NCDD Launches First Episode of New D&D Podcast!

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Courtney Breese

NCDD is excited to announce the launch the first ever episode of our new NCDD Podcast! This podcast will bring together members of the D&D community to share tools and resources, as well as discuss ideas, opportunities and challenges in our work. We’ve launched the podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. Small green NCDD logo

The first series of episodes in the NCDD Podcast were recorded at the NCDD 2016 Conference, where we asked leaders and practitioners from the D&D field to share their stories and ideas, as well as discuss opportunities and challenges in our audio room. These episodes will be released over the next several weeks as we continue our conversation from the conference about #BridgingOurDivides, and we’ll continue to add new episodes into the future.

This first podcast episode features a conversation between NCDD Board Chair Barbara Simonetti and me, NCDD’s new Managing Director. In the episode, Barb shares a powerful metaphor she came upon during her time at the conference that compares the D&D field to a multi-purpose public utility or smart grid, and we discuss other ways we’ve described the NCDD community in the past. We had an insightful conversation about thinking of our field as a generative network and what that means for opportunities that the network has going forward. We think will be good food for thought for many of our members!

We invite you to listen to this episode and share your thoughts here and in the comments on the episode and the main questions we’re raising: are dialogue & deliberation tools and processes a public utility? How should we describe our community and our work?

Many thanks to Ryan Spenser for recording and editing these podcast episodes, to Barb Simonetti for her financial support of this initial series, and to everyone who participated in the episode recording sessions at the conference! We are excited to launch this effort and hope you’ll tune in and share with your networks and on social media!

Support NCDD Today for #GivingTuesday!

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Courtney Breese

With the madness of the holiday shopping season now in full swing, it’s often easy to forget that this time of year is supposed to be about giving – sharing of what we have and supporting our communities. But today is “Giving Tuesday,” a day created to celebrate and support giving and philanthropy as a counterbalance to the “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” and NCDD wants to invite you to join in commemorating it with us.

This #GivingTuesday, we are encouraging all who are able to give in support of NCDD’s important work. After a tremendously polarizing election and increasing concerns over our ability to bridge our divides, the need is greater than ever to support the community of people dedicated to helping our nation listen to each other, learn from those we disagree with, and find common ground for action. NCDD does just that kind of crucial work, and we are inviting you to help us keep doing it by making a tax-deductible donation on this #GivingTuesday.

Many people recognize NCDD as a facilitative leader for this vital community of practice and the”go-to” organization for improving dialogue and deliberative capacity. But what many don’t realize is that NCDD is a small non-profit that depends on memberships and donations to remain a healthy organization. We run mostly on the our members’ yearly dues payments, donations, and a few small grants – that’s it.

With that meager funding, we are still able to bring the field together during our biennial conferences, maintain one of the largest online collections of D&D tools in our Resource Center, tackle challenges and explore innovations in the field through our Confab Calls and Tech Tuesday events, catalyze efforts like the #BridgingOurDivides campaign, and begin to support and connect rising young leaders in our field with our new youth program.

Just imagine what NCDD and the field could do if we had more.

We’re joining #GivingTuesday in the hopes of not only spreading awareness about the important work we do at NCDD, but encouraging you to actively support NCDD by joining as a member, renewing your dues, or making a donation.

Your involvement in and support of NCDD is critical to our organization and our field. Thanks for all you do in your own work and in your support of our network. We look forward to continuing to work with you and our vibrant community in the year ahead!

Tips and Resources for Better Thanksgiving Conversations

Posted on November 22, 2016 by Courtney Breese

For many people, the Thanksgiving holiday this week and the holiday season around the corner bring the likelihood of difficult conversations and out-right fights around the dinner table. Talk of politics and other hot topics can be tricky to navigate with family and friends – especially when we don’t see eye to eye – and it seems like the loud, divisive election season might only make holiday conflicts harder to avoid this year. tday-plate-faces

NCDD will continue to carry on our #BridgingOurDivides campaign through the holidays because we recognize that the holiday season can be a time when the divides our country is grappling with become most personal and hard to deal with, especially when Uncle Bob is on his third beer.

So to help folks enter the holiday with a game plan for productive, thoughtful conversations, we at NCDD want to share some tips and resources that you can use to help keep the family dinner conversations more about genuine dialogue and understanding despite differences than heated rhetoric and emotional outbursts.

Six Tips for Thoughtful Holiday Conversations from NCDD

Be an active listener: Listening is key to respectful conversations. Be sure that you are really seeking to hear and understand what’s being said, not just looking the next moment to interject or thinking about what you’ll say to argue their last point. Be sure to give the person your talking with your full attention – look at them, show you are listening with verbal or non-verbal affirmations (like saying “I see” or nodding), and ask clarifying questions about what they’ve said. Modeling active listening invites the other person to reciprocate when it’s your turn to talk.

Keep an open mind: Dialogue is most successful when we are open enough to learn something new and even admit that we might be wrong. Be open to others’ ideas and perspectives, to learning something new, to questioning your assumptions, and suspend your judgments for as long as you can. If you hear something that makes you angry or offended, take a moment to think whether your own biases are at play, and take the chance to ask for clarification or for them to say it in a different way. Misunderstandings frequently come from our own assumptions about what someone means, so asking about it can help prevent hurt feelings and breakdowns in communication.

Be curious. The opinions that we hold are usually grounded in a deeper set of values or broader outlook that we hold as important. So ask questions that seek to understand the values, interests, fears, or hopes that underlie a position or opinion you disagree with rather than just reacting against it. Being genuinely curious about what’s important to the other person can open up space for more meaningful dialogue. Focusing conversation on our deeper beliefs, values, and hopes gets at the core of what’s important to us and is a place where we can find more understanding.

Discuss stories rather than debating facts: Stories from your life or that both of you can relate to can help make space for personal connection and perspective taking that can shift an argument to a discussion. Especially in political conversations, telling stories can help you illustrate your points while circumventing disagreement over specific facts or statistics. Sharing a story during an argument can also help slow things down and build empathy, which can often help shift the tone back towards a more positive exchange.

Look for common ground: If you find yourself in an acrimonious debate, try shifting the conversation toward what you can agree on. If it’s a friend or family member, think about what interests, experiences, or beliefs you know you share in common and invite reflection on them. Even if you hold different opinions, is there a shared value that you both bring to the specific issue? Do you both have similar hopes for the future? Bringing discussion back to important things we share in common can help us realize that we’re not so far apart in many cases.

Try to end on a positive note: Even if you don’t agree in the end, that’s OK. Thank them for their willingness to talk with you before you’re done, or acknowledge that you understand more of their perspective now and maybe even learned something. Disagreements are often healthy and don’t mean people can’t get along just fine. Ending the conversation by reaffirming your appreciation and respect for one another promotes better conversations in the future, and it’s much better than someone getting up from the table and storming out.

Additional Resources for Tough Holiday Conversations

In addition to our quick tips above, NCDD has tons more resources that might help you have difficult conversations and good dialogue in our Resource Center. If you’re looking for some additional go-to resources, consider these:

The Quick How-To Guide for the Conversation Café process includes agreements and questions that can be helpful ways to start and manage conversations that might prove difficult
For another good list of tips about keeping things civil during holiday dinners, check out the “Holidays or Hellidays?” blog post from NCDD member organization Essential Partners
If things are likely to be especially bad at your holiday get togethers, check out NCDD’s list of sample groundrules. You might be able to ask Aunt Susan to agree to a few guidelines for conversation at the table before dinner gets started
And if you need a reminder or cheat sheet with some similar good conversation tips to keep in your pocket in case of emergency, you can print out this short list of dialogue techniques from NCDD member organization Building Dialogue

Even if there are fights and arguments, we hope some of these tips and resources will help you navigate your holiday gatherings better than the past, and maybe even help you begin to bridge some divides. Whatever happens during your Thanksgiving dinner with friends or family, we are wishing you all a safe and positive weekend.

Join our Confab on “What’s Next?” Post-Election, 11/29

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Courtney Breese

As we posted about earlier this week, the Presidential election has brought forth new needs for dialogue and deliberation, as well as renewed importance of the work to bridge divides that our field has been doing for many years. We’ve been appreciating the responses our community have had so far to this post, and we’d like to provide an additional opportunity for us all to discuss this important time in our work.

Join us Tuesday, November 29th at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific for a 90-minute Confab Call to talk together as a community about what’s next after the election. This will be an open call, allowing community members to talk about their bridge building work, or ideas for what they can do post-election. NCDD staff will lead the call, but we won’t have any featured presenters – we want to hear from you!

The need for dialogue and deliberation is stronger than ever, and our network is poised to help our communities and nation come together across divides to tackle our toughest challenges. Join us as we talk about what’s being done now, and what’s possible for us in our work individually and collectively.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

What We Know Post-Election: Dialogue & Deliberation is More Critical than Ever

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Courtney Breese

The Presidential election and the week following has brought the deep divides in this nation to a head, and brought to light numerous issues in our country. The results show us that huge swaths of the country feel unheard and anxious about the future, and sadly, many responses to the election and events taking place in its wake have highlighted issues of pent up frustration, racism, bigotry, and more.

We don’t know for sure what the coming weeks, months, and years will bring, but we do know this: dialogue & deliberation is more critical than ever. Our community may need some time to process this and think about what to do next, but we know our involvement is essential to helping bridge our divides, addressing substantive disagreements, and finding ways for us to work and move forward together as a nation.

The Needs We See & Our Network’s Response

There are many different needs that our country and our communities have right now, but we see a few key needs that stand out as ones that are especially suited for D&D solutions: bridging long-standing divides, processing hopes and fears together, encouraging and maintaining civility in our conversations, and humanizing groups who have become “the other.”

We at NCDD have been discussing bridging our divides all year, and we have an ongoing campaign focused on that work, but the election highlights that need even more. The partisan divide is always there, of course, as well as our historical racial divides. But the election also highlighted the disconnect between rural and urban communities, between people who attended college and who didn’t, and between people from different class statuses. The D&D community needs to be responding to all of these divides – exploring their origins, understanding how they impact people, and imagining how we can dissolve them. Essential Partners just released a Guide for Reaching Across Red-Blue Divides that can be a helpful tool for these needed conversations, and there are more.

After the election, people also need to process and reflect. There is a critical need for dialogue right now where people can express how they’re feeling and explore their hopes and worries for the weeks and months to come. Processes like Conversation Cafe are easy access points for people looking to have a dialogue to reflect on the election as well as what they’d like to see happen now. It’s a tool that provides the structure people need to have thoughtful, respectful conversations in person, and Essential Partners’ work to engage people about what happens #AfterNov8 is a good social media complement.

There is also a need – possibly more than ever – for civility in our discussions that allows us to disagree without attacking each other. D&D practitioners have our work cut out for us in helping people approach both public and private post-election conversations with civility and respect. Several NCDD members are leading efforts to maintain and restore it, with the National Institute for Civil Discourse leading the charge in their Revive Civility campaign, yet much more is needed.

fatima-talking Finally and maybe most importantly, the country needs help finding approaches to humanizing the people and groups that have become “the other” – unapproachable and unredeemable caricatures – to our own groups. Conservatives are feeling unfairly vilified and misunderstood. Many immigrants, Muslims, and women are feeling threatened, at risk, and unwelcome. NCDD is continuing to support this work and promote collaboration through our new Race, Police, & Reconciliation listserv, and Not In Our Town has many resources for opposing bullying and hate groups that we recommend checking out. But this strand of potentially transformational D&D work needs much more energy and investment devoted to it in coming months and years.

Share What You’re Doing

As we look ahead, we want to ask NCDD members and our broader network, what work are you doing in response to the election and the issues that have arisen? What resources can you share to help others at this time?

Please share any efforts you are making, ideas you have, resources or tools you know of that could be helpful in the comments section of this post or on the #BridgingOurDivides campaign post. We learn so much from being in communication with one another about what we’re up to. NCDD will continue to share your responses on the NCDD Blog and our social media using the hashtag #BridgingOurDivides to continue lifting up stories and resources to a broader audience, and we’ll be working to compile the best divide-bridging resources in our Resource Center.

Furthermore, tell us what you think we can be doing together as a community to address the post-election landscape. Let’s talk with one another about how we can work collaboratively to engage the public and bring peaceful interactions and greater understanding to everyone.

It’s clear there is a lot of work to do to help our country come together, and heal the divides this election season has unearthed or widened. Our community is well suited to do this work, and we call on all of us to be supporting one another in our efforts.

Continue the conversation with NCDD on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Join Our Aug. Confab Call on Building an Online Commons!

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Courtney Breese

You’re invited to join us for our next NCDD Confab Call on Thursday, August 25th from 1-2 PM Eastern (10am-12pm Pacific)! This interactive conference call will feature John Gastil, a democracy scholar and long-time NCDD member, and Luke Hohmann, CEO of Conteneo, Inc., who will share about a ground-breaking civic tech idea that they are working together to make into a reality. Register today to save your spot!

John and Luke are gathering together software designers, civic reformers, academics, and public officials to envision and build an integrated online commons – a commons that would link together the best existing civic tech and other online deliberation and engagement tools by making them components in a larger “Democracy Machine.”

The purpose of the call is to discuss ideas about the design and development of the machine in advance of a session on the same topic during NCDD 2016 this October. The aim is to draw new people into the civic sphere, encourage more sustained and deliberative engagement, and send ongoing feedback to both government and citizens to improve how the public interfaces with the public sector. In advance of the call, we encourage participants to read about the basic concept in John’s recent post on the Challenges to Democracy blog or read his full essay, “Building a Democracy Machine: Toward an Integrated and Empowered Form of Democracy,” by clicking here

John Gastil is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, particularly as it relates to how people make decisions in small groups on matters of public concern. His recent books include The Jury and Democracy, The Group in Society, and Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making, and Communication (2nd ed.).

Luke Hohmann is CEO of Conteneo, Inc. Conteneo is the leading provider of collaboration – not communication – solutions for the public and private sector. Through their cutting-edge technology and customized services, Conteneo enables employees, customers, and partners to work better together – no matter where they are in the world. Thousands of business leaders are using the Conteneo Collaboration Cloud and our Collaboration Consulting services to be more productive, innovative and competitive.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls…

Call for Proposals Open for NCDD 2016!

Posted on June 7, 2016 by Courtney Breese

NCDD’s 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is coming up this October 14-16 in the Boston area.

NCDD conferences bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada. Our last national conference (DC in 2014) had 415 attendees, and we hope to beat that number this year!

If your work involves dialogue and deliberation, or you want to get involved with this work, you’ll love this conference. Imagine spending three days with some of the most amazing leaders in this field, forming new relationships and reconnecting with old colleagues and friends, hearing about innovative new approaches to the challenges you’re facing, and exploring together how we can shape the future of this important movement, all while using innovative group techniques… there’s really nothing like it. (See our 2014 Conference Storify page for quotes and pictures.)

Today we’re announcing our call for proposals for our concurrent sessions for NCDD 2016. We’re interested in finding creative ways to highlight the best of what’s happening in public engagement, group process, community problem-solving, and arts-based dialogue — and we know you have lots of ideas!

Check out the Application for Session Leaders now to see what we ask for, and start cooking up those great proposals we’ve come to expect from our network! If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration, look over the comments on this blog post, where we asked the NCDD community to share what they’d like to see happen at NCDD 2016, and peruse the fabulous sessions offered at the 2014 and 2012 NCDD conferences.

Please note that the deadline for proposals is Friday, July 8th. We look forward to seeing what you’d like to offer!

Here is some guidance for those thinking about presenting sessions at NCDD 2016…

Our theme for the 2016 conference is Bridging Our Divides, and we invite workshop proposals that in some way build upon or engage the ideas around this theme. NCDD 2016 is taking place a month before the 2016 Presidential election, and in light of the extreme rhetoric and partisan rancor in this election cycle, we want to share stories about healing the partisan divide and about creating and implementing strategies that will help us move forward together in addressing our shared problems.

But the divide between left and right politics is not the only divide that we as a field need to help our country address – the Bridging Our Divides theme is an invitation for us to address the most persistent of our gaps in our society. We want this conference to lift up stories and strategies about people working together across our race divides, our religious divides, our economic divides, our divisions around gender, orientation, and expression, our generational divides, our divides between government officials and everyday citizens, and others.

We invite session proposals that will highlight work being done to bridge divides on all levels – from organizations, to neighborhoods, to cities, to the whole country. We also invite sessions that have a special focus on the role of media and the press in bridging our societal divisions, especially through partnership with the dialogue & deliberation field. Your proposal will be evaluated, in part, by its relevance to our theme and goals.

Some advice for potential session leaders:

Identify great co-presenters. Most workshops at NCDD conferences are collaborative efforts involving multiple presenters from different organizations and universities. Have you thought about who you can co-present with? Now’s the time to contact them to see if they’d like to offer a session with you! (Use the NCDD Discussion list and the comments below to put out feelers for potential co-presenters if you’d like.)
Look over past workshop descriptions. Peruse the list of workshops from NCDD DC to get a sense of the kinds of sessions the planning team selects. Sessions focused on innovative solutions to common challenges, ways to take this work to scale or to new audiences, and deep dives into great projects (and thoughtful explorations of failed projects!) are especially welcome.
Be innovative with your session. NCDD attendees are usually not too impressed with traditional panels or long speeches. Get them engaging with you and each other! Think about how you can get them out of their seats and moving around the room. And think about what you’d like to learn from them (not just what they can learn from you). Challenge yourself to run a session without relying on PowerPoint.
Share your stories. NCDDers prefer hearing your stories to getting a run-down of your organization or methodology. People are interested in learning about what you did, what you learned, and how they may be able to learn from your experience. Stories about bridging divides are a key part of this year’s conference as well!
Share the latest. What’s the latest research? What are the latest innovations in the field? What new challenges are you facing? What are your latest accomplishments?

Not quite ready to draw up a proposal yet? Use the comment field (and/or the NCDD listserv) to float your ideas by other NCDDers and members of the planning team. We may be able to match you up with potential co-presenters who can address the same challenge or issue you’re interested in focusing on.

Look over the comments on our engagement of members around what they would like to see at the conference, on the blog and the listserv. There is a wealth of ideas and insight in those results!

Deadline for submissions
To be have your session proposal considered, we need you to submit the session application by the end of the day on Friday, July 8th. Members of the conference planning team will review the proposals and respond by email to the first contact listed in your proposal by the end of the day on July 22nd.

Register for June Tech Tuesday featuring Trusted Sharing

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Courtney Breese

Registration is now open for June’s Tech Tuesday event featuring Trusted Sharing. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, June 28th from 12:00-1:00pm Eastern/9:00-10:00am Pacific.

Trusted Sharing is a free, asynchronous platform that allows people to host deeper, more coherent online conversations using specific facilitation methods such as World Café, TOP and Open Space.

Contemporary research highlights how essential high quality conversations are in our complex Information Age; yet our current online exchanges often fall short of our hopes and expectations. Trusted Sharing is trying to change that. Early adopters of this new platform have been educators, consultants, bloggers, facilitators and small businesses. It is user-friendly and good for informal groups that want to extend their interaction time through online conversations.

Teachers have used Trusted Sharing to launch the learning experience prior to the first in person class. A consultant commented that she could cut the amount of in person time down by 40-50% by using Trusted Sharing to gather online thoughts first. A blogger was able to answer questions that readers had and add depth to his blog. A coaching training academy is using Trusted Sharing as a way to catalogue conversations and make decisions across multiple informal groups they interact with.

Joining us for this call will be NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, and Ruth Backstrom, Director of Marketing and Outreach. Duncan and Ruth will provide a brief overview of the tool and demonstrate how it can be used with several case studies. They are collaborating with a number of facilitators, thought leaders, educators, and others to bring more coherent, effective conversations into old and new realms like nonprofits, schools, businesses, blogs and public online spaces, and they will talk more about this on the call.

For an overview of the benefits and potential for Trusted Sharing in different contexts, you may peruse this overview and the Trusted Sharing website.

Don’t miss this opportunity – register today!

Tech Tuesdays are a series of learning events from NCDD focused on technology for engagement. These 1-hour events are designed to help dialogue and deliberation practitioners get a better sense of the online engagement landscape and how they can take advantage of the myriad opportunities available to them. You do not have to be a member of NCDD to participate in our Tech Tuesday learning events.

Register for 5/17 Tech Tuesday with Urban Interactive Studio

Posted on April 29, 2016 by Courtney Breese

Registration is now open for May’s Tech Tuesday event with Urban Interactive Studio. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, May 17th from 1:00-2:00pm Eastern/10:00-11:00am Pacific.

UIS Urban Interactive Studio helps agencies and consultants engage communities online through project websites and participation apps that can be tailored to any approach, process or project objective. As web and mobile technology has become commonplace, citizens now expect online participation options, but public engagement practitioners are often forced to cobble together inflexible off-the-shelf tools that only partially meet their engagement needs. UIS’s EngagingPlans and EngagingApps deliver a comprehensive, feature-rich, and adaptable solution that helps meet varied objectives at every project stage, from early visioning to final draft review and interactive online plans.

EngagingPlans and EngagingApps inform and involve broad audiences while also generating actionable insights for decision makers. EngagingPlans bundles the most widely used features into one project hub that reaches, informs, and involves citizens and stakeholders in civic projects and decision making. EngagingPlans websites form the backbone of digital project communications, keeping documents, events, news, and FAQs accessible and collecting community feedback through surveys, discussions, idea walls, and draft reviews.

As projects progress beyond open-ended visioning, the choices for online engagement software decrease drastically. EngagingApps are semi-customizable mapping tools, workbooks, interactive plans, and simulators that encourage informed, specific feedback about topics like commuting habits, proposed land use designations, design concepts, growth scenarios, and funding allocation.

On this call, NCDD Member Chris Haller, Founder & CEO and Emily Crespin, Partnership Manager of Urban Interactive Studio will walk through examples of both EngagingPlans and EngagingApps in action, with particular emphasis on how EngagingApps can be configured to address unique participation objectives during each stage of any public process. Participants are encouraged to review the UIS website prior to Tech Tuesday and be prepared for a high-level overview of EngagingPlans and an in-depth discussion about EngagingApps and strategies for implementation.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see these tools in action – register today!

What would you like to see at NCDD 2016?

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Courtney Breese

NCDD’s staff is in the beginning stages of conference planning, and as we do each conference year, we’d like to hear from the D&D community about what you’d like to see, do and experience at this year’s National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation. Over the next ten days, we’ll be seeking ideas from the NCDD community via email, social media, the blog and a special conference call on April 28th at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific.

NCDD conferences look and feel a bit different each year because our events are experiments in collaborative planning, and our planning team is highly responsive to our community’s needs and energy.

Remember the graphic recordings and maps of numerous networks within the field at the 2014 conference?
Remember the “conservatives panel” at our 2008 national conference in Austin (with Grover Norquist!), where we dug into when, why, and under what conditions conservatives support dialogue and deliberation work?
Remember Playback Theatre in 2004, the Catalyst Awards process at our 2012 conference, the showcases and networking sessions, and the great speakers and participatory processes we’ve featured at all of our conferences?

NCDD’s national conferences bring together 400+ of our community’s most exciting leaders, innovators, learners, and doers, for an event that enables us not only to network and learn from each other, but to tackle our greatest collective challenges head-on, and to set the direction for our field.

What we cover at our conferences, and how we cover it, is important for this ever-growing, ever-changing field — and we want your input! Everyone in the NCDD community (members, past conference attendees, subscribers, social media friends) is welcome to participate.

To help you get started, NCDD’s staff and board would like to share an idea with you and get some feedback. For the 2016 conference, we can’t help but take notice of the extreme partisan rancor of this year’s Presidential election. We think making space at this year’s conference to discuss bridging divides across political lines, race, religion, and other tough policy issues is important. Sharing our stories of how we’re building these bridges is an essential part of this, to share with one another and to amplify our work. We’d like to hear from you whether this resonates, and what ideas you might have for how we should do this. (Plus the Board will send out more info about this idea soon!)

We’re also seeking more ideas. As you consider our intentionally broad framing question, “What would you like to see happen at NCDD 2016?”, think about…

What do you think about the idea above?
What topics would you like to see covered?
What ideas do you have for awesome activities?
What would you like to contribute to this year’s event?
What could we do this year that might improve your work?
What could we do that would help us move the field forward?
What can we do while we’re together that we can’t easily do virtually?
Dream big, or be specific… it’s all good!

Please share your responses to these questions in the comments below, via our discussion listserv, on social media, and via a special call we are holding on April 28th at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific. Sign up for the call to receive the call-in details.

We’re excited to hear your ideas and to get working on putting together another great conference!

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