Author Archives: Roshan Bliss

Nominations Open for IAP2 USA Board

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IAP2 logo

NCDD is a powerful network of some of the most active and innovative public engagement professionals and practitioners out there, and we are excited to have the opportunity to use the power of our network to find a new board member for our partners at the International Association for Public Participation’s US branch (IAP2 USA).

IAP2 USA just announced today on their blog that the organization is accepting nominations for new board members, and we would be thrilled to see some of our great NCDD members being nominated. Do you have a friend, colleague, or mentor who is dedicated to growing the public participation field? Then submit your nomination today! You can read the IAP2 USA announcement in full below or find the original post on their blog here.

Help us fill the IAP2 USA Board

The 2013 Board of IAP2 USA is seeking nominations for our 2014 board. Who do you know that will help our organization fulfill its potential? A professional colleague? A respected co-worker? Maybe it’s YOU!

Our Board is a working board that continues to expand the services and offerings to our IAP2 USA members. We work both with U.S. members and internationally on initiatives to advance the practice. In our third year as an affiliate of our international organization, we continue to evolve collaborating with our members and other organizations as the preeminent organization in this field. To realize our aspirations to remain a vibrant new organization, we invite you to consider the following attributes for new Board members:

  • Geographic and ethnic diversity
  • Diverse professional backgrounds, from government, academia, non-profits, private sectors, including those who work in the field, and those in related fields
  • Strong work ethic and willingness to bring their full talents and energies to the work of IAP2 USA
  • Public participation experience in private, public, non-profits, and grassroots volunteer work

We hope for a pool of candidates for the Board with institutional memory and new ideas and experiences — a diverse pool from which members will elect a new Board responsive to their needs.

Board Nomination Timeline 

Deadline for nominations: November 30th 

Voting will take place: December 4-15th  

Announcement of new IAP2 USA Board: December 20th 

Click here for the nomination form.

If you have questions about the board, nominations or application, please contact Doug Zenn, Zenn Associates, 503-256 -7222, dzenn@zennassociates.com

Dialogue Insights and Trainings from Public Conversations

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pcp_logoWe read a great piece recently from our friends and organizational members at the Public Conversations Project reminding us about the importance of intentionally preparing ourselves for difficult conversations and presenting new training opportunities to hone our preparedness. Dialogue, deliberation, and other forms of public engagement aren’t always about moving forward together – sometimes we have to work through heavy issues or open conflicts between groups.

As Public Conversations’ Bob Stains writes in the article, if we aren’t ready for the emotions and reactions these conversations can provoke, it can derail the whole dialogue:

…The more intensely I care [about the subject of the dialogue], the higher the conversational stakes, the more likely it is I’ll say something I regret. The thing I’ve said that causes regret is almost always an automatic comeback: a knee-jerk reaction rather than an intentional response, usually defending myself or attacking the other in some way. My reactions in those moments can set others off and then sweep us along a downward-spiraling pathway to pointless argument, misunderstanding and damaged relationships. As I look back on those moments, I wish I’d been able to approach them differently.

Many of us have seen this happen before, or even been the ones reacting from a less-than-productive place, and it reminds us that being prepared for dialogue is ongoing work.

Lucky for us, the Pubic Conversations Project announced in the same post that it will be offering two new two new workshops for the first time this spring called Preparing to Succeed and Facilitating Public Meetings. These trainings will focus on preparing for and facilitating difficult public meetings that will help practitioners show up and perform at their highest level. These two new trainings will be added to Public Conversations’ Fall 2013 – Spring 2014 workshop schedule for trainings on dialogue design, skillful facilitation, powerful practices of inquiry, and more. And NCDD members get a 15% discount on all Public Conversations trainings, so make sure to let them know you’re with us!

But you don’t have to wait until Spring to get new dialogue tools. We’ll leave you with some of the great preparation tips that Bob shared in his blog piece. Next time you’re getting ready for dialogue, consider thinking back to these kinds of questions:

You can prepare for a hard conversation by yourself or with a partner by asking reflective questions. Here are some sample questions from The Uncertain Path to Dialogue: A Meditation, an article by Founding Associate Sallyann Roth:

  • What do I do that shuts others down?
  • What makes it possible for me to listen to them?
  • How can I keep from being taken over by the belief that the other person or group is really the problem?

And more questions to ponder from our pre-dialogue preparatory interview process:

  • When have you had a constructive conversation with someone with whom you disagree on this issue?
  • What aspects or qualities of yourself to you want to make sure to bring out, and what do you want to make sure to restrain in order for you to be at your best in the upcoming conversation?

Finally, simply taking some time to think about your purposes for engaging in the conversation will go a long way. What do you care about? What are you hoping for? What do you want to make sure to avoid? How do you want the relationship to be after this conversation? Stepping back and reflecting on these and other questions beforehand can help you respond intentionally rather than automatically. It can prevent future regrets about things said and turn a potentially destructive conversation into one of mutual learning, understanding and respect.

We hope you can put some of these reflections to use in your own work. You can find the full post on the Public Conversations Project blog, Doing Dialogue, by clicking here: blog.publicconversations.org/preparing-to-connect/#.UoGP_Pl-TS0.

Webinar on Community Discussions & NIF Guides

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NIF-logoLast week, the American Library Association (ALA) hosted a one-hour webinar titled Guides for Community Discussions: National Issues Forums (NIF) and Others designed to help public conveners find out more about issue books, videos, and other guides available to help them bring their communities together to talk in productive, civil, and interesting ways. The webinar focused specifically on the resources provided by our partners at the National Issues Forums Institute.

If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry! The recording is now available online, and you can find it by clicking here. You can still hear the great insights and information shared by presenters Carolyn Caywood, and Nancy Kranich, both from ALA’s Center for Civic Life, and Patty Dineen from the National Issues Forum Institute. They review and show examples of available discussion-starting materials, describe how these guides can support engaging library programs, and give examples of how librarians have used them in their communities.

This webinar was the fifth in a civic engagement series produced by Programming Librarian and is sponsored by the ALA Center for Civic Life.  We encourage you to can find our more about the first four webinars at www.programminglibrarian.org/civic-engagement.html#.Ui9qXGRgZ38.

You can find out more about this webinar by checking out NIFI’s initial announcement of the webinar or its recent post about the recordings.

Moving the “Delibertainment” Conversation Forward

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Catalyst AwardsWe were pleased as punch to see the Real Dialogues Project, one of the winners of the 2012 NCDD Catalyst Awards, reach an important milestone last week – they hosted their very first Google hangout discussion! We encourage you to check out their post and the short video about the conversation here.

We also wanted to share a related write up on an interesting article from the Journal for Public Deliberation on public engagement in news media. We are inspired to see growing amounts of discourse on this “deliberative television” or “delibertainment” model that Real Dialogues is pioneering. You can read the write up below, or you can find the original post by NCDD organizational member Tim Bonnemann on his Intellitics blog.

Deliberative Television

The latest edition of the Journal for Public Deliberation features an interesting article by Ashley Muddiman and Matthew R. Meier that discusses how using citizen panels might be applied to “refocus news outlets on their fundamentally democratic functions and foster a more engaged and deliberative citizenry”: Deliberative Television: Encouraging Substantive, Citizen-Driven News.

Abstract:

With Americans’ confidence in the news media dwindling, the quality of programming declining, and audiences turning elsewhere, the American news media is at a crossroads. We argue that news outlets should consider a new form of deliberation-based programming for local news coverage as a means of responding to these problems. As a basis for the programming, we build on public journalism (Rosen & Merritt, 1994) and deliberative citizen panels (Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy, & Walsh, 2013). By engaging citizens in the production of news, media outlets not only stand to gain viewers by increasing the quality of their issue coverage, but they also could secure their claim as a public institution providing a valuable public good. We urge media outlets to consider turning to citizen panels to determine which issues are salient and to engage in structured deliberations about those issues, which can be captured and built into content packages for use in news programming. In so doing, news outlets can help activate viewers by positioning them not as passive consumers but as engaged citizens prepared for public deliberation.

The authors note:

We believe that the problems facing local news can be overcome by changing the content of local news programming. In particular, we suggest news content be built on three components: emphasizing state and local issues, engaging citizens in the production process, and maintaining audiences by relying on an alternative format.

They outline the following general process:

  1. Host a so-called priority conference, whereby randomly selected citizens decide what issues to cover
  2. Host a “citizen jury” (using the 2010 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review pilot project as a guide), whereby participants learn about the issues, deliberate with each other and form a range of opinions.
  3. “Soft news” coverage of steps 1 and 2
  4. Various options for further content implementation:
  • Develop content into a weekly stand-alone program with each episode focusing on a new issue
  • Create regularly occurring segments for broadcast in traditional news programs
  • Substantive web- or app-based interactivity

With regard to interactivity, I would specifically add the many opportunities digital engagement has to offer when it comes to turning viewers into participants. With the right setup, viewers could be brought into the deliberative process and that, in turn, could become part of the programming, thus creating a virtuous cycle of deliberative television!

In related news, a recent report by AmericaSpeaks also talks about new ways in which the news media might support citizen engagement and collaborative governance: Integrating News Media, Citizen Engagement, and Digital Platforms Towards Democratic Ends (PDF)

The article’s section titled “What can news media do?” (page 3) outlines four functions that news media might support to “bring greater citizen engagement and connection to decision-making and governance”. The authors suggest that “news media will need to find ways to heighten the entertainment value of the presentation” and bring up the idea of “a reality-TV show where popular participants work together to understand and react to current news events.” The authors further suggest that “second screen polling technologies can be used in conjunction with [...] the aforementioned reality-TV show” as a way to give citizens the chance to participate in decision-making in order to help them “fully understand the complexities of policy making”.

The report concludes:

Many of us in the world of deliberative democracy and citizen engagement have sought ways to institutionalize stronger links between citizens and decision makers within government. While those efforts should continue, building infrastructure and capacity for more informed, citizen-based decision-making and action within other sectors is needed. The news media and the evolution of digital platforms and engagement tools provide a powerful opportunity for this.

News media and deliberative democracy share an understanding of the importance of strengthening the connections between citizens and government to promote a healthy democracy. Though they have viewed this connection in different ways and employed very different implementation methods, both need to learn from each other, shift their approaches, and create something new together to accomplish the shared goal of engaging ever larger numbers of people, especially from the political center, in governance and strengthening our democracy.

Both the JPD article and the AmericaSpeaks report fit in perfectly with the work we’ve been doing as part of the Real Dialogues project. We’re prototyping on a shoestring budget, of course, but if things go well we should be able to validate a first few key pieces of the bigger delibertainment puzzle.

Stay tuned!

Find Tim’s original post here: www.intellitics.com/blog/2013/11/07/deliberative-television.

Pledge to Help Foster Respectful Dialogue

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LRC-logoAs an organization, NCDD is not in the habit of supporting online petitions. But when Joan Blades, a supporting NCDD member and a co-founder of Living Room Conversations and MoveOn.org, reached out to us to support a petition she recently created, we immediately recognized its value for our work and knew that it was something our members could support.

That’s why we are encouraging NCDD members to join us in signing and sharing Joan’s petition, which is a commitment to make a simple pledge. It states:

I pledge to help our leaders and our communities to engage in respectful dialogue and to look for ways to solve problems cooperatively. Doing this, we can create better answers to all the challenges we face.

As people committed to the work of engaging every day people in their communities and in a broader democracy through dialogue and deliberation, many of us in NCDD have probably already made such a commitment, at least to ourselves. But by making it publicly and encouraging others to do the same, we might be able to bring even more people into our work who will make or renew that commitment to keep improving the ways we solve our problems as a society.

Joan and her colleagues have framed this effort as an effort to tackle the deep polarization present in our nation and especially among our political leaders. As dialogue and engagement practitioners, it is clear to us that the political dysfunction we have seen in recent months and years stems from this polarization and a lack of willingness or ability to engage with “the other side” in our politics. But we also know that the solution involves moving toward greater collaboration and real relationship building.

So we are proud to join Joan, Living Room Conversations, and MoveOn.org in renewing our commitment to help our leaders and our communities engage in respectful dialogue and cooperation. We hope you will join us, too.

You can find and share the pledge by visiting http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/healing-the-heart-of.

Here’s hoping this is a spark that starts something bigger.

Job Announcement from the Jefferson Center

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NCDD is a network filled with impressive and capable people, and we are sometimes asked to share job announcements by organizations looking for just our kinds of folks. We have been impressed by the democracy work being done by the good people at the Jefferson Center for New Democratic Processes in Minnesota (an NCDD organizational member), so we are pleased to be able to share their newest job opening with you. We encourage anyone from NCDD to consider the position, and wish all applicants the best of luck! 

Jefferson Center – Program Associate

JeffersonCenterLogo

The mission of the Jefferson Center for New Democratic Processes is to strengthen democracy by improving civic discourse and advancing informed, citizen-led solutions to public policy issues. The Jefferson Center envisions a democracy where citizens interact genuinely with public institutions and officials, and where public input becomes an essential component of decision-making dynamics through the implementation and support of deliberative processes and initiatives.

Job Title: Program Associate – Exempt Position

Location: Twin Cities – Full Time

Opening Date for Applications: November 6, 2013

Closing Date for Applications: November 28, 2013

Summary

The Program Associate position supports the Co-Director functions by assisting in policy research and outreach efforts, researching funding opportunities, drafting grant proposals, preparing printed and electronic materials for fundraising and programs, assisting with project implementation tasks, and completing other duties as assigned.

Responsibilities & Duties Breakdown

  1. Research and policy analysis (25%),
  2. Program Assistance (25%),
  3. Fund Development (20%)
  4. Communications (20%),
  5. Other (10%)

Qualifications

  1. Bachelor’s degree in political science or related field; Master’s degree in public policy desirable.
  2. Minimum 2-4 years work experience, preferably in nonprofits.
  3. Outstanding interpersonal skills, including the ability to successfully interact with a wide range of individuals.
  4. Excellent oral and written communication skills.
  5. Strong computer skills, including standard MS Office and Salesforce/cloud-based software formats, strong internet research and data management skills required. Previous experience with Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, and Dreamweaver), WordPress, and basic HTML/CSS coding ability preferred, but not required.
  6. Strong organizational and presentation skills, including the ability to maintain and synthesize large volumes of information into comprehensible summaries and reports.
  7. Exceptional curiosity and intellectual capacity.
  8. Strong interest in governmental reform.
  9. Willingness to travel to various locations across Minnesota and other states.

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

Valid driver’s license required for travel to community sites (some out of state).

Please send cover letter and resume to: annettescotti@hrtechies.com. Questions, please call: 612-414-4537 

Will Decreasing the Voting Age Increase Engagement?

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takoma voteIn honor of Election Day, I thought it would be appropriate to share a recent development I heard about from a Washington Post article that might interest some in the NCDD community: today, the country’s first 16- and 17-year old voters will legally cast their ballots.

It might be that is a bit hard for many to believe, but the city of Takoma Park, Maryland’s election information page confirms the fact, saying,

In 2013, the Takoma Park City Council amended the City Charter to update Takoma Park’s voting and election laws. The amendment expanded the right to vote in City elections to 16 and 17 year old residents…

Earlier this year, the City of Takoma Park, Maryland began considering lowering the voting age to 16 years old instead of 18, and in May, officially made the change to the city’s charter. The change was made by Takoma Park’s city council — and contentiously for some, not by its voters — with a very specific logic.

The reasoning for the decision, which is listed in the amendment to the city’s charter, states that

…allowing 16 and 17 year olds to register and vote will enable them to fully participate in City elections while in high school and before leaving home, thereby encouraging the establishment of a life-long habit of voting.

The Takoma Park city council hopes that by allowing younger people to vote, it will not only increase voter turn out in its elections, but that the people who begin voting so young will develop civic habits that will stick with them.

To me, the reasoning seems sound. If young people are able to engage meaningfully in the political system during formative high school years while they still have the support and encouragement of teachers and parents, they will probably think more about voting and participating in other public forums in the future after they’ve left home.

What’s most exciting to me about this change is that it conceivably opens up space for young people to cut their teeth in civic engagement by participating in local school board elections. It’s not hard to imagine young people being engaged far beyond simply voting if they had a real say in a school board races. They would be the primary stakeholders, after all, because the decision would impact them more directly than maybe any other kind of political competition. Just think how different school board campaigns would look if many of the voters deciding the outcome were current students.

But does the reasoning of the Takoma Park city council hold up? Will letting younger people vote really increase voting and other forms of public engagement in the long run? Would you want to see this kind of change in your community? How do you think it would change the civic sphere where you live if 16- and 17-year olds could vote? Could this be potentially negative?

Interestingly, Takoma Park has been pushing the envelope on engaging its residents by expanding voting rights for some time now. Not only did 16- and 17-year olds gain the right to vote, but this year’s amendment also reestablished the right for convicted felons who had completed their sentences as a way to facilitate their re-engagement with their communities.

In addition, and much more controversially, the Takoma Park website also notes that

Residents of Takoma Park who are not United States citizens have been eligible to register and vote in City elections since 1993.

All of this raises questions about whether and how simply letting more people vote will change the way that the public participates in the broader civic sphere.

What do you think? Can expanding voter franchise increase public engagement? What do these sorts of changes mean for our field? Let us know what you think in the comment section, or share your ideas on NCDD’s Facebook discussion page!

Int’l Course on Participatory Methods in India, Spring 2014

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This post was submitted by NCDD member Varun Vidyarthi of the Manavodaya Institute of Participatory Development 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!

manavodaya

You’re invited to participate in a two-week program titled “People Based Development – Concept and Practice” is a unique experience in participatory development in India. It combines inputs in classroom with field visits involving direct interaction with villagers. This will be the seventeenth international course at the Manavodaya Institute that is known for its pioneering contribution to the self help movement in India.

The program is based on the following lessons learned at Manavodaya:

  • Participatory development is a process that builds on people’s own capacity and resources and it can be initiated by outsiders through deep dialogue.
  • The process of participatory development is feasible even among the very poor and illiterate.
  • A successful participatory development process requires a clear vision, strategy, and suitable values among facilitators of the process.
  • Participants from earlier programs have used the method among refugees in Norway as well as people with learning disabilities in the UK.

For more info about Manavodaya’s work you can find their website at www.manavodaya.org.in, visit Manavodaya’s Facebook page, or check out their informative and inspiring video below:

New Round of Grants from the Taylor Willingham Legacy Fund

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We’d like to encourage all NCDD members to consider applying for a grant from — or donating to — the Taylor L. Willingham Legacy Fund. You can find out more about Taylor, her work in deliberation, and her legacy here. The original NIFI announcement can be found by clicking here.

NIF-logo

Applications are now being accepted for grants from the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) to enable individuals to develop an understanding of deliberative democracy and to launch one or more deliberative forums in their communities or organizations. Grants are expected to be in the range of $500-$1,000.

Applications should consist of:

  1. A completed application form — click on the download link above for a copy;
  2. A resume describing your experience and education;
  3. A cover letter that explains why you are interested in becoming involved in the deliberative democracy movement and what specific course of action you propose to become familiar with this work and how and where you would implement forums; and
  4. A budget indicating how the grant would be spent.

Applications are welcomed from any U.S. resident, with special consideration given to residents of Texas. The application should be received on or by November 15, 2013.  Applications may be either faxed to Bill Muse at 937-428-5353,  e-mailed to bmuse@nifi.org, or mailed to:

National Issues Forums Institute
100 Commons Road
Dayton, Ohio 45459

Grants will be made by January 15, 2014 and will be for use during 2014. A report on activities will be required on or before November 30, 2014. You can find the application here.

Click here for more information about Taylor L. Willingham and her work.

Donations to the fund are welcome and can be made securely online. All donated money will go toward grant awards.

Making Engagement More Fun with CommunityMatters

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CM_logo-200pxCivic engagement and public participation can often be dry, boring, and even down right tedious, and many of us have struggled to find ways to make civic engagement more fun. Some have found interesting ways to do it, but for many of us, it’s hard to think of new ways to jazz up our work.

But that’s why our partners at CommunityMatters have been thinking and talking over the past month about how we can make our work of building and engaging community more fun. They have already started by helping show that engagement can be fun with their list of 75 ways to make your town more playful and their “leaderboard” for playful engagement projects.

And CM is continuing to help stimulate and grow those fun ways to engage with the second installment of their “Let’s Play!” conference call series, “Creating Fun Places“.  If you missed the first installment in the call series, “Making Engagement Way More Fun“, don’t worry! You can find and listen to audio of the entire call by clicking here.

The “Creating Fun Places” call is coming up November 14th from 4 – 5pm Eastern and will feature two great fun instigators who will share insights on bringing play into normal public spaces:

Public spaces bring our cities and towns to life – they’re where we gather with friends, take breaks from the office and bask in the sunshine on a warm summer day. But much of the public realm is lifeless and overly utilitarian. Wouldn’t it be nice if parking lots could make you smile, or if transit stops were so fun that you sort of hope the bus will be late?

On the next free CommunityMatters conference call, we’ll hear from Mike Lanza of Playborhood and Brian Corrigan of Oh Heck Yeah. They’re working on creative placemaking strategies to turn ordinary places into fun-filled ones. Join us on Thursday, November 14th from 4-5pm for great ideas on making your city or town a more playful place.

We encourage everyone to register now for the conference call, which promises to be both informative and, of course, fun! We know it will be a great break from the work week, so we look forward to having you join us on the call!