2019 IAP2 USA Skills Symposium Early Rate Ends Friday!

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

If you are looking for ways to improve your public participation skills or gain more tools, then we encourage you to check out the upcoming 2019 IAP2 USA Skills Symposium happening February 25 – March 1 in Austin, Texas. Hosted by NCDD member org, the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), the Symposium is a valuable opportunity to dive deep into P2 (public participation), connect with fellow P2 professionals, and experience a variety of methods, techniques, best practices, and more. The Early Bird discount pricing ends this coming Friday, December 14 – so act quickly to take advantage of this great discount! You can read the announcement below and find more information on the IAP2 site here.

2019 IAP2 USA Skills Symposium – Learn. Stay. Connect.

Are you troubleshooting current processes, or looking back, and thinking “there has to be another way?” The 2019 IAP2 USA Skills Symposium is just the place to meet other professionals in your field and acquire applicable tools and techniques to help you glean knowledge from the past, and streamline your processes in the future.

Early Bird pricing ends December 14, 2018!

The 2019 IAP2 USA Skills Symposium will offer a variety of training in public participation processes and methods. Join us in Austin, Texas dive into courses covering a range of topics including: mastering facilitation skills, using social media, and working with an angry public. Other topics include designing for diversity, and evaluating public participation initiatives. 1, 2, and 3 day courses are offered featuring experts in the practice of in community engagement. Attendees will engage in hands-on exploration and leave with many lessons learned on designing and managing effective public participation.

Are you an APA AICP? Did you know that ALL Skills Symposium Courses are eligible for AICP Certification Maintenance Credits? To learn more, check out their website!

Please click here to view the schedule-at-a-Glance, course fees, hotel room block information, and more!

Questions? Comments? Contact amelia@iap2usa.org

You can find this information on the IAP2 site at www.iap2usa.org/2019sksymp.

Using Text, Talk, Engage to address incidents of bias in schools

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Public Agenda Newsfeed

Addressing Incidents of Bias in Schools: Text, Talk, Engage

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Public Agenda Newsfeed

against inevitability

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Peter

These are examples of social theories that emphasize inevitability:

Classical Marxism: “[The bourgeoisie’s] fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” — Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Rational choice theory: What defines the tragedy of the commons is the “solemnity of the relentless working of things,” “the inevitableness of destiny,” and “the futility of escape” — Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons” (quoting Alfred North Whitehead about tragedy)
Skepticism about Great Men: “But the mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate. Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time. Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in course of preparation.” –Tolstoy, War and Peace
Progressivism: “The current has set steadily in one direction: toward democratic forms” — John Dewey, The Public and its Problems
A small-d democratic version: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”–Margaret Mead (attributed)

One thing that unites the disparate authors in our canon of Civic Studies authors is a refusal to accept any of these forms of inevitability.

Elinor Ostrom was part of the rational choice tradition, but she argued that whether we succumb to collective action problems–including today’s peril of climate change–depends on how we organize ourselves. It is neither a tragedy nor a comedy but a “drama.” She found that bottom-up solutions sometimes worked, and their chances of working depending on whether the participants used smart practices.

Jürgen Habermas came out of the Frankfurt School, which had assumed that capitalism inevitably blocks free inquiry and emancipatory reason. He also read theorists like Dewey, for whom (at least in my interpretation) emancipation is inevitable. Habermas holds, instead, that how well we reason and deliberate depends on how we organize our public life, and we have a chance to improve it if we work hard and wisely.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King confronted people who were deeply skeptical of nonviolent resistance, as well as quietist religious believers who preferred to wait for providence to sort things out. Their constant refrain was that we have a chance to improve the world if we try. Social science confirms that civil resistance sometimes works–and more often than violence does–although it depends on how the resistance is organized. During the century after Gandhi’s youth, the record of civil resistance improved, as activists learned better tactics, but lately, its record has gotten worse due to the autocrats’ ability to learn from their experience.

A major 20th century debate was about the relative importance of structure versus agency. Is history driven by inevitable processes or by intentional human action? The answer to that empirical question is: Some of both. But a much better question is: How can we enhance the better forms of human agency? The role of theory is not to weigh the past impact of structure and agency but to make agency more important in the future.

Tap into our Winter D&D Podcast Compilation!

Posted on December 10, 2018 by Keiva Hummel

It’s amazing how fast time has gone by since the last time we did a round up of our favorite D&D podcasts! Since it is such a great time of year to pop on a podcast and hibernate, check out the recent list we compiled dedicated to dialogue, deliberation, democracy, and engagement work, to boost you through the chilly months. We’ve added several more podcasts from our D&D community that we’ve found along the way since our compilation last time. Let us know in the comments below what podcasts you’ve been listening to lately and/or share some of your longtime favorites!

Podcasts focused on D&D:

NCDDers Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart host the podcast, The Outside, a joint conversation to bring in the fresh air necessary for large-scale systems change and equity. Listen here.
NCDD member Reva Patwardhan hosts the Dialogue Lab podcast and offers conversations to inspire listeners to thrive while making an impact. Listen here.
Conversations With People Who Hate Me by Dylan Marron, was recommended to us by Sage Snider as their favorite dialogue podcast. Check it out here.
The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, an NCDD member org, has been running their podcast, Democracy Works, with hosts Michael Berkman and Chris Beem on various democracy issues and interview people working in democracy. Listen to it here.
NCDD member organization, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, has several podcasts related to dialogue and NICD’s work, which you can listen to by clicking here.
Real Democracy Now! is a podcast based out of Australia and has several seasons that you can listen to here:
Engaging Local Government Leaders has a podcast about local government called Gov Love, which you can find here, and their goal “is to tell informative and unique stories about the work being done at the local level”.
Center for Civic Education has a podcast 60-Second Civics, which is a “daily podcast that provides a quick and convenient way for listeners to learn about our nation’s government, the Constitution, and our history”. Listen here.
The Aspen Institute has a podcast which you can listen to here, and is “working across the globe, bringing together people from different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view, to work together and find solutions to our world’s most complex challenges”.
The Civil Conversations Project is hosted by Krista Tippett from On Being, and “is a conversation-based, virtues-based resource towards hospitable, trustworthy relationship with and across difference”. Listen here.

Standalone episodes related to D&D:

The Private Side of Public Work featured CEO Matt Crozier of Bang the Table in this episode on their work and how to motivate people to be engaged. Listen here.
Conversations that Matter featured Valerie Lemming of NCDD member org, the Kettering Foundation. Via CTM: “In Episode 1 of our 7-part series on Democracy and the Media, Stu sat down with Valerie Lemmie of the Kettering Foundation to explore the current state of citizen engagement, the role that it plays in protecting Democracy, and how it has come under fire as the bombastic politics of the United States bleed over into the political mindsets of other nations.” You can read the article here and listen to the podcast on iTunes.
Shared with us via the EngagePhase Weekly newsletter:
- “The latest episode of the No Jargon podcast features John Gastil, a professor at Penn State, in a discussion about citizen juries and some of the latest research into their inner workings and effectiveness”: Episode 117: The Citizen Expert
- “A recent episode of the Reasons to Be Cheerful podcast featured guests James Fishkin (Stanford University) and Sarah Allan (Involve UK) in a discussion about various democracy innovations”: Episode 20. Rescuing Democracy: From Ancient Athens to Brexit

Don’t forget to check out the NCDD podcast too!

Episode One featured NCDD Managing Director, Courtney Breese and our former Board Chair Barbara Simonetti, on a powerful metaphor she realized which compares the D&D field to a multi-purpose public utility – click here to listen!
Episode Two told the story of Conversation Café by stewards of the process, co-creator Susan Partnow, past steward Jacquelyn Pogue, and NCDD staffer Keiva Hummel – click here to listen!
Episode Three was on the opportunities for D&D in Congress with Brad Fitch of the Congressional Management Foundation and our own Courtney Breese – click here to listen!
Episode Four had Journalism that Matters Executive Director Peggy Holman and Board President Michelle Ferrier discuss their thoughts about connecting journalists and public engagement practitioners – click here to listen!
Episode Five featured Julie Winokur of Bring it to the Table and their work on bridging political divides and healing partisanship – click here to listen!

Stay tuned to the blog as we work to release more NCDD podcasts in the future! We recently launched our end-of-the-year fundraiser and one of our main asks is to fund the NCDD podcast. We have a lot of great ideas in store that we would love to share with you and we encourage you to consider donating to NCDD in show of support to the larger dialogue and deliberation community or join as a member!

‘Guns, an American conversation’

Posted on December 9, 2018 by helensorrell

Case: 'Guns, an American conversation'

Dec 9 '18

Author:

Helen Sorrell

Guns, An American Conversation ‘Guns, An American Conversation’ is a dialogue journalism experiment in which citizens from across the United States with opposing views on the issue of gun control came together to engage in civil civic dialogue in a moderated environment. Purpose and Problems This experiment was an attempt...

‘Guns, an American conversation’

Posted on December 9, 2018 by helensorrell

Case: 'Guns, an American conversation'

Dec 9 '18

Author:

Helen Sorrell

Moderation

Posted on December 9, 2018 by helensorrell

Method: Moderation

Dec 9 '18

Author:

Helen Sorrell

The following is a suggested structure. We recommend users follow these headings to make it easier to compare and analyze entries. Definition Problems and Purpose History Participant Selection Deliberation, Decisions, and Public Interaction Influence, Outcomes, and Effects Analysis and Lessons Learned Secondary Sources External Links Notes