Author Archives: Roshan Bliss

Online Discussion on Recent NCDD Hot Topics, Friday 11/14

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We want to invite NCDD members to join an online & phone conversation event this Friday that former NCDD Board member Lucas Cioffi has set up so we can explore some of the topics that have been making waves on our discussion listserv recently. You can read his invitation below. NCDD is driven by members, and we love to see them taking initiative, so thanks so much to Lucas for leading on this! 

Hello Everyone,

There have been some deep topics discussed on this discussion list over the past few weeks. I’d like to open up some space for people to continue the conversation by phone and/or video chat.

Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/online-conversation-cafe-tickets-14285429103
When: Friday, November 14, 2014 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM (EST)
Cost: Free

For you, this is a networking opportunity, chance to meet with some other NCDD members interested in the same topics. For me, this is a chance to test out a system I’m building for online conferences.

The format is similar to Conversation Cafe where you’ll join several small group discussions (2-4 people per virtual table). Similar to Open Space, participants will choose the topics, ranging from current events to changing the world.

This is an informal and fun event. Expect to join other participants by phone and/or webcam (if you have it). Final details will be emailed to all who register.

Lucas Cioffi
Charlottesville, VA

6 Guiding Questions for Online Engagement from CM

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On one of their recent capacity building calls, our friends at CommunityMatters – a partnership in which NCDD is a member – had a great discussion about online engagement. They distilled a list of key questions to help people think about and plan for online engagement that are incredibly useful. We encourage you to read more about them below or find the original CM blog post by clicking here.

CM_logo-200pxDigital engagement is the latest buzz when it comes to public participation. We hear about the great work of Code for America. We read articles claiming digital engagement is the “new normal.” Our brains spin trying to keep up with new tools and terms—Gov 2.0, civic technology, hackathons, digital citizenship. The list goes on.

Pete Peterson, executive director, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership and Alissa Black, investment partner, Omidyar Network work with local governments to improve public engagement efforts. They know that despite the buzz, many cities and towns are hesitant to try more than a website or social media.

Pete and Alissa joined CommunityMatters to share ideas on getting started and going deeper with online public engagement. If your town is thinking about diving into the digital realm, consider these six questions.

Why engage the public? Nail down your goals for public participation before selecting a tool. Want to inform the public about a recent policy decision? A well-designed website will do the trick. Looking to collect ideas for a community plan? Consider an idea aggregation tool like Mindmixer or Neighborland. Public Pathways: A Guide to Online Engagement Tools for Local Governments presents a framework for categorizing and selecting online tools based on four engagement goals: inform, consult, collaborate and empower.

What kind of traffic visits the government website? Your municipal website is the natural place to host an online conversation. But, how many people regularly visit the site? What audience does it attract? Santa Monica, California (pop. 91,812) wanted input on its budget and general plan and took a hard look at web traffic. But the municipal site wasn’t garnering much visitation. The city partnered to host online engagement platforms on the local newspaper’s website to maximize participation and reach new audiences.

What is the outreach plan? It’s a no-brainer that you need to spread the word about face-to-face meetings. Online public engagement is no different. The latest and greatest technology isn’t enough to attract users—you still need to actively recruit participants. Trying to connect with a particular audience? Reach out to hyperlocal blogs or ethnic newspapers. Looking for intergenerational conversations? Steven Clift of e-Democracy.org recommends a mix of email and web-based technology.

How are we engaging people offline? Online public engagement is about complementing—not replacing—offline engagement. With Engage Oakland in Oakland, California (pop. 400,740), organizers encouraged public meeting attendees to share feedback online. Creating space for parallel online and offline conversations reinforced the whole process—online discussions motivated people to attend face-to-face meetings and kept those already involved at the table. The online space also allowed residents to stay in the loop without attending a meeting.

Are these the conversations we’re looking for? Take a look at examples from other cities and towns (our call notes are a great place to start!). Research the types of questions asked and issues addressed. You’re off to a good start if examples reflect what your town is looking to accomplish.

Y’all ready for this? Dust off that Jock Jams cassette and gather your posse. Online engagement is far from a contact sport, but you still need a strong team. What does readiness look like when it comes to digital public engagement? Here are a few essentials: dedicated staff to ensure government is responsive to online conversations; a marketing and outreach strategy to attract participants;committed resources for the project (and ideally, for sustaining online engagement long-term). Most of all, a willingness to dive in and try something new!

Read through the call notes and listen to the recording for more stories and insight on digital engagement from Pete, Alissa and our call participants.

You can find the original version of this post by Caitlyn Horose on the CommunityMatters blog at www.communitymatters.org/blog/key-questions-ask-successful-online-public-engagement.

Charlie Wisoff reviews “Making Democracy Fun” by Josh Lerner

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We just love Making Democracy Fun – a great new book by Josh Lerner, an NCDD member and ED of the Participatory Budgeting Project. We love to work with Josh and his ideas – from hosting his great “gamification” talk during the final NCDD 2014 plenary to co-sponsoring PBP’s recent conference – and we hope you’ll read the review of his book written by Charlie Wisoff of the Kettering Foundation below.

In Making Democracy Fun, Josh Lerner addresses a key problem of democracy: “For most people, democratic participation is relatively unappealing. It is boring, painful, and pointless.” This is the case in traditional public hearings that end in bitter conflict and have little impact, but Lerner argues that even idealized forms of participation, such as deliberation, are not intrinsically fun.

To address this problem, Lerner draws on the growing field of game design. Games are defined as, “systems in which players engage in artificial conflict, defined by rules, that result in measurable outcomes.” Lerner has in mind a broad range of games including sports, board games, video games, or play-oriented games like tag. In contrast to the paltry numbers many public engagement processes get, 183 million people in the US report playing computer or video games regularly, 13 hours per week on average.

Lerner suggests utilizing a number of game design concepts and mechanics and applying them when designing democratic processes. He outlines 27 game mechanics organized under the categories of conflict and collaboration, rules, outcomes, and engagement. He also notes that the effectiveness of games does not depend on digital technology, that face-to-face interaction is essential for democracy, and that digital games should only be used to supplement rather than replace in-person engagement.

Throughout the book, Lerner draws on a number of case studies in Rosaria, Argentina and Toronto, Canada to illustrate his points about incorporating games into democratic processes. In a participatory planning process called Rosario Hábitat Lerner notes how a map puzzle game was used to prompt slum residents to make collective decisions about where they want their lots of land to be developed. A core game mechanic highlighted here is group vs. system conflict. This mode of conflict presents a group with a collective challenge, such as limited land, orienting participants towards collaboration rather than competition over scarce resources.

Another game mechanic Lerner highlights is the importance of having enjoyable core mechanics. Core mechanics are the basic activities of a game like bowling a bowling ball or rolling dice, which should be intrinsically enjoyable in a well-designed game. In Rosario, Lerner notes how theater-like games were used to get participants moving while at the same time allowing participants to act-out a new law in particular contexts. In Toronto, during Participatory Budgeting events, simple activities like putting color dots up to rate proposals made a voting process more enjoyable.

Lerner concludes by arguing that, while there “are no simple or universal recipes,” there are certain principles that should guide the application of game design mechanics to democratic processes: engage the senses, establish legitimate rules, generate collaborative competition, link participation to measurable outcomes, and participant-centered design.

For more info or to order Making Democracy Fun, visit www.mitpress.mit.edu/demofun.

Last Day to Add to Our Conversation on D&D Barriers

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As we announced last month, NCDD is looking for input from our community on the important conversation we started during our national conference about overcoming the biggest barriers to and in our work, and today is the last day to add to that conversation via our online engagement space hosted by Codigital.

GroupWithBubbles-600pxThe period for input in the online space will end tonight at midnight, so if you haven’t already, please make sure to visit www.ncdd.codigital.com to help us identify new and existing strategies for overcoming the four barriers for effective dialogue and deliberation work that our NCDD community has said are most pressing:

  1. Lack of trust in our democracy, in our leaders, and in one another
  2. Unequal access to D&D practices and to government
  3. Lack of cohesion as a clearly delineated field of practice with all parts in communication
  4. Structural barriers within our democracy and in our own infrastructure

We want to hear your thoughts and ideas – what do you think we can or should do as a field to overcome these challenges?

At the same time, we also want you to hear each others, and there are a lot. As of last night there were 145 ideas being discussed, and nearly 4,800 votes cast on them! All of us have great ideas, and we want to hear yours, so make sure that you contribute to the conversation today before it’s over! could not be more excited to see such great participation from our members.

NCDD’s hope that the Codigital activity will help us get a sense of what ideas and actions resonate most with the whole community, which can then help us devise clearer paths forward on how to overcome our field’s most biggest challenges.

Thank you so much to all of you who have already made this post-conference engagement project a huge success, and we look forward to sharing the results with you soon.

Mathews Center Hosts Teachers’ Institute, AL Issues Forums

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We are pleased to share about a couple of announcements about from our friends with the David Mathews Center for Civic Life – an NCDD organizational member – about some exciting work they are doing in Alabama. We originally found these announcements separately on the National Issues Forums Institute’s blog, but we’re combining them here to make sure NCDDers hear about it all.

First, for all of our education-oriented members, be sure to note that the Mathews Center is hosting a great civic learning training for teachers this January:

The Mathews Center is pleased to announce that registration for Teachers’ Institute 2015 is now open. Teachers’ Institute is an interactive, hands-on professional development experience designed to equip teachers with skills and tools to increase active civic learning in the classroom and beyond. The workshop will be held January 15 – 16, 2015 at the American Village, and A+ Education Partnership and Alabama Public Television will be co-sponsoring the event.

Registration is free*, but space is limited. Reserve your spot today HERE. For more information, contact DMC Program Director Cristin Foster at cfoster@mathewscenter.org.

* The Mathews Center will reimburse substitute pay for all attendees. CEUs will be provided.

Second, if you live in Alabama, the Mathews Center is launching a yearlong series of dialogues across the state on children’s health:

After months of work, the David Mathews Center for Civic Life is excited to announce that we are kicking off Alabama Issues Forums (AIF) 2014 – 2015 in two weeks. During the yearlong series, we will be focusing on “Minding Our Future: Investing in Healthy Infants and Toddlers.” The first forum will be held on Thursday, November 13 from 6:00 – 8:00pm at the Harris Early Learning Center in Birmingham, Alabama. The Early Care and Education Work Group of the Children’s Policy Council of Jefferson County is convening the event, and everyone is invited.

If you are interested in convening a “Minding Our Future” forum in your community, please contact DMC Program Director Cristin Foster at cfoster@mathewscenter.org.

You can learn more about the David Mathews Center for Civic Life at www.mathewscenter.org.

“Vote” for A Better Democracy – Join NCDD TODAY!

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XS Purple NCDD logoHappy Election Day, everyone!

As we come to the close of yet another contentious and at-times ugly election season, we are reminded again of the importance of the work that the NCDD community does. As reflected in our “Democracy for the Next Generation” theme for our recent national conference, we believe NCDD and the amazing innovators we represent are a part of the solution to the broken politics of our time. In helping people really communicate, bridging gaps and partisan differences, building better civic infrastructure, and engaging our communities, what we are all doing is working to build a better democracy.

SusanAndMartinSignsThat is why, as we recently announced, our NCDD annual membership rates are increasing tomorrow, Nov. 5th. We are committed to growing our work and its impact on the shape of our democracy’s future, and to support that growth, we will be relying on our amazing community for support.

So we are asking you on this Election Day to “vote” for NCDD and the better democracy we are building by joining or renewing as a member today. Your membership and continued support of NCDD is an investment in the growth of this work and of a new kind of politics, and we hope that you will decide to grow your investment today!

But if you act now and join or renew before midnight tonight, you can lock in the lower membership rates and access to all of our great NCDD benefits for two years instead of one! We want to let everyone take advantage of the old NCDD membership rates, but this is seriously your last chance, so you have to visit www.ncdd.org/join today.

We have not asked our members to pay higher membership rates since 2006, and we don’t take this change lightly. But we see this increase as our way of doubling down on building a more robust civic infrastructure and investing in the success of our wonderful D&D community.

Don’t put it off any longer! Join NCDD or renew/upgrade your membership today!

National Harwood Public Innovators Lab, Dec. 16-18

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We highly encourage you to read the announcement below from our friends at The Harwood Institute, an NCDD organizational member. They are offering one of their great Public Innovators Lab trainings December 16th-18th, which NCDD members can get a 15% discount on. Be sure to check out the announcement below or learn more and register by clicking here.

HarwoodLogoNational Harwood Public Innovators Lab

December 16-18, 2014 in Alexandria, VA

Deepen Your Relationship with the Community

Communities across America are accelerating their change efforts with The Harwood Institute tools and methods shared in the Lab. It’s helping them engage people in new ways, generate new visibility and deepen their ability to lead change with community partners.

The Harwood Institute has a 25-year track record of success in helping individuals and communities accelerate their change efforts and achieve their strategic goals.

The Public Innovators Lab is open to all community leaders engaged in building a community’s capacity for change. It provides both the foundation of the Harwood approach coupled with a strong focus on concrete application. After the three-day training you will be able to:

  • Engage your community beyond the usual suspects to understand people’s shared aspirations.
  • Shift your relationship with the community through engagement – so that you aren’t simply seen as a customer service provider but are building will for people and groups to act together as partners.
  • Create or modify your strategies so they are aligned with your community’s capacity for change efforts – what we call a community’s “rhythms” or Stage of Community Life.
  • Assess the conditions that enable change in communities – what we call public capital – and learn how to build strategies to achieve your mission and create these conditions at the same time.

Cost: This 3-day course is $1,095.

Participants learn how they can use The Harwood Institute’s frameworks to start changing the way they and their organizations or community teams are doing their work, so that their efforts become more effectively rooted in the context of their communities. Having an orientation such that you use the community, not the conference room, as your reference point for the day-to-day and strategic decisions you make- we call this turning outward.

Learn more about the Public Innovators Lab and view the agenda at www.theharwoodinstitute.org/lab.

You can always learn more about the other great discounts available to NCDD members by visiting www.ncdd.org/discounts.

Workshop on Facilitation Under Fire from PCP, Nov. 11-12

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We hope that NCDD members will take advantage of a great training on handling challenging moments in facilitating being offered from our partners with the Public Conversations Project. Also be sure to note that there is a 15% discount for dues-paying NCDD members, so make sure to learn more below and register before the Nov. 3rd deadline if you’re interested!

Public Conversations ProjectDid you attend the workshop at the NCDD 2014 conference on “Facilitating with Grace Under Fire” with Public Conversations Project’s Bob Stains and Maggie Herzig? And did you wish there could be more? As it turns out, Bob and Maggie are teaming up again in just a couple weeks for a two-day iteration of that workshop entitled “Facilitating With Purpose and Poise – Even When Things Get Hot.”

This workshop, which will take place just outside of Boston from November 11-12, will prepare facilitators for handling difficult moments while facilitating. In this workshop, you will:

  • Develop deeper awareness of the personal, social, and cultural attributes you bring to the facilitator role that may help or hinder you in “staying grounded” when working with people whose views, styles, or identities differ from yours
  • Take away core questions you can ask yourself that will help you see through the fog of confusion in difficult moments
  • Gain clarity about resources at your disposal when a clear response or direction is not obvious
  • Build skills through role-play for deciding when and how to address difficulties
  • Learn preventive strategies that can be employed before people are in the room together or in the opening phase of the meeting

The workshop at NCDD 2014 required us to bring in extra chairs, so as we thought of people who would be interested in our two-day workshop, of course NCDD came to mind first! You can find out more about the workshop here, and, if you’d like, you can register directly here.

We are asking people to register by November 3 to confirm their spot, but if you register with a friend, both of you will receive 20% off with our Bring A Friend rate.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email Katie Hyten, Program Manager at Public Conversations, at khyten@publicconversations.org.

Institute for Civility in Gov’t Offers New “Civility Training”

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We want to make sure that NCDD hears about a great new training on civility being offered by the Institute for Civility in Government – an NCDD organizational member. We all know our nation’s civic life needs more civility, so please learn more about their training below or contact ICG to sign up.

InstituteForCivilityInGov-logoThe Institute for Civility in Government is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, grassroots non-profit organization founded in 1998, and is a member of NCDD. The Institute works to reduce the polarization of our political and legislative processes by facilitating dialogue, teaching respect, and building civility in both the public and private spheres. Our programs are a laboratory of civility, creating a model and setting a tone for each generation to experience and adopt as their own.

Maintaining civility makes life easier and more pleasant for everyone, but sometimes it can be a challenge. In response to popular demand, the Institute has developed and now offers online Civility Training based on our book, Reclaiming Civility in the Public Square – 10 Rules That Work.

The online course is divided into two sections. The first section teaches the ten rules. The second section provides real-life scenarios and then asks which of the ten rules are illustrated in the example given.

This short course helps people to not only be able to identify ten essential civility skills, but also to reflect on their application in daily life. The course has a wide range of applications, and is available for a small fee through the Institute’s website at www.instituteforcivility.org and/or at www.civilitytraining.org.

For more information, contact Cassandra Dahnke at 713-444-1254 or Tomas Spath at 281-782-4454, or email us at info@instituteforcivility.org.

NCDD Membership Rates Increasing Nov. 5th – Join or Renew Today!

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As many of you know, NCDD is a lean organization with a small staff, and we rely on the active support of NCDD members to continue our efforts and raise awareness of the innovations in engagement, dialogue and community-building taking place across the country. It is our strong and growing membership that enables us to add even more to what we can offer our members to support their work.

As part of our effort to step up the support we can offer to our members, we are planning to increase our membership dues on November 5th, the day after Election Day. That means that if you haven’t joined NCDD or renewed your membership, you need to do so today to lock in the lower rates!

Through November 4th (election day!), annual membership dues will stay at their current levels:

  • $25 for Student Membership
  • $50 for Individual Membership
  • $125 for Sustaining Membership
  • $150 for Organizational Membership

Starting November 5th, we will be using a new membership dues scale, and annual membership rates will be as follows:

  • $30 for Student/Young Professional Membership
  • $75 for Individual Membership
  • $150 for Sustaining Membership
  • $200 for Organizational Membership

But we are offering a great deal for those who join NCDD or renew their memberships between now and the 4th: if you join or renew before the new dues scale goes into place, you can lock in your dues at current membership levels for two years! Through November 4th, members will be allowed to prepay their dues at current rates and can avoid paying the new, higher dues for two years. It’s a great deal, so make sure to take advantage before it’s gone by visiting www.ncdd.org/join to join, renew, or upgrade your membership.

You can check what membership level you are currently by looking yourself up in the directory at www.ncdd.org/directory or on this chart (which shows all members’ renewal dates and member types). If you’re still not convinced that it’s worth it, then we encourage you to check out our member benefits page to get a sense of all of the great things your NCDD membership does for you. We think you’ll see why we are already over 2,100 members strong!

In these weeks leading up to the election, we have an opportunity to share what we know is not only possible, but is working, to reclaim our democracy. We hope you’ll take a few moments now to join or renew your membership and to help us spread the word and express your support for NCDD.