Hello all,

Jeff asked me to send a short description of a cool technique you can use
(actually you can't use it quite yet, but will be able to in a short while
when Compendium 1.3 is available for download).

When people have seen Compendium for the first time, they've often asked if
there was a way that several people at once could type contributions to a
map, similar to other group support systems. Up 'til now, there hasn't been
a way to do this, and true multi-user Compendium is still a ways off.

However there is a very effective, fast, and fun, "poor man's" way to do
this that we realized just yesterday, Using Instant Messaging software, as
many people as you want can send contributions to the person who's running
the map. They can drag the individual messages off of their IM window right
onto the Compendium map, where they instantly become nodes. All the
map-minder needs to do is arrange the nodes on the page and link them
appropriately (changing node types if desired).

We've now tried this both in a face-to-face meeting (where the two
contributors each had laptops but we were all close enough to see the
map-minder's screen), and on a phone teleconference, where everyone could
see the map with web-meeting software (e.g. Webex, NetMeeting, Placeware,
etc.).

This is also a great way to make sure everything is being captured in a
meeting -- when the map-minder wants to say something, they don't have to
worry that it isn't being captured or that they will fall behind; someone
else can just keep up with IM.

To see a picture of the IM-to-Compendium drag and drop captured from a live
session, click on
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/selvin/examples/Compendium-IM-DnD.jpg. Note
that there are 4 people in the IM session, each of which made contributions
to the map (via the map-minder's dragging and dropping).

Al

Note: We've done this with MSN IM which supports drag-and-drop, we haven't
tried it yet with other IM software.
Compendium 1.3 has loads of other cool new features, including lots more
drag and drop, but I won't spoil all the surprises :-)