This is probably the most needed requirement, and useful simply to organise discussion and feel connected to the wider membership. However it is also the base requirement for establishing consensus, or obtaining a minimum level of support for a proposal so that it can be considered for a poll or more formal vote.
# Finding a member
There should be a directory lookup service, or yellow pages for members. This service should be able to be extended and used for volunteering activities by for instance being able to find people near by, or members with particular skills for instance in video, event organising, or translation.
This Directory Service or Yellow Pages functionality would therefore be similar to that provided by LETS, volunteering or community currency platforms.
# Contacting a member
Having engaged in a discussion it is useful to eb able to follow up the conversation, and open up a private conversation with a member. The software should make it easy to contact individual members and open up channels of conversation using the tools of choice of the individuals concerned.
The software should be able to match preferred communication channels, so that if two or more participants all prefer to use Telegram or email for instance this option is available at the click of a button.
# Graduated Privacy
Revealing contact information should be at the discretion of the participants. The software should however make it easy to exchange this contact information and open up an independent communication channel when the participants wish.
This should not just be restricted to the application (web site) itself, but allow participants to converse in the way they find most comfortable.
# Contacting Groups The directory service should also provide a way to communicate to groups rather than only individuals. There are already a number of different types of group, each with their own protocols with regard to communication. The range and diversity of these groups is only likely to increase. For DIEM25 the relevant groups are the various DSCs, the VC, CC and the Thematic Groups.
As each group has it's own protocol regarding how it ca be communicated to, the software should explain and facilitate this form of moderation, and be flexible enough to evolve this over time as the movement grows and policies change.
# Group-to-group Communication An important aspect of the service would be the ability delegate the communication to the network of local or thematic group facilitators. This would prevent individuals from receiving too much traffic which can be off-putting to some members. It would also enable communication to be filtered and translated into the natural language of differing communities.
# Relationship to other functions
The Group Directory would relate to the Democracy Café or Augmented Video Deliberation service.
The Directory Service naturally relates to the various technical aspects of Digital Identity on the platform.
# See also - Software features for polling - Polling - Simple Polling Tools - Democracy Notes - Democratic Tools