Dialogue Mapping Webinar

This afternoon I took part in a dialogue mapping webinar which was fun though there was not a whole lot of new content. The things I found most interesting are as follows:

1. The idea that Dialogue mapping is there to essentially give context to the comments that are made by members of a discussion that do not really address the issue at hand but that are still relevant.
2. There fact that are tools which supposedly can be used to do collaborative mapping tasks - multi input mapping.

During the discussion I also came to think that making text chat based compendium tools would be good. I still really think that doing the tool set web enabled is really important but I think by adding various key features the value could improve greatly. The things I would want to see are:

1. In browser audio and video sharing 
2. Text (im) centric map creation, with things like text bubble drag and drop for mapping
3. Auto map optimisation software. ( I really think very few people do this well. And it would make a world of difference to the users)
4. Import export of data from compendium and others.
5. Retro-processing data and offering assistance in extracting a good map from any external or old data source. 
6. Keeping track of chronological data as well as issue based data as I think chronology is often overlooked in this kind of work. Perhaps even letting this inform the way maps render to some degree, to connote the flow of relevance in the conversation that lead to a given map.
7. Building of rich and mixed model data systems. For instance, easily incorporate another dynamic data from the Internet and allow piping via connections in Compendium. 
8. Use pain biased windowing, instead of the very wasteful window object model. 

So yeah. I hope that happens. If it does not I might just have to start a company to do it :-) Comments on what to put in such a thing would be really liked.

In other news, this whole thing being a webinar and all was interesting. I really think better remote meeting systems are a big part of the next frontier. 

Update: I now have a link to the complete webinar map series. Check it out if you are interested in this kind of thing. I think the Conversational versus Issue Based Structure.ppt offers some good insight for people who are really new this kind of mapping.