it this way?” or “Why don’t we try this?” Other users can then comment, expand, or extend ideas, or even fund or build them. Since systems like this require seed content to be successful, the fifty pages of existing solutions were used to populate the WhyNot[11].
Along with identifying solutions for Ottawa, a meta-goal was to provide a replicable process which other cities could use; the Ottawa public forum spawned a similar process in London, Canada. Going forward, results from many cities could be merged in a WhyNot or similar facility. Given the many thousands of municipalities with the human resources to tackle these issues, having even a few cities or towns running parallel processes—and sharing best practices and outcomes with each other—will help scale solution processes up to the level required to tackle the peak oil problem as a whole.
This exercise suggested concrete morals for scaling up collaboration:
· A distributed process can decompose large problems into smaller ones.
· Moderation, facilitation, or some other structure that keeps people’s contributions constructive is crucial: the goal is to keep the discussion moving in a way which produces ever more results.
· To keep people motivated and happy, let them self-select their participation and contribution. Offer multiple modes of interaction (e.g. in-person, electronic forum, open source idea generation). Having only one mode is like bringing a hammer as your only tool in trying to solve a problem you don’t understand.
· Involve the stakeholders who make the decisions.
· Approach large problems in stages—get a handle on what’s going on, and then scale up.
· Social time is important, for food, bonding, and fortuitous interactions.
WorldChanging
WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.[12]
WorldChanging is an online magazine bringing the most useful tools, ideas, and inspiration for tackling the really tough problems to a mass audience. It has produced a book[13], won several awards, and has a readership in the hundreds of thousands, with a tiny paid editorial staff. Voluntary contributors (including both authors of this article) number several dozen worldwide.
Any organization which styles itself as “worldchanging” has lofty goals to live up to, and every member of the core team is aware of that. There have been many well-received articles published on the site: interviews with nanotechnology ethicists and ecological economists, pointers to effective tools and innovative organizations, reports on organic LEDs and open source in the developing world. What are some of the challenges to doing even better?
WorldChanging faces challenges to open collaboration within its core team, which inspire several principles:
Design as if time is a scarce resource—Many contributions are done on a voluntary basis. But interesting people also tend to be busy people, with demanding careers—finding time to write substantive, original articles is difficult, and all the more so when interviews or research are required.
Support group intelligence and memory—Motivating contributors, sharing ideas about editorial and content direction, collaborating, and having fun together is tough with contributors in three continents. While the core editorial staff is together most days, others have to rely on tools to keep in touch—mailing lists, conference calls, and crossing paths in far-flung corners of the globe amidst other travels. There is an ongoing exploration for better tools, like chats, databases, videoconferences, or collaborative editing. The barrier to making use of them is not so much money, as time for setup and participation.
Work hard at finding the right people—Bringing in a greater diversity of contributors, especially from the developing world and different demographics, is an ongoing challenge. Finding contributors who are talented in their own field of expertise, able to write well, willing to contribute for free, and motivated to tackle tough problems is not easy, especially for voluntary efforts where trust is crucial.
Every group needs to eat—Many online collaborative efforts seem relatively costless initially. But once they scale past a certain size, expenses are inevitable, for technical and especially human resources. It’s a challenge to sustainably finance a resource valued by thousands but available online for free.
WorldChanging also faces challenges relevant to other large collaborations:
Push the tool boundaries—Navigating the huge back catalog of many thousands of posts is a key usability constraint—there’s just so much there, and keyword/category search is not enough. Can collaborative filtering or tagging systems highlight posts the community has recommended? What about “learning paths” that take readers on a guided tour of the best posts in an area?
Connect people and opportunities—The vast majority of visitors read but do not make comments—but from the many comments that are received both on- and off-site, it’s clear that some very talented people are reading and enjoying the site. How could they be networked with communities of shared interests and high-quality projects, using few volunteer minutes?
Channel spare hours and minutes—Similarly, adding social components to WorldChanging could fulfill the need for social activity and play, while also producing useful “collaborative byproducts”. People enjoy their leisure activities, especially the ones that allow an experience of down-time—open source collaboration is competing with television, video games, science fiction, and a myriad of other not-to-be-underestimated competitors for time. What fun processes could realistically channel a talented reader’s “spare minutes”?
Move from talking to doing?—Knowing about good options is only one step toward making them a reality. To get a WorldChanging idea like solar cooking or LED lighting into widespread usage—and we mean adopted by millions of people—there is a whole innovation and production pipeline. At which points could a voluntary collaboration like WorldChanging accelerate that process?
The broader point is that having ideas is often easy, but doing them is hard. (Adding information technology and consumer products to developing nations is easy, but upgrading infrastructure and human or institutional capital is hard.) Is there a natural next step to take that extends the ease of generating information to implementing solutions?
Collaboration for the many
These two case studies have aimed to demonstrate open collaboration via practical examples. Such collaborations are made possible by the amplifying effect of good tools, and the enjoyment of working in small networks of enthusiastic, talented volunteers. Our goal is to suggest methods that are usable by any motivated citizen. No $1000-a-day consultants, no expensive equipment—just simple tools, some training, and willing partners.
Social tools can be tougher to master than technical ones. They include filtering contributions and contributors to separate the wheat from the chaff, building community and shared goals, motivating contributors to stay involved, linking smaller and larger efforts, and keeping the whole process productive.
The way in which the tools are used is itself critical, and different “collaboration modes” each have characteristic interaction topologies, scale of people involved, and best practices. As a working definition, a mode is a replicable combination of tools, customs, and social intelligence that enhances some desirable aspect of group effectiveness; an example would be the Open Space method for organically evolving engaging workshops[14]. One could think of modes as “social software”. Each mode encodes a set of interaction guidelines and problem-solving methods, and just like a word processor or spreadsheet, a particular mode can be applied in many different areas. So two people can use the same mode, or way of working (voice chat and a shared editor, say), to collaboratively edit code, write a paper, or workshop a play.[15]
As the number or participants increases, tools and modes alter, adapt, break, and are replaced. Challenges multiply in structuring open collaboration to accommodate increasing numbers of contributors. Opportunities concomitantly multiply for problem-solving and effective action. To help picture what mass collaboration means, we propose a conceptual tool: the Mass Collaboration Scale, a logarithmic scale indicating roughly what 1, 10, 100… people can accomplish with a concerted effort.
Mass Collaboration Scale
0 = self: make your life more effective, write a book
1 = a small team: found a startup venture, produce a play
2 = hundreds: politicians in governing political party, motion picture team
3 = thousands: operating systems, IPCC climate change report participants
4 = tens of thousands: Manhattan Project, major research university
5 = hundreds of thousands: Olympics, invading Iraq
6 = millions: Wikipedia, rebuilding Iraq