Canada

WOW Process

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Your name: 
Lucila Spigelblatt
Your Comments: 
Dear Jason, I found Dotmocracy by accident!!!! while Googling for neat stuff to inspire a group of front-line staff working with people who have come to Canada from all over the world. I think they will find this process really appealing and different. It trascends language and cultural barriers. I will direct them to your website; will fully credit you as author and will not modify your material in any manner. I just want to spread the word. Many thanks for sharing it so freely. all of us work for non-profit agencies.
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BikeCamp TO

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Summary: 
BikeCamp TO was a one day unconference hosted by the Toronto Cyclist Union. The event used an Open Space approach. At the end of various workshops participants generated ideas for actions that were then dotted.
Date / Time: 
October 17th 2009
Discussing Dotmocracy Results
Name of Facilitator(s): 
Jason Diceman, Daniel Rose
Total number of ideas dotted: 
64
Number of participants: 
50
Preamble: 
At the beginning of the Open Space process, participants were asked to consider "What practical actions should we do together to make a lasting positive impact on bike culture & infrastructure in Toronto?" Posted on the wall: At approximately 3:30pm today, we will review the results of the Dotmocracy process and suggest the formation of a number of break-out Action Sessions that will each create a draft plan to turn the popularly supported ideas in to reality. The results of this Dotmocracy process will be published on the www.BikeUnion.to website within two weeks following the event.
Details: 
DB

Dotmocracy works for Calgary Transit community feedback

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Your name: 
Jen Malzer
Your Comments: 
Calgary Transit used Dotmocracy sheets to understand community members’ priorities for station improvements at a key LRT station. It proved to be a great hands-on tool where community members generated and ranked their own ideas. The sheets allowed everyone to participate and in a relatively short period of time, and the participants felt this meeting was their best so far.
Your website: 
http://calgary.ca
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ChangeCamp Toronto 2009

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Summary: 
At the first ChangeCamp in Toronto we invited participants to write and dot ideas for "next steps" during the closing plenary. Although Dotmocracy was not the focus, some very popular ideas were recognized in about 20 minutes.
Date / Time: 
January 24th 2009
Name of Facilitator(s): 
Jason Diceman, Daniel Rose
Total number of ideas dotted: 
10
Number of participants: 
60
Preamble: 
Daniel briefly invited the participants to grab a sheet and write an idea for "next steps" for the ChangeCamp community. The sheets were provided on cardboard clipboards with pens attached. Participants were instructed to put their one dot, sign and pass it on.
Details: 

The idea of using Dotmocracy was a last minute suggestion that Daniel Rose, the ChangeCamp facilitator was happy to try out.   The focus during this 20 minute closing plenary was on getting people to speak on ideas for "next steps".  Participants  Many of the participants had wifi laptops and PDAs and prefered to record their ideas via Twitter, blog or wiki.  That said, 10 ideas were drafted and many if not most of the participants who were handed a sheet, did dot it.  Some people forgot to sign, and thus some of the sheets have more dots than signatures.

The top 5 agreed ideas were:

  1. "Getting Gov staffers together w/ social innovators, tech folks, etc..."

  2. 'Tools for conversation with government should be in multiple languages'

  3. 'Government departments should provide raw data...'

  4. 'A continental exchange between Canadian and Brazilian ChangeCamps...'

  5. "Run a 'Code for Canada' contest for open gov't applications"

View scans of all the results in detail on Flickr

 

Learnings: 

Through out the conference I had invited people to use the Dotmocracy sheets during their sessions.  While only one of th approximately 30 groups bothered to try (and they were too small, I did hear back from other participants that "we could have used your sheets in our session".  As no surprise, it is once again obvious that if there is no buy-in and facilitation for using a Dotmocracy process by a group leader, then the group is not likely to use it. As well group leaders are not likely to try something new without some practice before hand.

The passing of clipboards during the closing plenary did work ok because the lead facilitator announced and supported the process.  Take-up for writing new ideas was slow, I'd guess because:

  1. Participants were burnt out from 8 hours of workshops.
  2. Many participants were posting ideas via Twitter and the event wiki.
  3. People were not bursting with ideas for "Next Steps". Very few people were interested in speaking orally to the question either.

But still once some ideas were written particpant did dot and pass while listening to the plenary. So the model can work.

In the future, I'd collect ideas for dotting through out the day, conducting dotting in the mid afternoon and just announce results in the closing plenary when people are tired.

Public contact information: 

www.jasondiceman.ca

www.changecamp.ca

Works great

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Your name: 
Gerard Murphy
Your Comments: 
I inadvertently discovered the dotmocracy posters in the spring as I was preparing to facilitate a session - and since then have used them with 3-4 different groups, e.g a) university faculty as they explored creative ways to partner with their external community and b) stakeholders interested in planning for diversity and social inclusion in a regional health authority. I love the fact that they 'force' folks to actually stop and weigh in on each individual item - different than typical dotmocracy processes. I'm quite kinesthetic and the idea of moving folks around the room to stop at each poster was very appealing! And the opportunity to build in a SWOT analysis is perfect. Participants have reacted very positively to the dotmocracy posters - I blow them up to 11" x 17" in size and they become very visual and easy to work with. An excellent toll to support a democratic decision making process.
Your website: 
http://www.trybarefoot.com
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Working with communities and larger groups.

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Your name: 
Linda Hill
Your Comments: 
Thanks Jason for sharing the Dotmocracy Handbook. I am a College professor and teach community development to social service students and community workers. I find your handobook to be a useful and practical 'how to' resource. It clearly explains dotmocracy as a tool for working with communities and larger groups. We do our own dotmocracy process in class and it always works beautifully enabling everyone to have a voice. I really love your handbook. I think it is an EXCELLENT resource and I tell people far and wide about it. -- Linda Hill, Professor & Coordinator, Social Service Worker Program, Humber College, School of Social and Community Services.
Your website: 
-
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Putting party guests to work!

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Your name: 
Amy Stein
Your Comments: 
A dotmocracy exercise worked well at my office last month. We were trying to pick a new tag line, and we put 7 different suggestions on the walls around the room at the Xmas open house. We laughed about it being the opposite of an ice breaker (asking people to face the walls for a solo thinking exercise) but about 20 of the guests participated â???? some were highly engaged and wrote in new suggestions. The outcome was very informative, effectively ruling out several contenders that would have been a mistake. The results were surprisingly unambiguous (to the extent that it did make me wonder if later voters were falling into "group think").
Your e-mail address: 
-
Your website: 
-
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Dotmocracy in the proofing process

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Your name: 
Adam Hess
Your Comments: 
Hi, We recently used your dotmocracy handbook to conduct an all-staff review of our strategy for public engagement. The tool was used to review isolated sections of a draft strategy and to gather, in principle, agreement from all staff on the sections in their draft form before continuing with the polishing and wordsmithing. The feedback we received from staff was very positive; participants found the dotmocracy tool useful in building consensus while also giving them some room to provide feedback. Instead of using the conventional process of <create draft>-<circulate link>-<Track Changes in MS Word> we are circulating something much closer to final...people are encouraged to make additional feedback and feel that they were inculded in the strategy's development without having to have gone to every meeting, or made comments in the document itself.
Your website: 
www.vsocan.org
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Professional Writers Association of Canada, National Conference 2007

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Summary: 

We used dotmocracy tools to complete a strategic planning exercise we had begun with an online survey prior to the conference. The sheets allowed us to focus the room's attention on 8 key ideas for the association, and to come to agreement on how to prioritize that list.

Date / Time: 
May 25, 2007 -- 2 hour session, plus pre-survey
Name of Facilitator(s): 
John Degen, Executive Director
Total number of ideas dotted: 
8
Number of participants: 
80
Details: 

See photos from the even here...

http://flickr.com/photos/8616187@N04/524894926/

 

Public contact information: 

http://www.pwac.ca
info at pwac.ca

writers planning strategically

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Your name: 
John Degen, Executive Director of the Professional Writers Association of Canada
Your Comments: 
We used the dotmocracy tools for association strategic planning at our recent conference in Vancouver. We worked with 8 key ideas for PWAC priorities, previously identified through an online survey, and had a great response from the close to 80 people in the room. Your system lends itself to such simple tabulation of the room's overall preferences. We were able to get the full results of the "voting" back to participants and to our wider membership the day after we returned from the conference. We now have a fully, democratically prioritized list of "PWAC should" suggestions for our Board to consider. It is an incredibly effective tool for us, and we'll be using it again.
Your website: 
http://www.pwac.ca
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