An "important" project can be identified not only by the attribution of the team members, but by the support of those who are ultimately affected by the project. An important project should not exploit anyone or anything. It should have a "soulful" nature and the "courage" to effect positive change.

Let's distinguish between "worthy" and "important." The list of things which need work in our world is immense, but our resources and energies are limited. Where should we best focus our time and enthusiasms? Certainly in those directions where we have most prospect of change for the better — which is where your definition is headed, Rob. But we should also attempt to make a distinction between things which must be changed and things we'd like to change. The things which must be changed are truly the important projects.

Thanks for the comments!

Malcolm, I agree — projects are important when they don't make selfish/unethical use of people/things (i.e. just by virtue of the fact that they don't). And they're important when/because their sponsors care enough to undertake them, and they're important when/because they're supported by those affected by their products.

I agree with you, too, Phil — but how do you suggest we make the distinction?

I take a very empirical approach to this question, mainly because if you don't you wind up in some very abstract philosophical debates about the relative merits of things which are inherently impossible to compare. In my view, we don't actually need to decide for ourselves what is important. More to the point, we don't *get* to decide what is important. We can certainly put our bids in, but most bids will be ignored and passed over. The activity of the human "hive" decides what is important, and if we can learn to pay attention to its signaling, we can tune in to that activity and learn to direct our resources where they are most needed.

To be more specific: companies like SustainAbility have produced lists of issues or topics which are key social and environmental concerns. I think their list contains around 50 topics: everything from sustainable agriculture, through women's issues to animal rights. This list (and lists like it) make great debating points, but they really don't help us decide anything (for the reason I mentioned above). However, we could group all of these issues into 4 or 5 "meta" topics — an exercise I carried out about 18 months ago. If you do that, and arrange them in a matrix (meta topics are the columns and the topics themselves are the rows) you'll notice that some issues actually impact several meta topics (one example is global warming, which impacts, for example, human rights, agriculture and the environment — another is GM foods).

It so happens that these issues are the very ones around which communities of special interest form (we call them transparency networks). You can map and measure these communities — the hive that is buzzing the loudest tends to be the one you need to pay most attention to.

Are you willing to share your "meta-topics" matrix? Sounds very interesting — could we post a soft copy of it to this category for download?

Sure — this is a work in progress and will evolve. If anyone has any comments or amendments I'd be happy to hear from them.