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, and, as our first collaborative project, are building towards the ESSENCE event—a unique, large-scale, collective intelligence event designed to inform the national and global policy choices made at United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

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.

Readers of the UK national newspaper The Independent are joining members of the Global Sensemaking community in contributing to one of the ESSENCE projects now underway:

The map (above) is still in the early stages of development; however, it has already benefited from significant input from, among others, Mark Klein at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, and the debates at the IQ2 Green Festival on Climate Change held at the Royal Geographical Society at the end of January.

If you'd like to help the project build you are welcome to embed the map on your own site (joining, amongst others, Globo TV, Grist, and Hot Topic).

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.

You can also follow and participate in the GSm project via our group wiki...

...and our group blog:

If you would like to contribute to the GSm blog, please contact Andy.

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: