I've spent much of August now making pitches to analysts/thinkers/strategists I deeply respect, asking them to join Wikistrat's community of strategists.
And I've got to tell you, we've got some real stars coming our way: Dmitri Trenin from Carnegie Moscow, Daniel Pipes from the Middle East Forum, Robert Kaplan from the Center for a New American Security, and Michael Scheuer of "Imperial Hubris" fame. From the blogging world we've attracted Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz, Mr. "Anglosphere" James Bennett, James Joyner from Outside the Beltway and this blog's "neighbor" ZenPundit. We're also signing up a number of World Politics Review writers like Frida Ghitis and editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein.
The invites keep going out and the acceptances keep rolling in. If you think joining up is for you, please contact me and let's discuss.
Wikistrat is offering various levels of belonging. Most of the heavyweights will be employed primarily on simulations for clients - the crowdsouring effect. The more junior ones will spend much of their time building up the GLOMOD, or Global Model that undergirds the simulations, but also getting in on those when it makes sense.
Exciting stuff!
As I tell these people, we know we're carving out some new territory here, but anybody who looks ahead realizes that analysis in the 21st century won't be done solely in a BOGGSAT (bunch of guys and gals sitting around a table) manner. With a world increasingly tackling its entertainment in a distributed, massively multiplayer online way, some portion of analysis naturally gravitates in the same direction - already embodied in the blogosphere itself.
So our point is, why not harness all that effort into something larger and more coherent. Instead of you, the client, visiting 40 blogs of China experts, why not have those 40 come together in TEAP mode (throw everyone at the problem) and work your China issue for you. And don't just have them discuss and then mush together their competing perspectives in the summary report. Instead, have those ideas compete on the Wiki in the form of scenarios - ones that illuminate the "black swans" you've never considered, etc.
I really think this is going to be an historic capability here, and I can't tell you how excited we are to attract such serious talent.