KenYersel, I would think, means "know yourself" to the non-Scot. It's an Edinburgh based project with webpresence, which is kind of in the nature of it. They combine democratic renewal, community engagement, open source and philosophical enquiry to come up with a very practical tool, which should not go unnoticed.

They have contrived a software that enables firstly to visually represent a pro/con discussion, and secondly to add to it, both online and by the old fashioned paper and pen. The outcome is a transparent record and visualisation of a discussion which is open for additions on an ongoing basis. This doesn't just make discussions more transparent to participants and policy makers, but helps reflect about the topic even beyond the actual discussion while enabling a wider range of people to participate and contribute. Open democracy at its best.

How does it work? Well, computers aren't good at representing natural languages or any non-binary stuff, so the idea is to make the discussion as binary as possible to start with. Rules are set up, taken from the philosophical enquiry theory, whereby a discussion topic is given, and each member of the discussion group gives a response to it. One response is picked and everyone is encouraged to comment on this response, by a) rephrasing the response, b)stating whether his/her contribution is in favour or against and c)making the comment. Each further contribution also has to state whether they are in favour or against and they also have to relate to the initial point. This insures that people are actually listening to one another as they always have to repeat the point that they are commenting on, and it also forces people to clearly state if they are in favour or against, which makes the visual representation simpler.

The KenYersel software (still in the development phase) then provides an interface to add all this together and link the points, using signs that represent in favour/against/point of clarification. New ideas can be inputted by a scribe, someone with access to the computer, and participants can add to this on paper or directly on the website, as it's dynamic and allows change. People are thus given a chance to review, reflect and get an objective representation of the way a discussion went, which will make it clearer, lead to understanding and possibly consensus, while enabling everyone to contribute, regardless of IT literacy or not.

Sounds great? I think so, check it out: www.kenyersel.org, where you can find out about the project, see the discussion maps and read about wikis. The actual software is not available yet, but if you drop the guys an email, they'll surely be happy to tell you more about it.