Alternatives to IdeaScale

[Bill Bushey]

Hi Everybody,

Historically we've used IdeaScale for large events to solicit project ideas, and I'm interested in experimenting with other ways to do this. Some recommendations for alternatives I've gotten from the CfA network include:

• http://mindmixer.com/
• http://www.reddit.com/
• https://www.uservoice.com/
• http://www.telesc.pe/
• http://www.groupmap.com/

Does anybody have experience with any of these tools for brainstorming and idea development? Or can anybody suggest any other tools?

-Bill

[Alison Link]

Hmm...I know we had a homebrewed IdeaScale-like system that was cooked up for our Campus Codefest at the U.  It's a Rails app, I believe.  Here's a look at last year's archive: http://umn.campuscodefest.org/events/6-campus-codefest-2014

I've been hoping to find an excuse to look at a little more closely, and am happy to connect with the group who built it at the U to get some better background.  I think they'd be happy to have folks hack at it more and use it in broader contexts!

Alison

[Kurtis Hanna]

Here's a few Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) collaborative online
decision making tools for you to check out as well:

https://www.loomio.org/
https://agoravoting.com/
http://liquidfeedback.org/

Cordially,
Kurtis

On Wed, 11 Mar 2015 21:41:45 -0700 (PDT)
Alison Link <link...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hmm...I know we had a homebrewed IdeaScale-like system that was
> cooked up for our Campus Codefest at the U. It's a Rails app, I
> believe. Here's a look at last year's archive:
> http://umn.campuscodefest.org/events/6-campus-codefest-2014
>
> I've been hoping to find an excuse to look at a little more closely,
> and am happy to connect with the group who built it at the U to get
> some better background. I think they'd be happy to have folks hack
> at it more and use it in broader contexts!
>
> Alison
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 8:17:11 PM UTC-5, Bill Bushey wrote:
> >
> > Hi Everybody,
> >
> > Historically we've used IdeaScale for large events to solicit
> > project ideas, and I'm interested in experimenting with other ways
> > to do this. Some recommendations for alternatives I've gotten from
> > the CfA network include:
> >

> > - http://mindmixer.com/
> > - http://www.reddit.com/
> > - https://www.uservoice.com/
> > - http://www.telesc.pe/
> > - http://www.groupmap.com/

[David Skarjune]

https://trello.com uses cards and boards and is free to use for brainstorming and project management,

David Skarjune
Word & Image
www.wordimage.com
Content Publishing

612-516-5303

@Skarjune

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[Kurtis Hanna]

Trello is free as in beer but it is not free as in respecting user's freedom. Luckily, there are Free and Open Source Software alternatives, such as http://libreboard.com/

On Thu, 12 Mar 2015 09:43:34 -0500
David Skarjune <david.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://trello.com uses cards and boards and is free to use for
> brainstorming and project management,
>
> David Skarjune
> Word & Image
> www.wordimage.com

> *Content Publishing*

> 612-516-5303
> @Skarjune
>
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 8:16 PM, Bill Bushey <wbu...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Everybody,
> >
> > Historically we've used IdeaScale for large events to solicit
> > project ideas, and I'm interested in experimenting with other ways
> > to do this. Some recommendations for alternatives I've gotten from
> > the CfA network include:
> >

> > - http://mindmixer.com/
> > - http://www.reddit.com/
> > - https://www.uservoice.com/
> > - http://www.telesc.pe/

> > - http://www.groupmap.com/

[david.skarjune]

Good point, to be clear Trello is a Fremium web service:
http://help.trello.com/article/718-how-much-does-trello-cost

I do support both OSS and Fremium software solutions on an Open Web. (I am a WordCamp Minneapolis organizer) No disrespect intended.

[Kurtis Hanna]

No disrespect taken. I personally choose FOSS whenever I can, but I'm
sure plenty of people on this ListServ appreciated your Fremium
software suggestion. I'm meeting Richard Stallman next week at
LibrePlanet, so I'm practicing my rhetoric in case I talk to him.

Peace & Blessings,
Kurtis

[Steven Clift]

Broader picture tools:
http://thegovlab.org/participatory-democracys-emerging-tools-2/

I think stand alone ideation disconnected from lists or awareness of existing projects or past hacakthon groups, limits our capacity to support ongoing efforts and to on-board new people and crucially new leaders on projects with ongoing potential.

[Kurtis Hanna]

I don't think I understand. Can you please rephrase this in a
different way?

[david.skarjune]

Kurtis, awesome for you! Stallman is one of my heroes, met him speaking at the U of MN years ago, and have supported the Free Software Foundation.

"Free as in Freedom"

[Bill Bushey]

Thanks for the suggestions everybody! Here's a list of all of the suggestions that have been mentioned so far (some we're mentioned off list or in links):

• http://mindmixer.com/
• http://www.reddit.com/
• https://www.uservoice.com/
• http://www.telesc.pe/
• http://www.groupmap.com/

• Ideagist
• UMN Campus Codefest platform

• https://www.loomio.org/
• https://agoravoting.com/
• http://liquidfeedback.org/

• https://trello.com
• http://libreboard.com/
• http://www.google.com/moderator/
• http://www.democracy21.info/
• https://www.opavote.org/
• http://democracyos.org/
• http://hypothes.is/
• Laddr
• Github Issues
• Geeklist/Hack4good
• Global Service Jam platform
• Jira
• Waffle.io
• LocalWiki
  

Steve brings up a really good point about stand alone ideation - soliciting ideas on a platform that is completely disconnected from previously mentioned ideas or existing projects. Sometimes stand alone ideation is useful, but I think OTC's experience shows it isn't the best solution for brainstorming and discussing project ideas. There's a curation problem (somebody has to manually move ideas suggested for hackathons into something, which so far has been http://opentwincities.org/projects/), a retrieval problem (http://opentwincities.org/projects/ is a mess to actually search), a discussion problem (you can't talk about ideas on http://opentwincities.org/projects/), a duplication problem (http://opentwincities.org/projects/ definitely has some ideas that should be merged - ideas that should have been suggested to users when they entered a duplicate idea), and a project problem (how does a team form around an idea on http://opentwincities.org/projects/, or how does an idea become a project)?

At the last meetup, we spent quite a while talking about project management tools - what OTC wants and needs in one. There's definitely overlap between what an ideation tool does and some of what a project management tool does (in fact, several of the items in the above list are project management tools). So for OTC, I'm inclined to think that whatever tool(s) we use for ideation should either be a project management tool, or should integration well with project management tools.

-Bill

[Chad Fennell]

On Sunday, March 15, 2015 at 2:59:33 PM UTC-5, wbushey wrote:

Steve brings up a really good point about stand alone ideation - soliciting ideas on a platform that is completely disconnected from previously mentioned ideas or existing projects. Sometimes stand alone ideation is useful, but I think OTC's experience shows it isn't the best solution for brainstorming and discussing project ideas. There's a curation problem (somebody has to manually move ideas suggested for hackathons into something, which so far has been http://opentwincities.org/projects/), a retrieval problem (http://opentwincities.org/projects/ is a mess to actually search), a discussion problem (you can't talk about ideas on http://opentwincities.org/projects/), a duplication problem (http://opentwincities.org/projects/ definitely has some ideas that should be merged - ideas that should have been suggested to users when they entered a duplicate idea), and a project problem (how does a team form around an idea on http://opentwincities.org/projects/, or how does an idea become a project)?

At the last meetup, we spent quite a while talking about project management tools - what OTC wants and needs in one. There's definitely overlap between what an ideation tool does and some of what a project management tool does (in fact, several of the items in the above list are project management tools). So for OTC, I'm inclined to think that whatever tool(s) we use for ideation should either be a project management tool, or should integration well with project management tools

I'm pretty late on this discussion, but I just stumbled across it.

The codefest app Alison mentioned does have the idea of a project backlog, which allows for projects to be migrated into a codefest event. e.g.:  http://ufoo.campuscodefest.org/projects.

The app could use some QA, design love, and overall polish...and perhaps does not meet all of the above requirements, but it is FLOSS and the primary author (David Peterson) is extremely open to collaboration: https://github.com/campuscodefest/ccf. You have a lot of great experience and concrete examples of needs to bring to the table. It would be nice if there were an opportunity to collaborate and raise all boats.

Regards,

-Chad