Author Archives: NCDD Community

International public engagement news & domestic learning opportunities

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This post was submitted by Rosa Zubizarreta of DiaPraxis via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Hi all! I’ve begun translating some articles from the news media in Austria about their growing public participation efforts. This first article is called “Developing Self-Efficacy” by Selbst Wirksam Werden and was published in Biorama, an Austrian online magazine on sustainability. The English version can be found here, and here is an excerpt:

2013 has been officially declared the “European Year of Citizen.” Twenty years after the introduction of EU citizenship, the focus of this year is the achievements of the people themselves and their own aspirations for their future. In the course of this European Year, events are being held to explain to citizens how they can use their EU rights directly and what measures and programs exist. There are also conversations with citizens throughout the European Union, on their views about what the European Union should look like in the future and what reforms are needed to obtain improvements in their daily lives.

The article goes on to describe the public participation efforts taking place in Vorarlberg, Austria, where there have been more than 20 successful “Bürger-Räte” (Citizen’s Councils) held since 2006, using the Wisdom Council model developed by Jim and Jean Rough. They describe the model as follows:

Twelve people from a county, a city or a region are selected at random to spend 1-2 days exploring an issue in a rather open manner. To this end, the facilitation method ‘Dynamic Facilitation’ is used, which allows an associative and creative approach to discovering new possibilities for action. A specially- trained facilitator helps participants uncover what it is they want and how they can creatively develop collaborative solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. At the same time, the process generates a dialogue marked by a high degree of listening.

For anyone interested in learning more about the practice of Dynamic Facilitation, also known as the Choice-Creating process, I will be offering two upcoming workshops this Fall. One in is Burlington, Vermont, from November 7 – 9, and another one will be in Voluntown, Connecticut, from November 14 – 16. For more info on the trainings, please visit www.diapraxis.com.

The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings

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Art Of Convening coverIn their book, The Art of Convening, authors Craig and Patricia Neal explore their “Art of Convening” engagement model and how it goes “beyond facilitating”. According to their book, convening creates an environment in which all voices are heard, profound exchanges take place, and transformative action results. The heart of this book is the Convening Wheel — a series of nine steps, or Aspects, that bring the practices and principles needed for authentic engagement together as a whole. The book provides exercises, stories, and questions to help you master both the inner and outer dimensions of this work — because, in convening, the state of the Convener is equally as important as the physical preparations. The book…

  • Details a powerful set of principles and practices for making any gathering productive, meaningful, and transformative
  • Draws on the authors’ decades of experience convening meetings in all kinds of settings
  • Offers practical wisdom on both the inner and outer aspects of convening

Convening works in any setting and can be adapted to virtually any group process. With this book you have all the tools you need to develop this essential life and leadership skill, one that will lead to improved outcomes in your organization, community, family, and relationships.

Some “back of the book” quotes…

“In this wise and thoughtful book, Craig and Patricia Neal help readers understand what’s needed to create the kind of authentic ‘meeting’ where true collective wisdom can emerge in group settings. They remind us that convening is an ancient art, one that can be critical to our capacity to survive and thrive in today’s challenged world.”
- Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, Co-Originators, The World Café

“Few people have refined the process of bringing people together as gracefully and elegantly as Craig and Patricia Neal. How we convene is much more than simple technique or facilitation; it is an expression of who we are and what kind of world we want to create. If their thinking and methodology were to become common practice, there would be more peace and connectedness and good will all around.”
- Peter Block, Author & Troublemaker

“These days we spend so much time working together in groups, doesn’t it make sense to learn how to do it better, smarter, deeper, and more authentically? If your answer, like mine, is “yes,” then like me you’ll love this book! It is both wise and worthwhile, profound and practical.”
- Alan M. Webber, co-founder, Fast Company magazine

As co-founders of Heartland Inc., Craig and Patricia Neal have led over 170 “Thought Leader Gatherings” with leaders from over 800 diverse organizations. Their new book shares their Art of Convening model — developed in these gatherings and refined over six years of intensive trainings.

Resource Link: www.heartlandcircle.com/aocbook.htm

This resource was submitted by Patricia Neal, co-founder of Heartland Inc., via the Add-a-Resource form.

e-Deliberation™

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e-Deliberation™ is a web-based platform used by teams and communities to collaboratively deliberate to resolve a focus, which can be a complex problems or a goal. The teams include a rich variety of stakeholder perspectives (between 15 and 80 participants) who all contribute to define a consent-based, strategy to address the said focus. The strategy develops as several complementary vectors which are integrated and harmonized as part of the process. e-Deliberation™ can be used for face to face summits as well as entirely web-based collaborations. e-Deliberation is based on Stafford Beer’s Team Syntegrity process.

e-Deliberation events or summits have defined start and finish dates/times, and follow the e-Deliberation process. All this is facilitated by a full-featured web-based user interface that supports each phase of the process. This interface can be used to support a conference where people are present in person, or it can be the virtual town hall meeting place for an entirely online event.

The e-Deliberation process starts with a named focus such as “What would it take to….” (resolve a difficult issue, achieve a goal, or manifest a vision). The proponent provides an initial Focus and description and lists stakeholder groups who ought to be concerned with or affected by the focus. The event can be private (participants are invited) or public (participants can also sign-up). A project manager/facilitator ensures all stakeholder groups are represented and sets a schedule for the phases of the e-Deliberation process based on how many hours per day participants can commit to the process (ranges from full-time to 1 hours/day). Signed up participants can offer suggestions to improve the wording of the Focus and the event description, as well as upload briefing documents and presentations.

The first phase of the e-Deliberation process is called Perspectives. In this phase, the participants do an unrestricted brainstorm of ideas that have to do with the e‑Deliberation Focus question or issue as seen through the lens of each participant. These ideas will reflect the various perspectives of the participating stakeholders, creating a universe of ideas from which the next step will draw inspiration.

The next phase is called Topic Jostle. Here, participants are asked to submit topic proposals for further deliberation. These topics are proposals that would inform or resolve the e-Deliberation Focus question or issue. Here we encourage “outside the box” thinking and provocative, creative thinking, so new avenues of thought and possibility are explored.

Once a topic is endorsed by at least 5 participants, it is included in the potential agenda of the e-Deliberation. Topics that are ill-conceived tend not to get endorsed or be replaced by better idea; this is a normal part of the creative process. Similar topics may get consolidated. The Perspectives brainstorm (previous step) is used to inspire these topics, as well as to validate that we have topics that talk to or advance the essential parts of that universe of ideas.

Participants are then individually polled to rate each of the topics that got 5+ endorsements based on how important they see that topic is with regard to resolving the event Focus. The topics that aggregate the highest importance score are conserved – how many depends on the number of participants (12 topics for 30 participants, 8 for 20, etc.) The participants are then polled to indicate on which of the conserved topics they would like to personally work on. This drives the assignment of the participants to teams formed around each topic. Each participant is a deliberative member of 2 of these teams, and a facilitator/guardian of up to 2 others. The formation of the team membership ensures that each team has direct access to all the other teams via the co-memberships of it’s team members.

The next phase are the Waves of Deliberation. Each Topic Team is tasked to deliver a document, called an Outcome Resolve, which puts forward proposals to the rest of the event participants on how the Team’s Topic can be put forward in support of Focus statement.

The mandate of each Topic Team is to ensure that their Outcome Resolve is consistent with the Outcome Resolves of the other Topic Teams, and that it has the support of all the participants of the e-Deliberation event. This means that while each participant is accountable to him/herself to speak their mind and be true to their values, they are also accountable to the deliberative community as a whole to help it deliver a wholesome and fully consented resolution to the Focus issue.

To achieve this integrated result, the process includes up to three Waves. In each wave, each team deliberates and drafts an Outcome Resolve document for their Topic. The deliberation is supported by a number of tools such as interactive team mind maps, threaded discussion forums, conference calls, Skype, even meeting face to face is an option if all the members of the Topic Team are collocated. The Outcome Resolve is edited online and is version controlled.

At the end of the first wave, each participant reviews the Outcome Resolves drafted by the various Topic Teams. The participant is asked to consent to the Outcome Resolve, or to object to it by providing an argued objection. Each Topic Team therefore gets feedback from all the Participants to understand gaps, blind spots and where others are coming from, as input to the next wave of deliberation.

This feedback also gives the Team guidance on how well their Outcome Resolve “fits” in the big picture and they also understand where the other teams are going with regard to their own respective Outcome Resolves.

This feedback, quantitative and qualitative, becomes an input to each Topic Team as it enters the second wave, which then proceeds the same way as the first wave, with a second draft of the Outcome Resolve and a feedback poll. A third wave follows the second, especially is during the second wave, several participants still had objections.

The goal ultimately is that the Outcome Resolve will win the consent of the whole e-Deliberation team and that it also dovetails with the Outcome Resolves of the other teams.

The last Outcome Resolve from each team is again polled to validate that it meets the approval of the whole team, and to allow a final round of adjustments to obtain the consent of everyone on the final version. An Executive Summary report is compiled which included all the deliverables from each of the process phases.

Not all the phases of the process are needed for every situation. Sub-sets of the process, called Variants, can be used for simpler situations.

The entire process is facilitated by a dynamic user interface that self-adjusts given the then current phase of the process. The website includes a number of automated workflows that simplify the job of facilitating the process: process phase changes execute according to the event schedule, and participants get emails to wrap up their work on the current phase as the next one is introduced. Summary as well as detailed “how to” instructions are provided for each phase so each participant always knows what is expected of him or her.

The e-Deliberation platform is entirely encrypted and hosted in a high security Canadian data center.

Resource Link: www.e-deliberation.com

This resource was submitted by Jean-Daniel Cusin, Managing Director of e-Deliberation Inc., via the Add-a-Resource form.

Poverty & Wealth in America: the National Dialogue Network begins coordinated conversations

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This post was submitted by John Spady of the National Dialogue Network via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

NDN logoNCDD member John Spady, who received our 2012 Catalyst Award for Civic Infrastructure, has announced that the National Dialogue Network achieved a major milestone on September 18 when it released its public Conversation Kit on the topic of Poverty & Wealth in America for voluntary and coordinated national conversations. To remember why NDN decided on this issue, check out their their May update here.

Groups and individuals are now invited to join the effort.  Click the “Get Involved” button on the NDN home page and take an action on the topic. An important first action is to simply download the Conversation Kit, then ask your friends, family, neighbors, or community to join in and inform the national dialogue.

The National Dialogue Network coordinates distinct individual and community conversations — giving everyone a “sense of place” and voice within the larger national dialogue. NDN’s dedicated volunteer’s seek to revitalize and promote civic infrastructures within communities where all who choose to participate will impact the national conversation by:

  • Focusing intently on an issue over time with others;
  • Listening to the opinions and ideas being discussed in your community and across the United States; and
  • Speaking up about your own opinions and ideas in conversations with your family, friends & community.

Jim Wallis, President and Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners Magazine, appeared prescient about the NDN topic when he wrote in the March-April 1999 issue:

“The growing economic inequality of American life presents the most crucial moral issue for the health of democracy, according to historian James MacGregor Burns. It’s an issue that affects almost every other issue, from campaign finance to corporate welfare to the daily priorities of the U.S. Congress. The widening gap between the top and bottom of American society is now the 900-pound gorilla lurking in the background of every political discussion. It’s just sitting there, but nobody is talking about it. It’s time we started talking about it. Our moral integrity demands it.  And the common good requires it.”

The NDN is appealing to participants and the general public to raise at least another $10,000 for 2014 so they can continue to develop processes and content for another year of national dialogue. Any amounts raised over $15,000 will be used to develop more professional content, coordination, and promotional grants. Donations can be made online at www.GoFundMe.com/NatDialogue.

Finally, the NDN is grateful to the people who volunteered their hearts and hands to make this project happen. Their collaborations are exactly what NCDD intended when it promoted the Catalyst Awards and NDN acknowledges and memorializes their contributions below:

2013 NDN Conversation Guide Volunteers:
Mary Dumas, John Spady, John Perkins, Dyck Dewid, Colin Gallagher, Craig Paterson, and Fedor Ovchinnikov.

2013 NDN Working Group Members:
John Spady, Mary Dumas, Colin Gallagher, Ben Roberts, Craig Paterson, Roshan Bliss, Vanessa Roebuck, John Perkins, Dyck Dewid, Fedor Ovchinnikov, Mark Frischmuth, and Michael Briand.

2013 NDN Advisory Group Members:
Linda Blong, Stephen Buckley, Daniel Clark, Lisa Heft, Peggy Holman, Don LaCombe, Stephanie Nestlerode, Steve Strachan, Sarah Thomson, Faith Trimble, and Rosa Zubizarreta.

An opportunity like no other – the Great March for Climate Action

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This message and call to action was submitted by Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Summary: In March 2014, the giant 8-month cross-country Great March for Climate Action will be launched. I believe it has truly profound potential for personal and social change, and is worthy of our support and participation. Dialogue and deliberation practitioners, in particular, can make a significant difference.

Dear friends,

If all goes as planned, almost six months from now – in March 2014 – one thousand people will depart Santa Monica, California, on a cross-country Great March for Climate Action. It will take them eight months – walking about 15 miles a day – to reach Washington, D.C. They will speak in hundreds of communities and venues along the way and be joined by locals for days or weeks. Once they arrive in D.C., they will swarm-lobby their representatives. Equally importantly, the lives of every participant will be profoundly changed and their roles in the world will evolve in ways they (and we) can barely imagine before this adventure begins. Above all, I believe they will co-create new, far more effective forms of social change.

I want to see that happen. I want this march to succeed in boosting climate activism to an entirely new level. I want it to produce hundreds of more savvy activists and hot collaborations. And I want you to consider joining it, to think about it seriously, as I find myself doing. It is worthy of the participation and/or support of every one of us.

Why do I feel so strongly about this?

The first reason is that climate change is, as the organizers note, not an issue, but a crisis – a Very Big Crisis, with many side effects and repercussions. Along with peak oil and other resource limitations – and the wars, corruption, and social and economic disruption those limits could generate – the climate crisis may be the defining fact of life for people living through the coming decades. The time for addressing all this was yesterday, and now it is today. The longer we wait, the messier it will get. The earlier we take creative action on it, the more profound and positive the transformational impact of our efforts can be. And, as my friend John Abbe (who became Marcher #22) said, “The time to act is now before it is more too late than it already is.”

The second reason I feel strongly is that 27 years ago I spent 9 of the most intense and transformational months of my life on the 400-person LA-DC Great Peace March. As I describe in the Prologue to The Tao of Democracy, that experience gave rise to the vision of possibility that became my life’s work on co-intelligence, wise democracy, and our collective capacity to effectively self-organize our communities and societies. This leads me to believe that the potential impact of such a mobile activist community will be at least as big from the exciting things that happen in and among the marchers, themselves, as from the marchers’ engagements with the places they pass through.

Mobile Activism

Early during my life on the Great Peace March, I wrote an article entitled “Mobile Peace Activism”. I explored the interesting ways that peace marches, bike-a-thons, cruises, and caravans get attention and build community. I’ll share here some of what I wrote 27 years ago exploring the question of why someone would go to all the trouble to organize or join a complicated cross country march instead of engaging in traditional action right at home?

“Novelty plays a role in this. Travelling out-of-towners bring new life and flavor with them — the spirit of other places and a sense of connection to those other places. Stationary people seem fascinated with why mobile people are doing what they are doing….

“It is easy to get into ideological, psychological, spiritual, emotional, organizational or tactical ruts when you are always confronting a desk or a book [or a screen!] or the same faces at every meeting. There’s something about moving to another place each day or week that rubs off on your whole way of thinking and feeling. Perhaps a certain responsiveness or fluidity can develop, making it easier to break out of fixed conditions, to think in new ways…

“Many of us long for a way to transform ourselves while we transform society, to enjoy life while we are saving it from destruction. Mobile activism tends to have transformative and recreational effects on the participants while at the same time achieving external objectives.

“Most mobile activities demand a high level of cooperative living just to keep moving down the road. This stimulates the formation of tightly-knit mobile communities with strong feelings of being ‘family.’ This is both a backdrop to activism and an actively-created part of it, a laboratory for building effective, loving, non-violent lifestyles. And mobile activists, in their trips from town to town, can weave together a greater sense of community among the local activists with whom they work.”

Perhaps most significantly, when hundreds of climate activists walk down the road together every day and live in tents beside each other every night, they talk. Among the things they will talk about are climate change, activism, strategies, deeper causes, long term nuanced consequences, how their grandchildren will live, and what really needs to be done about all that. Their diverse perspectives and information will churn together in a thousand combinations and novel configurations. The march will be a hothouse of new ways of thinking, feeling, and taking action. We could even say that it will be “the other greenhouse effect” – a hundredfold concentration and enrichment of the energy, thinking, and conversations we already engage in together for a few hours or days at a time.

Carrying on such intensified interaction for eight months cannot help but generate breakthrough initiatives and collaborations, transformed lives and lifestyles, new directions for the whole climate movement and every other movement. That’s what happened to me on the Great Peace March. My life changed totally and my work on co-intelligence was born. As I noted in my “Mobile Peace Activism” article, some of the most profound effects of mobile activism are “the effects that all those activists create once they leave the mobile activity and return home or involve themselves in other forms of activism.”

During the last decade I have often wondered if and when there would be a resurgence of mobile activism — of people taking the road instead of taking to the streets. I see it happening now, with this climate action march being perhaps the most ambitious initiative among many others.

Disturbances Transformed by Dialogue

Ironically, the most important thing that happened on the 1986 Great Peace March was that it fell apart two weeks after it began. The founding organization, ProPeace, went bankrupt and told us all to go home. 800 of us did. 400 of us didn’t. Instead of going home the remaining 400 of us talked… and the March was reborn in the middle of the Mojave Desert as a self-organized mobile community that generated its own collective intelligence and collaborative functioning woven out of complex voluntary leaderful activity with nobody in charge. It was held together by purposeful determination and rudimentary but dedicated conversational processes, most especially “talking circles” (which I prefer to call “listening circles”).

Many of my readers and subscribers are practitioners of leading edge processes like Sacred Circles, Open Space, World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, Dynamic Facilitation, and dozens more. The Great March for Climate Action may not fall apart like the Great Peace March, but it will surely be filled with powerful, smart, assertive, value-driven people – exactly the kind of people who can make or break a giant collaborative enterprise, who can get in each other’s way or together generate highly functional activities, breakthrough insights, and innovative projects that change the world. This polarization of good and bad possibilities will become even more intense in the potent greenhouse of living and walking together day after day after day.

Perhaps the most significant factor in whether the best or worst occurs on this march is how much opportunity the marchers have for high quality conversations designed to support the emergence of breakthroughs, healing, effectiveness, and joy. That’s why I hope that dozens of practitioners who read this essay will join this march. Together they can convene and facilitate conversations that will vastly improve the march’s capacity to govern itself effectively, resolve its internal conflicts wisely, vibrantly engage the communities through which the march passes, and ensure the march positively affects the issue that may well impact more people and more issues – from water to democracy, from justice to war – more profoundly than anything else in this century.

That’s why I invite you – I urge you – to seriously consider what role you could play in support – or as part – of this remarkable effort. Depending on how we each engage with this opportunity, it could make all the difference in the world.  Find out more about how to get involved at www.climatemarch.org.

Blessings on the Journey we are all on together.

Coheartedly,
Tom

Take advantage of your 25% NCDD discount with the Future Search Network!

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This post was submitted by Jennifer Neumer of the Future Search Network via our Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have field news you want to share with the rest of us? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Please join us this December 9 – 11, 2013 for the Future Search Training Workshop with Sandra Janoff. Save 25% off with your NCDD discount! We offer non-profit discounts as well!

Managing a Future Search – A Learning Workshop (MFS) is for facilitators, leaders, students and managers who want to learn how applying Future Search principles enables a community, company or organization to transform its capability for action. Participants will acquire the tools needed to organize and manage Future Search conferences with integrity in any sector or culture.

Future Search Workshop participants will learn:

  • How to manage a meeting in which the target of change is a whole system’s capability for action now and in the future.
  • Key issues in matching conference task and stakeholders.
  • A theory and practice of facilitating large, diverse groups.
  • How to keep critical choices in the hands of participants.
  • How freeing yourself from diagnosing and fixing enables diverse groups to come together faster.
  • Basic principles and techniques that can be used to design many other meetings.

Register here or find out more here.

Managing a Future Search – A Learning Workshop (MFS) is for facilitators, leaders, students and managers who want to learn how applying Future Search principles enables a community, company or organization to transform its capability for action. Participants will acquire the tools needed to organize and manage Future Search conferences with integrity in any sector or culture.

Date: December 9 – 11, 2013

Fee: $1690.  (SAVE 25% when you mention this special NCDD offer! Ask about all nonprofit, student and group discounts as well!)

Location: At the Crowne Plaza Philadelphia West in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

For more info, you can contact Jennifer at 215-951-0328, 800-951-6333, or email her at fsn@futuresearch.net.

Want to get a better sense of what a Future Search looks like?  Click here too see just one example of Future Search being used around the world at a Youth Future Search in Ireland.

Future Search Network co-sponsored, and Sandra Janoff facilitated, a G8 Youth Summit in Northern Ireland in May, 2013. It was held in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in the same location and one month prior to the G8 Summit where President Obama and the other 7 world leaders met. 110 young people from across the country created a shared agenda. The youth voice, with their dreams for the future, was brought into the G8 Summit the following month. Their report was translated into each of the 7 languages.

Registration: www.futuresearch.net/frms/workshop/signup1.cfm

More info:  www.futuresearch.net/method/workshops/descriptions-50748.cfm

Invitation to October 2013 International Dialogue Education Institute in Baltimore

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This post was submitted by NCDD supporting member Michael Culliton of Global Learning Partners via the Add-to-Blog form.

NCDD folks, please Join us in Baltimore, MD, October 24-27, 2013, for the 2013 International Dialogue Education Institute!

The Institute is an intensive and engaging conference for educators, facilitators, coaches, consultants, trainers, and others from around the world who are interested in Learning & Change, and in Dialogue Education.

Highlights of the conference will include:

  • Plenary keynote session on the biology of learning with Dr. Jane Vella
  • Variety of 90-minute and 3-hour active sessions (you won’t be sitting and listening much!) on topics related to learning and change
  • Interactive poster gallery where you can showcase your own ideas, tips and tools related to learning and change

See our list of 19 reasons to consider attending.

The Institute is hosted by Global Learning Partners, Inc., an organization dedicated to using an approach called Dialogue Education to create effective learning and change in the world.

Registration for the Institute is $479 and covers all Institute materials; a Thursday evening reception with hearty hors d’ouevres; breakfast, lunch, and snacks all day on Friday and Saturday; and breakfast on Sunday morning. Dinner Friday and Saturday are on your own. Lodging is at the Marriott Waterfront, where you’ll get our discounted room rate of $185/night (a $300/night value).

Human Migration: Policy Possibilities for Public Discussion

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The Interactivity Foundation (IF) has recently published a discussion guidebook entitled “Human Migration: Policy Possibilities for Public Discussion.” The guidebook was edited by IF Fellow Ieva Notturno, who also managed the long-term project and two discussion panels that explored and developed the ideas that resulted in the six policy possibilities listed below and further outlined in the guidebook.

The discussion panelists initially worked thru a series of fundamental questions and concerns about human migration, including “What could human migration mean? What are the forces that drive it? What societal goals and public policies might pertain to it? What are its different dimensions and how might these different dimensions conflict with each other? How might human migration and the conflicts that arise from it affect the ability of democracy to achieve its goals? Might immigration and emigration, as special examples of human migration, pose special threats to democracy? And if so, what are they? What concerns might Americans have about human migration? How might our public policies address these concerns? What conceptual policy possibilities might we develop that might affect the future of human migration?”

Human-Migration-coverIn response to these and other questions and concerns, they developed the following six policy possibilities for further exploration and discussion:

  1. Put Security First
  2. Privilege Human Rights & Humanitarian Needs
  3. Promote Assimilation into Local Communities
  4. Put the Economy First
  5. Keep Families Together
  6. Embrace Freedom of Movement

For each of these possibilities, the discussion guidebook also describes possible implementations, effects (or consequences), and further discussion questions.

The Interactivity Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to enhance the process and expand the scope of our public discussions through facilitated small-group discussion of multiple and contrasting possibilities. The Foundation does not engage in political advocacy for itself, any other organization or group, or on behalf of any of the policy possibilities described in its discussion reports. For more information see the Foundation’s website at www.interactivityfoundation.org.

Resource Link: www.interactivityfoundation.org/discussions/human-migration/

This resource was submitted by Peter Shively of the Interactivity Foundation via the Add-a-Resource form.

The Human Impact of Climate Change: Opportunities & Challenges

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The Interactivity Foundation (IF) has recently published a guidebook for public discussion on “The Human Impact on Climate Change,” edited by IF Fellows Dennis Boyer, Jeff Prudhomme, and Adolf Gundersen. The guidebook was developed from the group discussions of 16 panelists in two groups from south central and southwestern Wisconsin.

Human-Impact-on-Climate-coverTest discussions facilitated by former Wisconsinites in Tucson, Ariz., and in Sonora and Mazatlan, Mexico, further developed the text of the discussion guide.

Six contrasting policy possibilities emerged from these group discussions and are described in this discussion guide along with possible implementations, examples, and consequences:

  1. Promote climate awareness: Improve public understanding of climate impacts, their consequences, and options for action.
  2. Change consumer habits: Focus on human consumption as a source of atmospheric carbon and greenhouse gases.
  3. Go for results: Identify efficient and low-cost solutions that are currently available for short-term action.
  4. Heal the planet: Plan and implement long-range recovery and rehabilitation of ecosystems.
  5. Deal with a different world: Adapt to changed conditions and plan for climate emergencies.
  6. Focus on the developing world: Assist developing nations in reducing climate impact activities and help them “leap over” traditional industrial development to clean technologies.

In developing these possibilities, the project panelists felt that much of the existing political “debate” about climate impacts has been unhelpful to citizens and policymakers. Eventually, their discussions designated certain issues, such as “Is the planet getting warmer? How is the climate changing? What role does human action play in global climate change?” as questions that rely more on empirical scientific research for their answers. Conversely, they designated other key questions, such as “What public policy choices might we make about climate change? What, if anything, might society do about global climate change?” as public policy questions that need exploration by all citizens.

This distinction helped the panelists to side-step much of the highly partisan and interest-group-driven “debate” and engage in a public conversation that was more anticipatory and imaginative. Their explorations seem to be shaped by three realizations:

  1. Universal agreement on the precise nature and extent of climate impacts is difficult to achieve and waiting for it could forestall consideration of workable impact policies.
  2. There is sufficient current evidence of dramatic environmental consequences connected to climate impacts to merit development of policy responses.
  3. Significant institutions and interests are assuming that human climate impacts are real and must be accounted for.

This last point accounted for a dramatic shift in the project discussions. Among the more conservative panelists, the realization that major financial institutions, large investors, risk managers, insurers, and military and national security leaders take climate impacts into account in their planning was a turning point. It was seen as evidence that the politicians often lag behind in both consciousness and practical problem-solving.

The sense that emerged from the climate project was that these starting points for public conversation represent a possibly useful foundation for discussion of the opportunities for innovation, economic development, and prudent planning related to climate impacts. Now it’s your turn.

Resource Link: www.interactivityfoundation.org/discussions/human-impacts-on-climate/

This resource was submitted by Peter Shively of the Interactivity Foundation via the Add-a-Resource form.

Job, Internships, Facilitator Opportunities with Participatory Budgeting

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This post was submitted by Josh Lerner of the Participatory Budgeting Project via the Add-to-Blog form.

There are several new job, internship, and volunteer opportunities with the participatory budgeting programs in New York City and Chicago. Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. In New York, over 15,000 residents will decide how to spend around $12 million over the next year. In Chicago, over 3,000 residents will decide how to spend $5 million.

New opportunities to get involved include:

1) New York Community Engagement Lead Position

Community Voices Heard has just posted a 7-8 month community engagement job position to help support community engagement efforts for PBNYC, particularly with traditionally disenfranchised populations. Read more here.

Deadline: September 13, 2013, but CVH is looking to fill the position asap.

2) Volunteer Opportunity: Facilitation & Outreach Teams in NYC and Chicago

Do you have a couple of hours a month to give to your community? The Participatory Budgeting Project, the Great Cities Institute, and Community Voices Heard are looking for volunteers with Outreach and/or Facilitation skills to support Participatory Budgeting in New York City and Chicago. This is an excellent opportunity for individuals interested in honing their facilitation and outreach skills, learning more about city government, gaining experience engaging diverse community members, and contributing to real grassroots democracy.  Read more here.

Deadline: September 6, 2013