I hope other people will lay out there own visions, both for how to use this site in particular, and for how to create positive change in general. Ultimately, our most overarching purpose is to provide a venue for people to exchange ideas, get together, and make things happen.

There are some interesting similarities and differences between your vision and mine, both in terms of the site and the world. I'd like to explain, in case you or anyone else is interested.

You say that this "is a site for activists to put into practice known solutions." Put another way, I hear you saying: We know what to do; what we need to do is get together and do it.

I see the purpose of the site as larger than that. I’m sure that some people are already certain about what the solutions are to a given problem, and that they will use the site to find others who feel similarly, so that they can begin the process of making change happen. That’s great. But I think that there are others (like myself) who don’t think that the solutions are so obvious. I have no doubt that there are many excellent ideas out there – we’re actually putting a great deal of effort into finding some of them and inviting the people who came up with them to participate on the site. But I doubt that any of them is so good that it couldn’t be improved. And I am convinced that there are new solutions out there, some merely unknown and others that haven’t been thought up yet because no one’s asking for them. Our purpose in setting up the site is not just to facilitate action but also to try to initiate a different kind of dialogue about problems and solutions. Not about whose to blame, or how unsolvable all the problems are, but about what can be done.

I don’t see discussing "what can be done" as necessarily a quick conversation. For some, I’m sure it will be. There are many people eager to begin acting, and they will want to identify what they can do today or tomorrow and get started. I truly think that’s a good thing to do and a good use of the site. But I think there will be some others who may be interested in a longer (and perhaps deeper) discussion – one that tries to sketch out how more far-reaching solutions could work, what obstacles they would have to overcome, and who would have the power to implement them.

You express your preference for "actions that can be taken at the grassroots level… here and now" that don’t require being a "high level government official" or "hav(ing) millions of dollars."

I have the opposite preference. While I respect and applaud people who take personal or local actions, I’m not personally very interested in actions that I can take alone or with a few other people. I don’t think that there is enough time left before our planet passes the tipping point for such small ripples to grow into the necessary tidal wave of change. I hope that I’m wrong. But I don’t think we can afford to ignore the "high level government officials" -- rather, I think we need to build the popular political momentum that will push them in the direction of positive change.

I don’t think that the new political movements that need to evolve will be powerful enough unless they are structured in a new way. Not the traditional movement structure, where people line up to follow what the charismatic leaders say. And not, in my opinion, the kind of movement where people only do their own small-scale actions but there is no large-scale vision or coordination. I think we can create a new model, one that is truly bottom-up, but only if we find a way to reinvent political dialogue and marry it together with political action. We need to be willing to think and talk about problems in all their complexity, and imagine solutions and methods that are innovative and practical enough to address them. No matter how brilliant the "known solutions" are, I think they will remain in relative obscurity until there is a place for people to talk about them, question them, and imagine how they could be better still.

Right now, getting politically involved is probably easier than it ever was. There are millions of groups you can join, either online or in person, almost all doing good work (as they define it) and helping people and trying to change the world.

It is also unbelievably easy to discuss the problems of the world with other people right now. There are dozens of chat rooms and forums and blogs where you can interact with other people about what’s happening in the world and what should be done about it.

But I don’t know of anyplace that successfully brings both processes together. A place to dialogue with other people about how to change the world that is not just a conversation, but the precursor to real action. A place to "band together behind solutions and take action," as you put it, that is not limited to following pre-packaged prescriptions, but also gives people the room to create the solutions they want to implement.

I think it is the promise of this combination – dialogue and action – that will make Activist Solutions a valuable site.

You can read more of my thinking on this issue in the Program Description booklet in the About Activist Solutions section, especially the last chapter – Why Dialogue is the Key to Reinvigorating Democracy.