Author Archives: Courtney Breese

Join Us for an Intro to NCDD’s Website April 20th!

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On Wednesday, April 20th, in one fell swoop, you can meet NCDD’s staff, tour the website, and get a better sense of what NCDD offers its members.

For the first time, all five of us will be walking new members, not-so-new members and prospective members through the whole NCDD site.  You will be floored at the amount of resources, opportunities, and information available to you that you weren’t aware of!

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Join us on Wednesday, April 20th at 1pm Eastern (10am Pacific) for this special one-hour webinar that will help you make the most out of your NCDD membership.

The entire NCDD staff will participate in this event and discuss portions of the website related to their work with NCDD. NCDD’s staff includes:

The five of us will walk you through the various resources and tools available to NCDD members, including our news blog, resource center, events pages, the member directory and map, the listservs, our social media, and the myriad options you have for connecting and sharing information with other members. NCDD serves as a gathering place, a resource center, a news source, and a facilitative leader for this vital community of practice, and much of our work and offerings to the field are incorporated in our website.

New members are especially encouraged to attend, but the call is open to ANYONE who wants to learn more or get a refresher on how to get the most out of NCDD’s website. Be sure to register today!

Register for March Confab with Participatory Budgeting Project

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Join us on Wednesday, March 23rd for NCDD’s next “Confab Call.” We’ll be featuring NCDD organizational member the Participatory Budgeting Project and learning more about their exciting work with a rapidly expanding process. The confab will take place from 2-3pm Eastern (11am-12pm Pacific). Register today to secure your spot!

Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP)PBP-Logo-Stacked-Rectangle-web1 is a non-profit organization that empowers people to decide together how to spend public money, primarily in the US and Canada. PBP creates and supports participatory budgeting processes that deepen democracy, build stronger communities, and make public budgets more equitable and effective. Launched in 2009 and incorporated as a non-profit organization in the state of New York in October 2011, PBP now has offices in New York, Chicago and Oakland and has worked to bring participatory budgeting to numerous cities including Boston, San Jose, St Louis, and more!

On this Confab, we will hear from PBP’s Communications Director David Beasley about participatory budgeting, and PBP’s work to bring this approach to managing public money to cities, districts and schools. He’ll talk with us about the successes PBP has had working across the country and the challenges they face. We’ll also talk about PBP’s current PB Squared initiative (PB^2) which calls for ideas for how to make participatory budgeting better, and their upcoming Participatory Budgeting Conference in Boston. We’ll also be joined by Allison Rizzolo from Public Agenda, who will speak to their current work evaluating participatory budgeting. Come ready to learn more about this exciting work and to contribute your ideas about how to improve it further!

David is responsible for the strategic development and management of PBP’s communications, fundraising through individual giving, and their conference. He has trained dozens of advocates to be spokespeople for their movements and supported them through print and broadcast media engagements with organizations that include Safe Horizon, Scenarios USA, Hollaback!, and the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, among others. David believes that telling better stories build movements that change culture.

As the Director of Communications at Public Agenda, Allison Rizzolo develops and executes communications strategies to broaden the impact of Public Agenda’s research and engagement work. A former teacher, Allison is also the co-author of Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform.

For updates on about PB and best practices for empowering communities to decide together, sign up for PBP’s newsletter.

NCDD’s confabs (interactive conference 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…

Confab bubble imageNCDD’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.

Register for Feb. Tech Tuesday Event feat. Balancing Act, co-hosted by IAP2!

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Registration is now open for a special Tech Tuesday event co-hosted by NCDD and IAP2, featuring the platform Balancing Act. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, February 9th from 3-4pm Eastern / 12-1pm Pacific.

balancing-act-logoBalancing Act is a tool for learning about public budgets and the choices elected officials face in the budgeting process. It allows participants to try allocating funds – expressing their priorities and preferences – but also requires them to balance spending and revenue. Balancing Act brings people and government officials closer together in an informed conversation about what priorities are in everyone’s best interests. Because it is online, it is accessible to anyone at anytime and is far more convenient than a traditional public meeting or budget hearing.

Balancing Act was created by Engaged Public, a public policy consulting firm specializing in engagement-driven strategies. On this call we will be joined by Chris Adams, President of Engaged Public, who will tell us more about Balancing Act and how it has been used by governments and communities. Chris will also highlight its application for participatory budgeting efforts and talk about a special offer for participatory budgeting projects.

This tool is available for cities, counties, school districts, libraries, non-profits, states and others, and Engaged Public will soon offer a Federal budget tool as well! The tool can be used with different currencies and in some different languages (English, French and Spanish, currently).

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn more about this fun, exciting tool – register today!


Tech_Tuesday_BadgeTech Tuesdays are a series of learning events 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 or IAP2 to participate in this event.


About NCDD
The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation is a network of thousands of innovators who bring people together across divides to tackle today’s toughest challenges. NCDD serves as a gathering place, a resource clearinghouse, a news source, and a facilitative leader for this extraordinary community. Learn more about NCDD here.

About IAP2
The International Association for Public Participation is an international association of members who seek to promote and improve the practice of public participation in relation to individuals, governments, institutions, and other entities that affect the public interest in nations throughout the world. Learn more about IAP2 here.

Sign Up for December’s Tech Tuesday on Common Ground for Action

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Registration is now open for December’s Tech Tuesday event featuring Common Ground for Action. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, December 1st from 2:00-3:00pm Eastern/11:00am-12:00pm Pacific.

NIFI-CGA_Branded_LogoIn 2013, Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums collaborated with Conteneo, the developer of the San Jose Budget Games, to produce a platform that could allow truly deliberative online public forums. The result is Common Ground for Action, a simple, intuitive tool that allows participants to examine options for dealing with the problem, weigh tradeoffs, and find common ground, with beautiful visuals that let you actually see the shape of your conversation as it evolves. And because CGA works in any browser, there’s nothing to download, nothing to update – no technical mumbo jumbo.

CGA works not only for National Issues Forums issue guides, but also for localized adaptations of those guides, or in fact, any deliberative framework on any wicked problem.

On this call we will be joined by NCDD Members Amy Lee from the Kettering Foundation and Luke Hohmann from Conteneo, who will tell us more about how this tool was developed and demonstrate how it works. Amy will also tell us more about the current schedule of forums, and how you or your organization can utilize this FREE tool!

Don’t miss out on this opportunity – register today!

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeTech 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.

 

More about Common Ground for Action…

CGA can be helpful for any conversation where you need:

  • the ability to convene people from diverse locations
  • the ability to convene people who may not be able or willing to participate
    in-person
  • the ability to let people talk together about an issue
  • visuals showing the group’s evolution in judgment
  • an easy-to-analyze record of the entire forum.

Other important facts about CGA:

  • It’s free!
  • It’s easy to become a moderator – 2 simple online sessions!
  • It can be used to augment in-person deliberations as well.

Register for NCDD’s October 15th Confab on Brain Science

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Join us on Thursday, October 15th for NCDD’s next “Confab Call.” We’ll be talking with NCDD Members Mary Gelinas and Susan Stuart Clark about how brain science supports constructive dialogue and deliberation. The confab will take place from 2-3pm Eastern (11am-12pm Pacific). Register today to secure your spot!

What’s happening “beneath the surface” when peopConfab bubble imagele are participating in public meetings? Many conveners are nervous about emotions: those of the public and sometimes even their own. Understanding what evokes the potentially difficult emotions of fear and anger as well as the potentially constructive sense of compassion and hope, along with the conditions that help people notice and effectively manage such emotions, is critical to designing and conducting productive processes.

Mary V. Gelinas of Gelinas James, Inc. and Susan Stuart Clark of Common Knowledge both use the burgeoning findings from brain science to work with clients and plan interactive group processes that use emotions skillfully to help groups find common ground. They also use it to prepare themselves to facilitate such processes. They will share highlights about:

  • Triune brain theory;
  • What emotions are, along with why and how they get evoked in meetings;
  • Some key lessons from brain science for designing and conducting effective group processes;
  • How brain science can increase our ability to be instruments of change.

During this interactive session Mary and Susan will highlight the key elements of brain science they use in their work to provide a stepping off point for participants to ask questions and share their own insights and experiences.

Mary V. Gelinas, Ed.D. is the managing director of Gelinas James, Inc. and co-director of the Cascadia Center for Leadership. She is a committed student of how brain science and contemplative practices can strengthen the design and conduct of inclusive and collaborative processes. Her blog “How We Talk Matters” provides inspiration, tips, and tools to create constructive conversations about consequential questions.

Susan Stuart Clark is the founder and director of Common Knowledge, a mission driven organization dedicated to a more inclusive and innovative democracy. She works at the intersection of sectors and cultures, using insights about neuroscience to help people interact with “other.” A research deputy for the Kettering Foundation, Susan serves on the board of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation and as an advisor to civic tech groups.

About NCDD’s Confab Calls…

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.

Sign up for September’s Tech Tuesday with QiqoChat

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Registration is now open for September’s Tech Tuesday event featuring QiqoChat. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, September 29th from 12:00-1:00pm Eastern/9:00-10:00am Pacific.

QiqoChat is a tool for phone-based dialogue and video chat.  It supports Tech_Tuesday_Badgedialogue methods such as online open space, Conversation Cafe, and liberating structures.

We will be joined by Lucas Cioffi and Michael Herman, who will provide a demonstration of the QiqoChat platform and discuss the lessons learned from hosting two open space conferences for the worldwide community of open space facilitators.

NCDD Member Lucas Cioffi served on the board of NCDD for three years.  He is an Iraq War veteran and is the software developer that built QiqoChat. Michael Herman been a facilitator and trainer of many methods and approaches since 1991 and an active Open Space community member since 1996. Michael and Lucas co-convened the first ever “virtual open space on open space” gathering in July 2015.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about this platform and how it has been utilized – 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.

Registration Open for August 5th Confab with Matt Leighninger & Tina Nabatchi

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Join us on Wednesday, August 5th for NCDD’s next “Confab Call.” We’ll be talking with NCDD Members Matt Leighninger and Tina Nabatchi about their new book, Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy. The confab will take place from 2-3pm Eastern (11am-12pm Pacific). Register today to secure your spot!

PP421CDPublic Participation for 21st Century Democracy is an exciting new book that aims to help people improve the infrastructure of public participation, the regular opportunities for citizens to take part in making decisions, solving problems, and strengthening community. It provides real-life examples and practical suggestions for renovating and creating new arenas for participation, as well as utilizing the skills and ideas of citizens.

On this confab, Matt & Tina will provide an overview and some highlights of the book, and share some of their learnings in putting this book together. They welcome your contributions to help improve and expand upon the book, so if you get a chance, check it out before the confab (here’s the link to Amazon)!

Matt Leighninger is the executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, an alliance of organizations and leading scholars in the field of deliberation and public participation. With twenty years in the field, he has worked with public engagement efforts in over 100 communities, forty states, and four Canadian provinces.

Tina Nabatchi is an associate professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. The author of several book chapters, monographs, research reports, and white papers, her research focuses on citizen participation, collaborative governance, and conflict resolution.

Our confabs (interactive conference calls) are free and open to all NCDD members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

More about the book…

Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy explores the theory and practice of public participation in decision-making and problem-solving. It examines how public participation developed over time to include myriad thick, thin, and conventional opportunities, occurring in both face-to-face meetings and online settings. The book explores the use of participation in various arenas, including education, health, land use, and state and federal government. It offers a practical framework for thinking about how to engage citizens effectively, and clear explanations of participation scenarios, tactics, and designs. Finally, the book provides a sensible approach for reshaping our participation infrastructure to meet the needs of public officials and citizens.

The book is filled with illustrative examples of innovative participatory activities, and numerous sources for more information. This important text puts the spotlight on the need for long-term, cross-sector, participation planning, and provides guidance for leaders, citizens, activists, and others who are determined to improve the ways that participation and democracy function.

About NCDD’s Confab Calls…

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential Confab bubble imagemembers) 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.

An Update on the NCDD-CRS Meetings

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As many of you know, NCDD has been working with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service since last October’s NCDD national conference, to organize meetings between NCDD members and CRS staff at their fourteen regional field offices. This was inspired, in part, by CRS director Grande Lum’s speech at the conference.

We wanted to let the network know that meetings have begun taking place in several cities over the past few months, and more are in the works!

GrandeLum-NextStepBubble-borderThese meetings are an exciting opportunity to start a productive relationship with staff of an important government agency based in your area. They are also providing the supporting NCDD members who attend with an opportunity to talk about how we can be more responsive during times of crisis that call for dialogue, and to build relationships that strengthen our ability to respond. See our November 6th blog post at www.ncdd.org/16724 for more information on CRS and our initial plans for these meetings.

Meetings took place this past winter and spring in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Seattle, where our members came together with CRS staff to learn more about one another’s work and discuss opportunities to collaborate and support each other. Some exciting ideas have emerged from these initial discussions, including:

  • Supporting CRS and NCDD members alike by inviting one another to trainings
  • Sharing resources, including facilitators and mediators, and making referrals from CRS to NCDD members, and vice versa
  • Involving one another in regional networking
  • Working together on initiatives, such as CRS’ Student Problem Identification & Resolution of Issues Together (SPIRIT), or building a community responders network in members’ communities

NCDD members have reported back that they learned a lot about CRS and the kind of work that they do in communities in their region, and that CRS staff and NCDD members alike were very eager to explore ways to support one another and possibilities for working together. These initial meetings were just that – the start of what we hope will be a growing relationship between CRS staff and our members in their respective regions.

Meetings are still being planned this summer and in early fall for the following cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. All NCDD 2014 attendees and supporting members of NCDD whose dues are in good standing are welcome to attend. If you would like to attend one of these upcoming meetings, please send an email to NCDD’s program director, Courtney Breese, at courtney@ncdd.org.CRS-offices

Many thanks to the NCDD members who have stepped up to serve as lead contacts in each of the cities where a meeting is being held. We couldn’t pull this off without their help! Lead contacts for the meetings that already took place were: Nicole Hewitt & Susan Shelton (New York), Elizabeth Hudson (Detroit), Kathryn Hyten (Boston), John Inman (Seattle), and Janice Thomson (Chicago). Our most heartfelt thanks for their help in organizing these meetings.

We are beyond thrilled with the next steps coming out of the meetings held to date, and look forward to engaging more of our members with CRS staff in their region. If you have any additional thoughts about how NCDD members might collaborate with CRS, please share them with us in the comments below. NCDD will share these ideas with the CRS staff and local members in each region as they continue to explore possibilities for these budding connections.

Announcing June’s Tech Tuesday with Bang The Table

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Registration is now open for June’s Tech Tuesday event featuring Bang the Table, creator of online engagement platforms EngagementHQ and the Budget Allocator. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, June 9th from 2-3pm Eastern/11am-12pm Pacific.

Bang the TableTech_Tuesday_Badge began as a place online where people could gather to discuss public policy at a grassroots level, named in recognition of the frustration that many people feel with the traditional policy and decision making processes of government. Today, Bang the Table provides online engagement platform EngagementHQ to over 150 clients as well as the Budget Allocator,  a participatory budgeting tool.  Over 50 new online engagement projects are launched using EngagementHQ nearly every week.

On this call we’ll be joined by NCDD Member Matthew Crozier, CEO and Co-Founder of Bang the Table. Matthew will talk about his experience of engaging communities online including a number of case studies. This is a great opportunity to learn about how online engagement practice has evolved in Australia, to discuss management of risk in the online space, tool selection and the management of online engagement with scarce resources, as well as the future of engaging communities online.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to talk with Matthew and learn more about these tools offered by Bang the Table – 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.

A Resounding “Thank You” to Andy Fluke

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NCDD Co-Founder Andy Fluke’s role as Creative Director is coming to a close in July. While many of you know Andy, you might not realize the scale of the contribution he has made over the years. It’s a story well worth telling.

Andy-pumpkin-borderAs creative director, Andy has been the graphic design force behind our website and publications, quietly anchoring NCDD’s infrastructure and fostering its growth for the past 12 years.  He may be best known for developing the website from a handful of pages to what it is today: a 6,000-page compendium widely regarded as the leading source for news and resources in the field. In NCDD’s first 12 years, Andy redesigned and expanded the website four times, in response to the needs of our community and the growth of the organization.

His first love has always been graphic design, a skill he learned in his father’s printing business and wielded to create the conference guidebooks, reports, signage, infographics, and other NCDD materials that have drawn praise from professionals throughout the dialogue and deliberation community.

To focus only on Andy’s creative skills, however, would be to miss the myriad other ways he has helped to shape NCDD since its founding in 2002. As co-founder, he played a critical role as sounding board and thinking partner for Sandy over the years. His contributions to NCDD’s day-to-day operations have also been significant: he has assisted with office tasks, written and edited content for the website, helped behind the scenes at NCDD’s events, maintained the staff’s computers, and much more.

AndyOnRock-borderAbove all, Andy has been essential as a problem solver, stepping into new responsibilities and mastering new skills on the fly. “There is no accomplishment that I’m more proud of than my overall ability to solve problems and create opportunities with little or no financial investment,” he said. “In every task, I’ve dedicated myself to seeking the most cost-efficient and productive ways to make things happen for NCDD.”

This ability has been indispensable to NCDD’s success. When Sandy and Andy co-founded NCDD in 2002 after running the first National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation, planning conferences and running organizations were new territory for them. NCDD has always been a lean operation, and the desire to do as much as possible for NCDD members required them to be thoughtful, frugal, and clever when attempting anything new, especially online.

As Andy moves into the next phase of his career, we know that his resourcefulness and “keep it simple” approach will serve organizations well for years to come. At the same time, as Andy says, “I look forward to acting as an ambassador for the fantastic work that NCDD continues to do and continuing to support the dialogue and deliberation community.”

Andy will continue offering his skill and experience to the dialogue and deliberation community and is available to consult on or engage in any publication or internet design projects. His personal email address is afluke@gmail.com and you can also learn more about him at andyfluke.com.