A few days ago I posted a note on the Compendium Institute list announcing the public availability of a groupware-enabled version of Compendium (see extract of post below).  I've only gotten a few nibbles of interest, but I am incurably devoted to pushing an issue-based collaboration and information tool forward, and for now this version 1.6 of Compendium is what we've got.  Trouble is, I'm swamped with other stuff, and in any case don't have all the skills needed to do the required technical support.

So I'm looking for someone who ideally fits the following description to do some part-time work for me:

1. Has worked with MySQL and other databases and is comfortable installing and configuring MySQL in a network environment.

2. Knows Compendium inside out.

3. Has excellent social skills and can work directly with CogNexus clients and prospects helping them over the various technical hurdles in getting a networked version of Compendium set up.

4. Has the skills and tools to document the process of installing and configuring a networked Compendium/MySQL installation.

5. Shares my vision and naive enthusiasm that even a funky version of Compendium on a shared database is better than anything else out there, hands down, and paves the way for the next Killer App.

Let me know by private response if this is you and we'll talk, OK?

Jeff

Extract from my post on the Compendium Institute Yahoo list:

For more than a year CogNexus Institute has been working with a major client, Southern California Edison, to develop a version of Compendium that could serve their needs for collaborative issue-based information sharing.  The result is Compendium 1.6 v28g which is currently in daily use by its 25 users.    Many of the shortcomings of the 1.5 and Alpha releases have been fixed, including:

1. Vastly improved performance.  There are many places in the v1.5 code (created long before Michelle got her hands on it) that are amazingly inefficient; for example, typing a single character in a node label involves 6 to 8 database operations!  We spent many months cleaning up the worst parts of that code and the 1.6 version is very fast ... fast enough even to perform reasonably well when accessing a MySQL database over the Internet.  This is not the flash/flex interface that Jack mentioned (that still needs to be done), but it does mean that not only LAN users but also globally distributed participants can now share a Compendium project over the Internet.  It's not perfect, but we do finally have real-time simultaneous access to a common database.

2. Improved database updating.  Users working in the same map at the same time can see the changes being made by others within a few seconds, depending on their Data Refresh settings.  The improvements include sensing when an open map has been changed, and how those changes are integrated into the version of the map in memory.

3. Improved User Manager.  It's now quite painless to maintain a large number of user accounts (though there are some tricks to making new account creating easier).

4. Multi-user File Sharing.  A Compendium administrator can designate a shared folder into which all users' drag-n-drop operations place the reference file.  (This feature alone is a huge hit for my clients because it creates a flexible, annotated document sharing capability.)

5. C-mail.  The current "Drop in Inbox of ..." command is called "C-mail" in v1.6 and is more fully featured.  A user can 'send' C-mail to any number of recipient users, adding a text comment explaining the purpose of the C-mail 'link'.  That C-mail is not only placed in all of the recipients' Compendium Inboxes but is also placed into a new (regular) email message in the user's email client ... all the user needs to do is click "Send" and the recipients are sent a "Compendium Inbox Notice" email.  (This is very important in building a critical mass of regular Compendium use.)

There are lots of other improvements, and there is still lots of room for improvement, but as someone who now makes his living supporting networked Compendium users over the Internet, I can testify that v1.6 is can now support industrial strength issue mapping and information sharing. 

Virtually all the of the v1.6 improvements have been (and will be) rolled into the coming v2.0 release from the Open University, and you might prefer to wait until that version comes out.  But let me know if you're interested in trying out v1.6 (it's free, of course), and I'll help you get set up.  If there's enough interest I'll see if we can work out a way to make 1.6 available more widely.

Getting the capability in Compendium is a dream I've had since Compendium's predecessor, QuestMap, disappeared beneath the waves over a decade ago.  But my real interest is not so much in the technical infrastructure as in the "social infrastructure" of creating a community of users within an organization who have the software, issue mapping, map management, and collaborative skills that they can collaboratively tackle wicked problems together, synchronously or asynchronously as the situation demands.

Dr. Jeff Conklin
CogNexus Institute ... Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems
http://cognexus.org   Phone: +1-707-256-3425  Fax: +1-707-256-3903
1037 Juarez St., Napa, CA  94559    USA