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DialogueMappingMap

Goal - make meetings more productive

Question - How can meetings become more productive?

  • Answer - Use DialogueMapping
    • Pro - Extends short term memory of group
    • Pro - Records the discussion
    • Pro - Makes points more accessible
    • Con - Takes time and effort of facilitator

Q - Who started this?

  • A - Hoerst Rittel, a Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley

Q - What is the history?

  • A - The Issue Based Information System (IBIS) ran on Apple ][s.
  • A - It was an early hypertext system.
  • A - Then gIBIS was developed as a graphical version.
  • A - Then QuestMap commercialized it.
  • A - Now CompendiumInstitute offers Compendium for free.
  • A - I use this indented outline form to get max info on page.

Q - Where can I learn more?

Q - What to use for shared display?

  • A - Flip chart, tape full pages to wall.
  • A - Laptop driven projector to big screen.

Q - What goes on the dialogue map?

  • A - Goals, questions, answers, pros, cons
  • A - Plus references, links, footnotes*
  • A - Extend as needed, but check that it still works for you

Q - What rules govern the placement of these elements?

  • A - Questions (and refs and links and footnotes) go anywhere
  • A - Answers are tied to a question
    • Q - Only one? Why? 
      A - For one answer to two questions, pros and cons may differ
  • A - Pros and cons are tied to one answer

Q - Why are there so few pros and cons here?

  • A - With only one discussant, few answers needed attack or defense

Q - How can the questions be tied to their goals?

  • A - Goals could be named and some names could be listed on each Q.

Q - How else could you use dialogue mapping?

  • A - You could map an essay or a field of study

Footnotes:

  • Q - So what do you play footnotes on?
    • A - Why a shoehorn of course.

List of main questions addressed here: (auto construct?)(click to see?)

  • Q - How can meetings become more productive?
  • Q - Who started this?
  • Q - What is the history?
  • Q - Where can I learn more?
  • Q - What to use for shared display?
  • Q - What goes on the dialogue map?
  • Q - What rules govern the placement of these elements?
  • Q - Why are there so few pros and cons here?
  • Q - How can the questions be tied to their goals?
  • Q - How else could you use dialogue mapping?

FormattingBug: Funny look for indented stuff after "Only one? Why?"

Derivation:

  • This map was constructed from the following text copied from DialogueMapping.
We can make multi-viewpoint meetings work better by building a shared display with minimal structure to enhance the short term memory of the participants and to record the discussion in a way that is easy to review and understand. This idea began with an architecture professor and his early hypertext system called IBIS, the Issue Based Information System. QuestMap was a commercial product in that space. The latest tool is freely available from the CompendiumInstitute and looks like a sort of mind-map builder.

I nitpicked for the author a related book called "Dialogue Mapping". This shows how to employ any such tool to enhance the results of such a meeting. The facilitator needs to understand the topics enough to include a few words to record each point made by someone in the meeting and put it into the shared display. Even a flip chart with pages ripped off when filled and taped to the wall will do for a shared display. Nicer might be a laptop screen projected on a big visible screen. I prefer an indented (outline form) text document since that allows the most content on the screen at one time.

The minimal structure is that we have some listed goals and identified questions intended to elicit (multiple) answers and (multiple) pros and cons for each answer to each question. With just that much, it can be pretty clear where to insert any point made by any participant. New questions can go anywhere, but Answers must connect to one question and Pros and Cons must connect to one answer. If the same answer is applied to two questions, the pros and cons may differ. there may be a good way to tie the questions to the goals they are intended to address but I have not worked that out yet.

One possibly interesting task is to take any discussion or essay and reform it into these questions, answers, pros, cons, references, footnotes etc. This puts many things in a useful perspective and even suggests, semi-automatically, where the discussion can be extended. To start such an effort, simply insert a new link into the page to be reformed which uses the name of that page extended with "Map".

Step two could be to copy the entire text of the old page onto the new one. Step three could be to extract a question into the front of the new page in some appropriate form. These steps are another example of what I call ExtremeIncrementalism.

See DialogueMappingMap.

DickKarpinski started this.

Updated: Thursday, August 17, 2006