samples
A little taste of the great things folks are creating with Wagn:
Connectipedia: how a foundation grows wiser
In the 20+ years I have been working at nonprofits and with technology projects, I have never found more innovative, responsive, ethical and committed developers and project managers.
In 2006, Meyer Memorial Trust was facing a common problem. Several program officers had recently departed, and they realized that a lot of institutional knowledge was leaving with them. But instead of the common reaction – throwing up your hands and saying "so it goes" – they began thinking about ways to capture more of their team knowledge. The idea was not only to be prepared when team members move on, but to help team members be more effective together right away.
At that point the story begins to sound a bit like Goldilocks. They tried storing information in a relational database, but it was too tight – it didn't give them the flexibility to capture all the rich knowledge needed to make great grants. So then they tried a wiki, but it was too loose – they wanted to be able to query information like a database, and they didn't want to make their busy grant officers learn a bunch of weird syntax.
And then there was Wagn. Just right.
After using their Wagn website internally, they began to realize that much of the information they were gathering would be of great use to people outside of their foundation. So they decided to launch a public website that would also retain some private data visible only to Meyer staff. They named the site connectipedia.org and launched it in June, 2008. Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the original wiki, was in attendance and proclaimed:
Wagn lets you express fairly complex relationships in a way that's simple, but powerful. It's one of the freshest contributions to wiki since I coined the term.
Like all Wagn sites, connectipedia continues to evolve, and it underwent a major redesign in early 2012. The website now contains over 23,000 cards.
FortZED Energy Challenge: going green together
In 2007, the City of Fort Collins and Colorado State University rallied with a group of leading businesses and foundations around a bold goal: to create the world's largest net-zero energy district. Given all the aging homes in the district, they would need the community's help.
The resulting community outreach effort was entitled the FortZED Energy Challenge. They divided the district into territories, gave each territory an animal mascot (marmots, elk, black-footed ferrets...), and then set out to convince everyone of the benefits of more energy efficient (and thermally comforable) houses.
The task required an online hub, so they set up a Wagn website at fortzedchallenge.com to:
- gather pledges to reduce home energy
- organize energy-themed events
- recruit "Rangers" to spread the word
- send out targetted emails to everyone in a territory, all Rangers, etc.
- gather and share energy resources
- help the community share success stories
Not only did the community make great use of the website; they also helped to build it. Community members were invited to monthly "Wagneering" meetups where they could learn more about the tool and help expand its functionality.
California Air Resources Board: from concept to reality
To address the air pollution challenges of the most populous state in the US, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) has to manage knowledge well. Atmospheric science and clean air technology are heady stuff, and the board manages the intersection between the two.
Each year the board fields new research concept submissions, which must then be assessed by multiple reviewers to determine how best to allocate resources towards achieving cleaner air. With their Wagn website at arb.researchplanning.wagn.org they have now automated their concept submission process.
ARB Staff then privately use the same Wagn site to review the concepts, record reactions, assign scores, and generate reports. With relatively minimal Wagn configuration, the board was able to create a powerful, effective team tool that not only made their lives easier, but also simplified the submission process for those presenting new research concepts.