There are many different reasons to get involved

• Participating in the program will be a stimulating experience. Writing and posting concrete solutions to challenging public problems is only the beginning of an exciting opportunity to share important positive and proactive ideas and get direct responses to them. This can be really productive for thousands of thoughtful people, who have good ideas but rarely get them heard and responded to by interested and interesting others. The flow of suggestions, questions, and other input can help develop new ideas and convert them into workable proposals. Interacting around innovative thoughts can develop into a network of ongoing relationships with people who share common, very important concerns.
• Time and effort commitments are flexible. There will be many ways to participate in the Activist Solutions projects, each of which will provide very different kinds of experiences, challenges, and rewards, and each will require very different commitments of time and effort.

  Once it launches, the Dialogue Network for Action (DNA) will require a significant time and effort pledge. As a result, it will probably attract a relatively small number of self-selected people who are exceptionally motivated. However, only a small number of capable people are needed to make the DNA project work.

  Other ways to participate will require much more flexible commitments. Participants in the Solution Exchange can spend a lot of time or a little. They can put as much work as they like into developing their own ideas for solutions and revising them based on the feedback they receive; or they can simply stop after posting their first draft. They might engage in a good deal of online dialogue about their ideas, or they might get very little response, or they might choose not to interact with the people who do respond to them. They might also choose to read and rate the ideas of others from time to time, thereby contributing directly to the Selection process.

  The Action phase will be similarly flexible. People may choose to spend hours writing carefully crafted letters to the editor in support of one or more of the proposals posted, or they can spend just a few minutes signing an online petition and passing it on to their personal email list. They might also decide to spend a number of hours engaging in real time online or face-to-face strategy groups to work out ways to get their proposed solutions publicized or possibly even enacted into law.