House Party is a framework for collaboration software. It allows people to create a shared model of ideas. These people do not have to be in the same place, or working at the same time. The model is independent of it's presentation--there are multiple ways to filter and display the entities and relationships in the model. Different people may use different representations, and a single user may use multiple representations simumtaneously. House Party is as good a single-user tool as it is for groups working on a project, or far flung open source teams pulling together a design framework. A tool like this needs to not only support the interactions of the people currently using the system, but needs to alert them to ongoing interactions of which they may be unaware as well as facilitate bringing new members up to speed on the state of the discussion.

House Party may be the first attempt at software supported discourse, as used in linguistics. I imagine that it could support several hundred people involved in a discussion about the role of power in political systems, or any other open ended, ongoing discussion.

There are a number of problems to be solved....

• The networking system (Loose Dog) has to maintain data consistency accross multiple sites, allow people to work on-line of off-line, and maintain the intention of the users actions in the model.
• The model representation has to be flexible enough to support open-ended discussions with no clear goals in unlimited content areas. This includes the ability to incorporate external media in addition to the native elements of the model.
• Discussion takes place in public, but requires varying degrees of private collaboration of individual congitation. Smaller discussions may be incorporated into the larger discussion or other discussions may be referred to.
• Any knowledge building activity takes place in a social context. The system has to communicate and support the socio-emotional state of the participants. Investment in communication is based on trust. The system needs to foster community building of the participants.
• Good communication relies on multiple channels of information, some of which are very light-weight and ephemeral (a quick smile, a shake of the head). The social context can not be maintained unless these channels of communication are viable.
• Good discussion has structure. Extraneous material needs to eventually be weeded out of the discussion, the important concepts identifies, and closure reached. Concerns need to be addressed, reservations respected, and history maintained. Neither a system that simply displays all current and previous elements of the model, nor a system that requires explicit management of this structure will be sufficient.
• An external API must be provided so software agents can traverse and manipulate the model. Another API needs to be available so agents can monitor the discourse traffic and analyize the discussion process underway.

Example applications

W++ = N
G++ = D