Think back to your past. What people, places, actions made an impact in your life? What profound influences did each one have on you?
What if these people, places, and actions made a difference in someone else's life as well? Or if others had milestones on their journey that are similar? Will you know? Will the link be made?
Typically, you would map your own life privately through journaling or in a small group workshop with people you know. Visualizing where you are help guide where to go next in life. But what if this was possible in a wiki, so that you can tell also where you are at in the context of others?
This is based on volunteer work I am doing for Servas International, an NGO for world peace. We are in the process of taking life mapping online. Can being cognizant of the similarities and differences that link our life maps help build world peace and mutual understanding?
Notes from session
Life maps are not necessarily geographical. Although they will have a geographical component, they are most of the time conceptual maps.
They could be temporal - based on years, age.
Significant events, e.g. 9/11, could feature heavily in many life maps.
Mind maps of ideas and teachers, not just of events or actions.
Sports events could also be significant. So are books, writers, movies/concerts.
Design considerations:
There is a need to maintain personal pages in a private space plus a way to interlink to global space. Global page (e.g. the 9/11 page) can link to individual pages. Pages are linked together to form a map (e.g. wiki structure/book). Users will need to be able to choose what type of page (via template?), for event, idea, teacher, person, book, writer, etc... to create for each of the items in the map.
Another possibility may be to totally scrap the idea of a global page - add semantic markup to personal pages and use tags instead? Perhaps this could be complementary rather then a total replacement. Who do you allow to edit pages? Personal pages need to be protected - in a sense, personal maps built out of linked wiki pages are almost like micro-blogs, but not really a blog in the traditional sense since they are more like wiki pages because they are atomic information linked not necessarily linearly, and form a greater body in the wiki as a whole (the global space).
A nice UI effect would be to have a mosaic of people impacted by x, y, and z, as navigation. Need to consider users' privacy requirements, of course.
Although the original motivation behind roadmapping (in Servas International context) is world peace, it can be more than that: world fun, world celebration, mourning. nexus of positive and negative events.
Also, why would someone care to investigate your personal experience? It could inspire other people, e.g. if I hear about how travel has impacted me, it could inspire me to travel. It could also help people to live with things that go bad in their life by discovering others with similar experiences.
Important also to link sharing offline in group workshops or just with one's own personal contacts to sharing online - it will help to build community. Link to social networking is essential.
Useful projects:
Inspirations for life mapping:
Paulo Fiere - in the context of learning, being aware of one's life story in the context of others' life stories broadens one's perception of oneself., and enhances one's ability to learn and grow, i.e. not be constrained by one's interpretation of one's own story, but liberated through alternative interpretations/points of view.
Bob Luitweiler - being aware of one's links with others in web of humanity leads to mutual understanding and helps build world peace.
Afterwards
You might be interested in this map I've made of my own life. -- LionKimbro