Participation in the Solution Exchange will be entirely open-ended. Some users will probably spend just a few minutes a week reading, commenting on, and evaluating proposed solutions. Others will devote considerable time and effort to drafting and revising their own ideas for solutions. Still others will read the ideas presented and talk with other people about them, but never make any contribution to the Activist Solutions program directly. They might however become part of an expanded better informed political dialogue or a movement that has its origins in one or more solutions posted on the Activist Solutions site.

Membership in a DNA group will require a more substantial commitment of time and effort than the Exchange. As a result, only a small number of people are expected to opt to join the DNA, while many more will probably be available to participate in the Solution Exchange from the beginning. However, the DNA project only requires a small number of thoughtful, innovative, and highly motivated individuals to successfully begin. Because the Dialogue group work will be demanding, a natural self-selection process should ensure a high level of capability and motivation in its participants.

To better understand the kind of motivation we’re hoping for in DNA group members, it might be useful to compare them to participants in a writer’s workshop. Imagine that most of the would-be writers involved are passionately committed to helping each other develop their first novel or play.

Similarly, artists of various periods are famous for their involvement in groups of peers who were their most constructive critics and their most ardent supporters. Groups of abstract painters, Impressionists, and cubists included artists like Picasso, Renoit, Gaughin, and many nobody ever heard of.

An even better comparison might be with people deeply involved in community theater. Most are excited about the experience and find it challenging and time-consuming, but also highly rewarding. In most cases, only a few are particularly talented, but usually they all help and support each other, and each produces more than they're capable of alone. Many of them grew into their calling over time. All of them had more opportunity to be seen, heard, and possibly get opportunities in commercial theater that might not otherwise be available to them.

Some major playwrights and actors began this way. But most importantly, each writer’s workshop or small theater group can produce exciting, meaningful growth experiences for its participants, and the larger community always benefits from the product. These networks of small creative community efforts can substantially impact the culture of a community and a nation.

In a political context, we hope that participation in the Solution Exchange or in a face-to-face or online Dialogue group will be an equally compelling option to anyone seriously drawn to creating new solutions to public problems. Knowing that many others will be attracted to reading the solutions they created and to interacting with them and with each other will help make the experience exciting.