Here are a number of projects that Mediate.com has led over the years.
My biggest question at this time is whether the leadership in our field should establish a national and/or international online mediation advocacy organization that would seek to expand the use of mediation and AI and seek to ever elevate the quality of online mediation services?
This two hour-long program, The Mediators – Views from the Eye of the Storm Vol. I, features 31 of the most experienced mediators in the world. This is a “highlight” film of compelling commentary from pioneers and leaders in the mediation field.
Family Mediation Edition: Views From the Eye of the Storm is a remarkable collection of observations and experiences of 27 of the most experienced family mediators in the world. You can see an short introduction to this video here.
Mediate.com continues to offer over 100 “Views from the Eye of the Storm” mediation pioneer interviews. Check them out here.
Photo taken by John Helie. Among those present: Geoff Ball, Paul Waharftig, Charles Cooper, Richard Birke, Victor Herbert, Bill Drake, Terry Amsler, Joe Folger, Steve Toben, Baruch Bush, Anne Milne, Marilyn McKnight, Linda Baron, Alice Phalen, Jim Melamed, Brad Warren, Dean Peachy.
An informal umbrella group called the National Council of Dispute Resolution Organizations (NCDRO)—essentially a coalition of all the major U.S. conflict-resolution organizations—was funded by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation in 1998-99. Steve Toben at Hewlett, Bob Barrett’s successor, was the coordinator of this effort.
Mediate.com, The Academy of Family Mediators (AFM) and the Hewlett Foundation coordinated a major event at the Nikko Hotel in San Francisco. NCDRO brought together all of the leading national conflict resolution organizations, including AFM, SPIDR, CREnet, NAFCM, ABA DR Section, AFCC, NCPCR, etc.
For good or bad, it was out of these meetings that the Hewlett Foundation committed to provide 2.5 million dollars of funding for the field, however, there was a perception at Hewlett that there was too much duplication of effort in the field. Hewlett thus proposed a merger of AFM, SPIDR (the Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution) and CREnet (Conflict Resolution in Education Network) as a part of Hewlett’s $2.5 million funding package.
The result of all of this was the creation of a new merged non-profit organization, the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR) at ACRnet.org. While ACR has done some great work, and is currently celebrating its 25th Anniversary, some in the field have concern that the ACR “conflict resolution” mission is just too broad, that ACR is a mile wide and a foot deep.
A little known story is that Mediate.com initially offered to develop its business model (Mediation content to generate traffic, with a Professional Mediator Directory and our Dynamic Web Site Package) for the new ACR in 2000. ACR had put out a Request for Proposals stating a budget of $70,000 for its new website development for one year. Mediate.com responded by saying that this was really not best viewed as a one year project, but better as an ongoing relationship and sustainable service. Mediate.com ended up proposing a budget of $100,000 for 2 years, but that was not accepted.
In retrospect, it was Mediate.com’s good fortune that ACR did not accept our proposal. Running a technology operation based upon the ongoing expansion and improvement of online technologies was, in retrospect, not the kind of work that a traditional non-profit organization would likely be good at managing.
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