Debategraph: Debategraph.org is a social enterprise that combines argument visualization with collaborative wiki editing to make the best arguments on all sides of every complex public debate freely available to all, and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all.
Peter Baldwin: Debategraph co-founder Peter Baldwin was a federal MP for Sydney from 1983-1998, including six years as a minister in the Hawke/Keating government, first as Minister for Higher Education and Employment Services (1990-93) and then as Cabinet Minister for Social Security (1993-96).
Following the change of federal government in 1996, he held Opposition shadow portfolios of Education and Finance before retiring from politics in 1998.
After leaving politics, Peter became interested in argument mapping as a means for raising the quality of debate about public policy issues, and in particular the potential for the web to enable dispersed collaboration on the creation of large-scale argument maps of complex and contentious issues.
Building on his programming experience prior to entering politics, Peter began to develop the software underlying Debategraph as a web application to facilitate large scale, collaborative argument mapping.
David Price: Prior to co-founding Debategraph with Peter, David Price worked in public policy research and consultancy, TV documentary production, and community mediation; all the time exploring the potential for collaborative argument mapping to enhance public communication and understanding.
Across his career, David has worked with various public and private sector organisations including: the BBC, the European Commission, the UK Prime Minister’s Office, H. M. Treasury, British Telecom, Ofcom, and Virgin TV.
David has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in organisational learning and environmental policy, and a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the University of Bath.
He lives with his wife and three children in Somerset, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
[...] Peter and I co-founded Debategraph in 2006 with the social entrepreneurial goal of creating a new form of public service communication in which the best arguments on all sides of any policy debate would freely available to all and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all. In the iterative pursuit of this goal, we have been lucky to collaborate on a stimulating range of projects with amongst others: Amanpour on CNN, the Prime Minister’s Office, the White House open government team, The Independent newspaper, and with partners for the European Commission – with all of the public maps forming intersecting parts of a single, emerging graph of thought. [...]
[...] Peter and I co-founded Debategraph in 2006 with the social entrepreneurial goal of creating a new form of public service communication in which the best arguments on all sides of any policy debate would freely available to all and continuously open to challenge and improvement by all. [...]