Stop the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico – Stop The Gusher Site Launches

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a tragedy.  We have just launched a new Collaborize site, called www.StoptheGusher.com, that we believe is the first and only site where people can see and vote on suggestions about how to stem the tide of oil that is polluting the Gulf Coast, as well as ideas about clean up and containment.

As we aggregate all the ideas, we will provide resources to enable any and all of us to take ones voted “most likely to succeed” and direct them to the right people in BP (British Petroleum), the government and mainstream media. We are doing this with high hopes that this site will be obsolete by the time we get it launched, but accepting the fact that it probably will not be.

I don’t think anybody thought the undersea oil gusher a mile below the surface would be a global catastrophe when it first happened. Americans are prone to think “Theyll get it fixed.”  But after weeks go by with one failure after another, we have begun to wonder: at what point should ordinary people get involved and try to have an impact on the situation? Kevin Costner has tried, as has James Cameron.

Beginning about a month ago, we at Democrasoft started to notice that there are many, many ideas beginning to surface, and that made an impression on us.  While the number of ideas is increasing daily, there is currently no single repository where these ideas are neatly organized and also no way for the best ideas to be vetted. The current repositories are a start, but they are clearly enough.

Back on or about “day 30” of the oil leak, we were semi-joking around the office that this situation was actually tailor-made for a Collaborize site. But we’re a company with a lot to do, and besides, we, too, thought the issue would get resolved “any day now”. But two more weeks went by and the oil was still gushing, so we started to give serious thought to creating our own site, modifying our platform so the collective wisdom of the community can be used to address and maybe even help solve this very disturbing global crisis.

We started asking ourselves whether we didn’t have a moral imperative to do what we can. By chance (or not), of all people or companies out there, we at least have at our disposal a perfect tool that can facilitate massive collaboration and bring the best ideas to the top. Government can’t do this, or doesn’t know where to start. So even though it is already day 60, we thought we would start now, because unfortunately, this issue doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

We realize the “www.StopTheGusher.com” site is not going to make money, and it may not even make a difference. But maybe it will.  And on that small possibility of making even a small difference, how can we not do it? If we don’t do something can we just assume that someone else will?

What personally scared me into action was when I heard it mentioned that one possible solution being promoted by so-called “experts” was to stop the oil leak by detonating a small nuclear device at the site of the leak, a mile under the surface of the ocean. If something goes wrong with that solution, an already terrible leak of a million gallons a day could become a nightmarish million gallons a minute! There had to be a way to vote those types of ideas DOWN as well as sensible alternatives UP.

Anything on the scale of this oil gusher disaster attracts all kinds of ideas and that’s really a good thing. So all ideas, the good ones and the desperate ones, need to be vetted and voted on. Together we increase the chances of success. Harvesting the best of what we all have to offer is what our tagline refers to: the Wisdom of We. And we could all use some of that wisdom right now in the Gulf of Mexico.

So our big idea is to bring your big ideas to the forefront. We will be organizing them into helpful categories and seeking your votes on as many as you are willing to review. Go to www.StoptheGusher.com right now; review the current ideas, help find new ones, vote the best ones up, and most important — share this website (and the individual best ideas) with everyone you know.

You never know where the best ideas will come from. Everything in America gets done because somebody takes the initiative to do something and just does it. We can’t just wait for someone else to do it for us. And that’s a good thing.

Normally on a Collaborize site, we would be asking people to “Ask Questions”, but we are trying to modify our platform a bit for this purpose. So when you go to the site, and click on “Ask a Question,” instead of asking a question, name the solution you are about to post to the website. Upload your solution as a video or a PDF, or just describe it. Finally, designate it as a “yes-no” question. That will allow people to vote on it up or down, and lend some consistency to the process.

In the “Resources” section of the site, we will provide tools for sharing the best of the “Wisdom of We” as our contribution, because it is part of our value system to be a good corporate citizen beyond just making money. We want to help find the right solutions and see them properly implemented. When things do finally get taken care of, whether by us or by someone else, we will breathe a sigh of relief and shut the site down, because we aren’t attached to any outcome except trying to help. But in the meantime, let’s get the word out, because this one really matters, and there’s not a minute to lose. Thank you for your support.