What if we had a FitBit or Fuel Band for large scale online community discussions and debates? Could we create a feedback loop for more efficient, inclusive, and creative online deliberation? Online communities have been playing an increasingly important role in supporting grassroots initiatives in the area of social innovation and sustainability. However, as such platforms go larger and larger, it is more and more difficult for community managers to ensure efficient debates among citizens, i.e. to ensure collective ideation, decision and action. https://medium.com/@leesean/a-fitness-tracker-for-online-communities-7b229c31f468 http://catalyst-fp7.eu/

1. A Fitness Tracker for
Online Communities?
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Collective Intelligence meets Wisdom Hackers

2. Online communities have been playing an
increasingly important role in supporting
grassroots initiatives in the area of social
innovation and sustainability.
!
However, as such platforms go larger and
larger, it is more and more difficult for
community managers to ensure efficient
debates among citizens.
Major community networks and leading
research institutes have teamed up to
tackle this issue with the support of the
European Commission’s research funding
programme.
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Over 2 years, through the CATALYST
project, they will develop and test
collective intelligence tools and make
them available, as open source solutions,
to any interested communities.
Meet Catalyst
Watch the "Meet the Catalyst Team" Video on YouTube

3. What is Collective Intelligence?
Collective intelligence is the ability of a
group of people to be collectively
smarter than the smartest individuals in
the group if they acted alone.
This has been happening for a very long
time in the natural world.
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The advent of the Internet however, has
allowed for collective intelligence to be
much more easily implemented, and is
allowing people from many different
regions and backgrounds to connect.
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Source: http://assembl.org/what-is-collective-intelligence/

4. Connecting Communities
Use cases planned in the short term should
demonstrate how CATALYST developments
can boost local initiatives in the area of
social innovation, increase awareness on
new sustainable lifestyles, support
eGovernance efforts of European cities and
even empower citizens and the civil society
in debating emerging issues for the new
European Constitution.

5. Help us test Catalyst
We have partnered with the Wisdom Hackers
community to test DebateHub, part of the
CATALYST suite of open source tools.
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Join us in a collective ideation, discussion, and
debate of ways to maintain the festival spirit in
everyday life, how to think outside the cubicle
and activate the thinking body, and much more.

6. DebateHub Visualizations

7. Comparing Communities with EdgeSense

8. Catalyst + CAPS
CATALYST addresses the CAPS domain.
CAPS are non-commercial, open Internet
platforms, connecting citizens to each
other (and to the “Internet of Things”
whenever necessary) and providing them
with a more effective way to:
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• Spontaneously adopt more sustainable
behaviours and lifestyles, based on better
information (extended awareness);
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• Contribute to a low-carbon economy, for
instance by lending, exchanging and
reusing goods at scale, across geographic
boundaries (collaborative consumption);
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• Get facts/evidence from citizens for better
decision making, at personal or
institutional levels (e.g. crowdmapping);
• Develop alternative collaborative
approaches to problem solving
(crowdsourcing, crowdfunding,
participatory design, collective
intelligence, collective decisions);
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• Actively engage, innovate and act,
individually or collectively, towards
societally, environmentally and
economically sustainable approaches and
solutions to tackle societal challenges:
growth and employment, environment,
climate change, health and education,
inclusive societies, wellbeing, etc.
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Source: http://caps2020.eu/

9. Catalyst Consortium Partners