What makes AthenaBridge different?

AthenaBridge provides structure to make online conversations of all sizes more productive. You might ask, “Wait– how large can these conversations get?!” Well, because AthenaBridge is hosted on Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud, there can be millions of people in the same structured conversation.

The quality of a typical conversation– either online or face-to-face– decreases as the number of participants increases due to a lack of structure. The key is to provide just enough structure so that the conversation improves as more people join; this is a big challenge, and it’s one that we’re passionate about.

AthenaBridge helps to find the best ideas on each side of an issue and opens those ideas to critical analysis. It’s not enough to just list pros and cons; we must follow up and dig deeper to get past sound bites and talking points.

There are several advantages of the AthenaBridge method:

• Efficiency: Creates a map of each conversation for simpler navigation of complex conversations
• Quality: Sorts the highest-rated ideas to the top to make the most of your time
• Scale: Allows an unlimited number of simultaneous participants to collaborate in the same conversation. More people = more ideas. Having more ideas is better as long as you have a system like AthenaBridge to empower the participants to separate the good ones from the uhh… not so good.
• Structure: Can be used to provide structure for almost any type of conversation- collecting feedback, multi-linear instant messaging, group brainstorming, two-sided debate, etc.
• Credibility: Track of each participant’s reputation over time, and find out who your superstars are
• Logic-Based: Opens all ideas to logical discussion based on facts, assumptions, logic, and definitions
• Optional Anonymity: Anonymity, if used correctly, can be critical to creating an atmosphere of honest dialogue. Tied to reputation and credibility, the risk of abuse is minimal.
• “Red Team” Analysis: Giving a voice to dissenting opinions, or even assigning people in your organization to take a divergent view and challenge conventional wisdom is essential to reducing the risk of groupthink.
• Common Ground: Using the map, participants can visualize the common ground so you can move forward as a group on the items with which you agree, and focus on the disagreements when appropriate.
• Context: The same exact conversation can exist in many contexts across many URLs. This means you can engage many different audiences in the same conversation without them having to leave the websites they are on. If you’re interested in doing this, please contact us for more information.

However, there are several barriers to adoption in many organizations:

• Logic-Based: Some people are afraid to have their ideas open to constructive feedback and do not want honest dialogue. (What are these people doing in your organization?!)
• Unconventional: It’s a commonly held assumption that, as more people join a conversation, the less productive it gets. That’s generally true for face-to-face discussions. AthenaBridge software creates the possibility of harnessing the intelligence from very large conversations using just the right amount of structure.

The best time to use AthenaBridge is when you’d like to organize a lot of ideas from a bunch of people. AthenaBridge will not produce an absolute answer, but it can arrange the group’s thoughts so that you can make an informed decision in a short amount of time.

For information about our software, please visit our page of frequently asked questions or these articles about the AthenaBridge Philosophy.

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Tags: Our Philosophy, overview