Dotmocracy/Speed Geeking

Dotmocracy is an alternative to traditional one person, one vote voting and is similar to the facilitation technique called "multi-voting".

Dotmocracy is often used within Open Space Technology facilitation to recognize popularity of ideas and topics.

While Dotmocracy is not required within a traditional consensus facilitation model, it can often serve as a useful tool to help direct the focus of deliberations and recognize existing agreements within a large group.

What is Dotmocracy?

Dotmocracy is an established facilitation method for collecting and prioritizing ideas among a large number of people.

It is an equal opportunity & participatory group decision-making process.

Participants write down ideas and apply dots under each idea to show which ones they prefer. The final result is a graph-like visual representation of the group's collective preferences.

Read the step-by-step process

This website presents the "Advanced Dotmocracy" process, which uses specially designed forms called Dotmocracy sheets to record each idea and participants' levels of agreement (or confusion), related comments and signatures for validation. It also follows a specific set of rules & requirements.

The Advanced Dotmocracy processes has been proven to:

Recognize priorities and direction from all participants. Engage and empower diverse groups. Give a voice to even the quietest of participants. Recognize and celebrate shared values. Focus on solutions while avoiding traditional power dynamics. Provide fully documented results that can be easily turned into action plans. Support friendly discussions while efficiently leading to practical conclusions. The process is fun and takes only minutes to learn and apply.

To start using Dotmocracy you first need to download and printout a blank Dotmocracy sheet and then read the handbook.

‹ HandbookupStep-by-Step Process ›

Rules and Requirements in instructions To facilitate an Advanced Dotmocracy session that is reliable, accountable, fair for all participants and promotes useful results, the following rules and requirements should be followed.

Rules Official Dotmocracy facilitators are authoritative and responsible for the Dotmocracy process but neutral on the content. Each participant may only fill one dot per a Dotmocracy sheet. Participants must sign each sheet that they dot. Participants may dot as many or as few sheets as they please. Participants have the option to contribute anonymously. There are no changes to an idea's text inside the idea box once dotting has started. Participants are always invited to post new ideas. A Dotmocracy sheet should only be removed from the dotting process according to the official facilitators' judgment. Required Posted Information For each Dotmocracy session the following information should be posted for all participants to easily see:

The basic process instructions. Start and end times. The question(s) to be addressed. Preamble and references to related information materials. A statement on how the results will be used by the hosting group. The hosting group's name and contact information. The facilitator(s) name and contact information.

If a facilitator fails to follow these rules or post this information, that's not cool. The design of the Advanced Dotmocracy sheets in combination with these rules and requirements have been refined and published to help facilitators produce a reliable large group decision-making process and to give participants assurance that there time and ideas will be collected and prioritized in a fair and constructive manner.

If you have suggestions for improving these rules and requirements, please post your comments below.

Who Uses Dotmocracy?

Team leaders, human resource professionals, project managers, community organizers, stakeholder engagement consultants, government representatives, meeting facilitators, conference organizers, teachers, students and social innovators from around the world are using Dotmocracy to find agreement within their groups.