ESSENCE09 Workshop

The ESSENCE challenge

ESSENCE is the first public event organised by Global Sensemaking (GSm), a network formed in 2008 to develop human-centred computing tools to help tackle wicked problems such as Climate Change.
The overall idea behind the project is that digital discussion and deliberation technologies have the potential to provide a structured medium for building collective intelligence from diverse stakeholders, who often disagree.
Within this context the ESSENCE online experiment has been conceived with the overall goal to improve how climate science and policy deliberation is conducted, in local networks, national organizations, and inter-governmentally.
In particular, ESSENCE has been designed to develop a comprehensive, distilled, visual map of the issues, evidence, arguments and options facing the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), and being tackled by many other networks, which will be available for all to explore and enrich across the web.

Research

Within the ESSENCE project we study and develop technologies for online discussion and deliberation, with the overall goal in mind to help to build online environments for:
•    scientists to explore and discover common grounds and agendas in a very complex and extensive domain as environmental science is;
•    policymakers to identify problematic issues to be faced in order to reinforce public policies and make them more accepted or even agreed;
•    the Public to widen or build understanding on climate change issues and consensus about new climate change policies.

Outcomes

The workshop seeks to develop a roadmap for ESSENCE to COP15.  We will also discuss strategies for further research lines and challenge to address for the ESSENCE team/GSm community.

Organizing Committee

Simon Buckingham Shum (KMi, Open University)
Anna De Liddo, (KMi, Open University)
Aldo De Moor (CommunitySense)
David Price (Debategraph)

The full program can be found here.