By Maggie Quick, News Correspondent

With a presidential election just behind us, it’s tempting to think what we might do if we had been elected in Barack Obama’s place. It’s also the question behind If I Were President, a platform for the proposal and development of such ideas, created by Northeastern student entrepreneur Daniel Sullivan.

Sullivan, a Northeastern graduate student who majored in civil engineering and is now studying for his master’s degree in urban and regional planning, said he was inspired by a New York Times op-ed of the same name as well as the partisanship he saw dividing government. The idea behind the platform is simple: Have people share something they would do if they were president, either online or on one of If I Were President’s traveling chalkboards. Then, a community of users can add to and amend the idea until a proposal is ready to be brought to a person who can do something about the issue.

In this way, If I Were President aims to improve communication about issues people care about that could eventually be turned into legislation. Sullivan sees the operation helping a “collection of minds” share ideas across partisan lines.

“There are a lot of people in the middle willing to compromise. … Unfortunately [we are not seeing them] in the [current] political environment,” Sullivan said.

While the website has not been publicly released yet, the chalkboards have been put to use across Northeastern’s campus and other areas of Boston. On the Fourth of July, If I Were President had chalkboards on the Boston Common.

“It was fun to see what people were doing. Lots of people were taking photos of the boards,” Sullivan said.

“It’s the fun part of what we do … People will talk your ear off when they are passionate [about something],” he said, adding that the hard part is figuring out “how to get people involved in the boards to go to the website or tag us on Facebook — the physical to web conversion. … Social media use has [now] permeated all demographics … so it is a very powerful tool.”

If I Were President combines the Wikipedia model of crowdsourcing and collaboration with social media to inspire the sharing of ideas. Some competing sites are more “single minded,” Sullivan said; for example, change.org sends out daily e-mails with petitions for users to sign, but Sullivan said no one wants to take the time to read them or sign them because they are impersonal and overwhelming. He hopes If I Were President users will someday get emails directly from other users about shared issues, because he believes that personal interaction will connect and motivate many users.

Sullivan started the project with some simple guess and check.

“[You have to] try a whole bunch of things and see what starts working,” he said.

He started out by building the website (ifiwerepresident.com), reaching out to groups like community advocacy organizations and public servants and using outreach (in the form of chalkboards) to get people involved. He recruited peers who shared his interests and now has team members working on marketing, outreach, finances and video and photo work. Sullivan also took a step back multiple times to evaluate the direction of If I Were President. His current vision is different from the one he held eight months ago.

Northeastern faculty members also influenced the project, Sullivan said.

“There are so many … professors and mentors who have pushed me and helped me … It’s difficult to name them all. The whole Northeastern community has been so helpful. We have the resources here [for student entrepreneurs], you just have to seek them out,” he said. “Put yourself out there and explore every opportunity you can find. Talk to everyone that will talk to you. The benefit of being at Northeastern and in Boston is access to unparalleled expertise.”

The late professor Bruce Wallin influenced Sullivan greatly. His American Government class “is the reason I’m still at Northeastern,” Sullivan said.

A favorite quote of Wallin, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, has helped Sullivan remember you need a strong team to be successful: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Sullivan has worked with IDEA, the student-run venture accelerator at Northeastern, on If I Were President. Although IDEA works primarily with for-profit companies, it has given If I Were President access to legal advice, a business consultant and possible investors.

“[IDEA] introduced us to a lot of people and helped us refine our goal,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan has worked with other Northeastern community members to test out the platform as well, including members of the Student Government Association. Student Body President Pete Petrin said the SGA decided to help Sullivan test If I Were President because of its promotional techniques; namely, the chalkboard operation. Petrin said If I Were President’s model of community collaboration is something the SGA hopes to emulate and to take advantage of in order to inform student government about issues students care about.

“If I Were President makes people think as if they were decision makers … [We want students] to think as if they were President Aoun,” Petrin said.

He also thinks the online platform is a good idea.

“A lot of people [take] concerns, ideas, complaints to the Internet and discussion boards, blogs and forums … If I Were President creates a forum for collaboration,” Petrin said.

The SGA uses Ideascale, software similar to If I Were President, which allows students to rank ideas. This was a reason Sullivan wanted to work with them to test his model. He hopes the SGA will one day use If I Were President as a discussion board for community issues instead of Ideascale, because the latter is only open to undergraduate students.

“If I Were President would be inclusive,” Sullivan said.

He has done an interview series with President Aoun, former presidential candidate and Northeastern Professor Michael Dukakis and other faculty to get feedback.

While If I Were President is well on its way today, it has not always been smooth sailing.

“[Being an entrepreneur] is an emotional roller coaster, [but] it is good to go through [positive and negative] emotions. Like Republicans and Democrats, you need one to balance the other,” Sullivan said. “If you think you’re great, you haven’t considered the variables. … If [developing your idea] was easy, someone else would’ve done it [already].”

He added, “People are always going to tell you [your idea is] not going to work and they might be wrong or they might be right, but there’s only one way to find out.”