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Organizing contacts in a campaign-centered way
Ellen | Jul 5 2006
I'm wondering if what I'm about to describe exists in any OS X form... I need a contact manager that operates under the premise that the user is working on a single grand goal (say, an activist's campaign) and needs to utilize or even create connections between the user's contacts in various far-flung interest areas that could be related somehow to the central goal/agenda. Something with an intuitive visual interface that helps you keep the far-flung areas straight in your mind, and the people involved in them, and helps you see and/or make connections between your contacts and their various agendas (as well as helping you keep track of and contact them, of course). Ordinary address books just don't seem to cut it - they're just dry database entries and lists that don't relate to each other. And ordinary project outliners seem designed to handle data, not PEOPLE. (Same problem with brainstorming software) And ordinary groupware assumes that everyone in the project is on the same page and is working on the same goal and will participate themselves in the organization process via the groupware. (ie, they log in, add information about themselves, etc) None of these assumptions really would work for the contact management software I have in mind. This software would be to organize contacts who are NOT in on the same project -- and who only relate to each other in the user's scope of imagination about a larger project. Does such a thing exist? (Or is anyone working on such kind of software?) 3 Comments
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I don't know about Mac...Submitted by jason.mcbrayer on July 6, 2006 - 2:41pm.
I don't know about Mac software for this, but how about web apps? Custard Melt is kinda-sorta like what you want, except that it's intended for building communities --- the "contacts" would have to be participants in the site for you to link them into your campaign. I'm working on something also sort of like what you want, in that it tracks donors, volunteers, and contacts for a nonprofit, and their relationships between each other and various issues. It's not planned to be big on the visualization, at least not early on, but rather on searching based on common interests and characteristics (location, for instance). Unfortunately, this is on the back burner for me right now, due to paying work, and it's not in a usable state right now. » POSTED IN:
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