Robin Good has an interview with Sanjana Hattotuwa of Info-Share, who instigated a Groove-based environment for mediation in the Sri Lankan conflict resolution process. Some pointed barbs for the marketing folks here... although, I think, this is Groove's single most powerful case-study to date.

I'm sometimes ambivalent about the role of NGOs - see for example a critical recent article from Médecins Sans Frontières. Sri Lanka is different: the workspaces provide a deliberately neutral ground between opposing factions; as Robert says in a comment to Robin's article, "the cool, depersonalized nature of virtual space of any sort lends itself better to the rational articulation of stances, positions, and compromises". Hattotuwa makes a similar point: "because it would be political suicide for them if knowledge of their participation were known to their constituency before the groundwork was fully laid".

I'd like to reply directly to Robin's points that "I was curiouser to find out more was how Groove had been selected over other tools. Unfortunately we are not given to know much about this... it is hard for me to understand why this group chose to go the Groove way". Groove is an unusual toolset: it fosters a unique sort of enthusiasm, which I've seen in several forms over the past few years. The Groove business partners include several people and small companies -- PopG, Computact, and others; I'd probably include Cabezal in that list too -- who saw something special and simply invested everything in it. Yes, v2.5 is slow. Yes, it's still too difficult to build custom applications. But having experienced the hook, they (we) bet the farm.

For me, the hook was the decentralized synchronization model; everything else (architectural depth, extensibility, security, provenance) is gravy. For Hattotuwa, perhaps something similar: "There is no other software application that can match what Groove has to offer to teams of organisations and people involved in a peace building process anywhere in the world. In fact, the more difficult the topography of a region, the better suited Groove is to help in keeping teams in contact with each other". Reading more customer quotes, I'm sure you can see the same thing.