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Who is Cairns?
Principal Investigator:
Beth Simone Noveck, Democracy Design Workshop, New York Law School
Lead Technologists:
Tom Igoe and Dan O’Sullivan, New York University, Interactive Telecom Program
Lead Designer:
Patrick Dwyer
Director of Research & Communications:
Alexandra Samuel, Harvard University
Project Manager:
Chun Li, New York Law School
Cairns Graphic Design:
Pablo Aguero • Geraldine Chung •Janey Lee
Short Description: Cairns is a web-based tool designed to connect people interested
in finding collaborative and participatory ways of working.
What Problem Does It Solve?: It overcomes barriers to engaging in collective action.
How Does It Do That?: This open source too captures information about the way
groups work together. Like a map, its unique visual interface allows participants
to see what others are doing and to find and communicate with a community of practice.
It also helps match those 'doing collaboration' to those studying
and documenting participatory practices.
Why Is It Different?: Cairns is the first knowledge management tool to use visual
interfaces to connect the community of collaborative practice.
Who Will Use It?: All groups engaged in collaborative or participatory ways of
working and all those wishing to find people, methods, tools and groups working
in collaborative and participatory ways.
Implementations: Pilot implementations include groups working in:
- Labor organizing
- Deliberation and dialogue
- Democratic and E-democratic organizing
- Citizen participation and consultation
- Political activism
Other Potential Uses: While Cairns is currently being implemented to build and
connect those interested in collective action, the software is a visual knowledge
management tool that can be re-purposed to connect any knowledge network.
More Detailed Description: Cairns is based on a 'taxonomy' of questions
about the goals, organizational structure, tools, methods and output of a group.
By answering these questions, participants 'build a cairn' to describe
their own work, rather than relying on third-parties to do so. Users of the software
can search the Cairns by navigating a visual map of the 'Cairnspace'
and seeing other related projects. At every Cairn, users can add comments or create
a weblog to create the conversation and build the community.
People can use the Cairns software in order to:
- Find people and projects in engaged in related endeavors
- Share best practices for collective action
- Publicize information about the way a group or project worked
- Get ideas for how to work within a group to make a decision or solve a
problem
- Discover ways to use new tools and technologies to do group work
- Learn about methods for engaging in collective action
- Communicate with people with common problems
Lead Designer: Beth Simone Noveck
Sponsors: Cairns is sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Council of
Europe, AmericaSpeaks and the New York Law School Institute for Information Law
and Policy.
For More Information, see the Cairns Project Web Site: http://www.nyls.edu/cairns
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