Global Sensemaking (GSm) is a group of people dedicated to helping humanity address complex, interrelated global problems—such as climate change, energy policy, poverty, and food security—by developing and applying new web-based technology to assist collaborative decision making and cooperative problem solving.

We began to coalesce as group in the Spring of 2008, with some of us working towards something we dubbed ESSENCE as a large-scale, collective intelligence event around the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Climate Change continues to be a particular topic of concern, but this network is far broader in its interests.

We are from all walks of life: professors, scientists, software engineers, politicians, parents, grandparents, public health professionals, business people, students, film-makers, .... If our charter (below) appeals to you, please join us.

DebateGraph is collaborating with the Planet Under Pressure 2012 conference team to weave together the arguments, evidence and policy options discussed at the conference into a coherent, dynamic knowledge map that can be shared with, and explored by, a global public audience in the build up to the UN Rio +20 conference and beyond.

You can explore the current work-in-progress in the map embedded below, and open the full map here to see the detailed underlying text, add new ideas and citations, rate the significance of the different options and arguments, zoom into specific issues and zoom out see clusters of ideas, and be alerted to changes as the content and structure of the map continue to evolve.

You can learn more about the meaning of the different colours and arrows and the different ways of looking at the map in the Help system here, and help to disseminate the ideas globally by sharing the link via social networks and embedding the map (like a YouTube video) in your own website.

This is a voluntary, collaborative endeavour to create a unique public resource at a critical time – and if you would like learn more about the process, join the mapping team (from anywhere in the world), or support or sponsor the process in any other way, please get in touch.

Open map full screen

GSm Charter (v1.0)

Mission Statement

To enhance the ability of people worldwide to collaborate on solving global wicked problems.

Vision

Humanity faces an emerging mess of global challenges (often called wicked problems) — such as, climate change, poverty, peak oil, population pressure, water shortages, declining biodiversity, and failing food supply — that are the product of patterns of thinking and behavior that no longer make sense. We need new tools of thought if we are to adapt to the scale and complexity of these challenges; tools that augment individual intelligence with the structured insights of many minds. We are building those tools.

Mantra

Start making sense.

Strategy

To realize our vision, we are creating a web portal, developing open source software, and fostering international standards to create a scalable, collaborative, deliberative, and global discourse environment (e.g. web-based global sensemaking platforms) for addressing the most pressing problems of our time.

* GSm Portal: a website dedicated to bridging the gap between people, organizations, and tools engaged in global sensemaking.

* GSm Software: envisioning and building the tools and glue required to enable global sensemaking.

* GSm Standards: working with international standards bodies to define a set of interfaces to support interoperability between global sensemaking tools.

Beginning as an all-volunteer group, we are open to spawning nonprofit and commercial initiatives that advance our vision. The products of our collaboration are issued under open source licenses or otherwise made freely available to all.

Ethos

We adhere to the principles of appreciative inquiry and nonviolent communication—striving to enhance enhance life in word and deed.

Membership

Anyone who agrees with and upholds this charter may become, and remain, a member of the group.

Organization

We are guided at the outset by a voluntary steering committee currently consisting of: Mark Aakhus, Mark Klein, Simon Buckingham Shum, George E. Mobus, Jack Park, David Price, Andy Streich, Jeff Conklin, and Mark Szpakowski. Further volunteers are welcome.

An introduction to the freely available Cohere software. Publish your ideas, weave webs of meaningful connections between ideas and discover new ideas and people.

A high resolution version of the video is available here, and for more Cohere videos: click here.

Find more videos like this on Global Sensemaking

GSm member George Mobus posted an excellent seed topic map on the Forum here, which we have converted into Debategraph so that it's open to editing and further development by the group: