How often do you have to collaborate with others to think through a new or existing idea? Exploratree was designed to rapidly facilitate the idea iteration process. It’s essentially an interactive mind mapping tool with a few twists.

Using Flash as the engine, Exploratree allows users to create what they call “Thinking Guides” - tools or frameworks for thinking through an issue and considering different aspects or perspectives that can be useful for helping to develop thinking skills. You can use one of their 23 ready-made templates or simply work from a blank canvas to develop your own to add images, text, and shapes that help you develop and evolve your thoughts.

While the application was originally designed as part of the Enquiring Minds project - a three-year research and development program that is run by Futurelab and funded by Microsoft - working alongside teachers and students in two UK secondary schools the project to develop a distinctive approach to teaching and learning that takes the knowledge, ideas, interests and skills that students bring into schools more seriously and enables young people to take more responsibility for the content, processes, and outcomes of their learning, it is now available for more general use.

By using the power and functionality of the application you can create your document and then send it to a friend or group of friends for review/comment, or allow them to log-in to your Thinking Guide to edit and save changes.

I see a lot of relevance and applicability for this application, and others like it, in connecting distributed work teams and allowing them to rapidly iterate through ideas and projects they are working on/through. I can also see a lot of value in using it alone because it’s simplicity and ease of use allows a user to focus the creation or elaboration of an idea or brainstorm as opposed to being focused on the technology used to facilitate the ideation or brainstorming process. In other words it does what it’s supposed to without getting in your way.

If you are a visual thinking (like I am) who is looking for a light weight, web based tool that is feature rich but very easy to use for collaborating or brainstorming, I’d say that Exploratree is worth taking a look at. No download is required. You can try it without registering, or sign up to the service to get your work saved online, all for free. Exploratree: http://www.exploratree.org.uk

After seeing a number of other association-related bloggers reference Dave Gammel’s posting on the 4 Levels of Engagement in the Blogosphere, and then coming across a link to Dave’s site on Ben Martins blog, I decided that I needed to check it out for myself.

Dave suggested model runs the gammut from the lowest level, or those who I would refer to as the digitally disconnected (Level 0), to his highest level, or those that I could be fittingly called the digitally empowered (Level 3). It’s an interesting model and quite similar in many ways to the 4 Levels of Learning / Conscious Competence Learning Model. In this model an individual learning or acquiring a new skill will generally pass through four levels:

• Unconscious incompetence: You don’t know what you don’t know. The individual neither understands or knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit or has a desire to address it.
• Conscious incompetence: You know what you don’t know. Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.
• Conscious competence: The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.
• Unconscious competence: The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes “second nature” and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she can also teach it to others.

Notice the similarities? I think it’s a great way to conceptualize the levels of engagement. Anyway, the obvious extension of this is to ask what it means to organizations and associations in general and how can we use the information to help folks mature through the model? After all, folks at the lowest two levels are either unaware of all of the great things your association is doing (at least online) and even if they are at level 1, they aren’t letting you know how to service them more effectively, sharing ideas, helping your association grow or improve. In fact they aren’t telling you much of anything.

I would say that your goals is to actively target and engage these folks in a dialouge, make them feel welcome and try to help them move into the 2nd and 3rd levels, at least if you want to engage and retain them regardless of whether they are customers, members or employees.