A TalkingStick user starts by joining a group of five to twenty other participants either in person or online via video conference for the purpose of discussing a specific topic.
After joining a session, the user will have an opportunity to either upvote or downvote a speaking participant based on how they feel about what is being said.
Behind the scenes, TalkingStick is quickly calculating the effect of each new vote on the total flow of votes between participants. This is done in much the same way the flow of water can be calculated through a network of connected pipes. One person talks at a time, that being the person who symbolically holds the “talking stick’.
In the same way water always seeks it’s own level, the flow of votes through the participant network can be analyzed to calculate where they are all going. Each participant’s vote carries the same amount of ‘water’ as everyone else’s, and their ‘water’ doesn’t count until they’ve given it away, that is until they cast a vote for someone.
Things can sometimes change by the minute! All participants get real-time feedback on who’s ranked highest based on the flow of votes. Counter intuitively, dumping lots of ‘water’ (ie voting many times for the same person) doesn’t effect the overall flow of ideas or the popularity of ideas.