Author Archives: Sandy Heierbacher

More on our next Tech Tuesday event on Ethelo

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Our upcoming Tech Tuesday, on May 27th from 1:00 to 2:30 pm EST, introduces Ethelo—a new tool committed to pioneering progress on how collaborative thinking and decision making can occur online.

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeRegister now for this free online event, if you haven’t already!

Ethelo founder John Richardson and his team (which includes NCDD member Kathryn Thomson) will demonstrate how the Ethelo algorithm works and how it can enhance the work of D&D practitioners. Currently at Beta stage, Ethelo is offering NCDD members free access to the platform and asking for our input to help them refine its development as a powerful tool for dialogue and decision making.

Here is how they describe their work:

Ethelo (a Greek word which signifies deep intention) is designed to complement and support the power of deliberative dialogue. Traditional methods of getting to whole group support, such as consensus, are often exhaustive, time consuming, labor intensive processes. Other methods of gaining group support include some form of compromise–which leave many if not all members vaguely unsatisfied, or a majority vote rule which can leave nearly half of the members unhappy.

Ethelo’s online platform deepens and extends in-person public processes; it enables groups to think differently about the issue or decision at hand, and leads to a more thoughtful, more well supported outcome.

To preview how Ethelo works to identify the collective will of a group (whether that group is a family, an organization, or a whole community) here are some links to different examples:

  1. Ethelo-logoThe Condo Dispute—condo disputes can take up so much time and energy, even on minor issues. Click here to see how one contentious issue was resolved using Ethelo. This example will take about 5 minutes for you to work through.
  2. Group Holiday Decision—this one is also fairly quick to work through.
  3. Comfort Cove Community Center—this is a more complex decision, so you’ll want to set aside about 15 minutes to work through this one.

This webinar will be interactive, thanks to Ben Roberts and the Maestroconference platform, and you’ll have lots of opportunities to provide input and ask questions in large and small group settings. We hope you’ll join your Tech Tuesday hosts and the Ethelo team for this opportunity to learn about more about the potential of this innovative new tool for collaboration and decision making.

Call for Proposals for NCDD 2014!

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NCDD’s 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is coming up this October 17-19 in the DC metro area.

Table-group-600px-outlinedNCDD conferences bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada. 400 people attended our last national conference (Seattle in 2012), and we hope to beat that number this year!

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

Today we’re announcing our call for proposals for our concurrent sessions for NCDD 2014. We’re interested in finding many creative ways to highlight the best of what’s happening in public engagement, group process, community problem-solving, and arts-based dialogue — and we know you have lots of ideas!

Check out the Application for Session Leaders now to see what we ask for, and start cooking up those great proposals we’ve come to expect from you! For ideas, look over the results of our March Codigital experiment, where we asked the NCDD community to share what they’d like to see happen at NCDD 2014, and peruse the fabulous sessions offered at the 2012 and 2008 NCDD conferences.

We look forward to seeing what you’d like to offer! Please note that the deadline for proposals is Monday, June 16th.

Here is some guidance for those thinking about presenting sessions at NCDD 2014…

Our theme for the 2014 conference, Democracy for the Next Generation, invites us to build on all the innovative practices and tools that have been invigorating the dialogue and deliberation community in recent years. Now more than ever, we have both opportunity—and the increasing imperative—to bring this work to a much larger stage in order to build a stronger democracy that is able to address society’s most pressing challenges.

YoungLadiesWithMug-NCDDSeattleWhat do we want the next generation of our work to look like, and how can we work together to get there? We’ll address these questions through the 2014 NCDD conference goals:

  • Create new pathways, new partnerships, and new ways of thinking about how we can expand the scope of our work and find new ways to embed our practices in governance.
  • Provide attendees with insights and know-how for harnessing the emerging technologies that support dialogue and deliberation.
  • Connect seasoned practitioners to newcomers, for the benefit of all generations.
  • Inspire and invigorate attendees’ current work through exposure to new ideas and innovations in the field, and by boldly addressing how to break down persistent barriers to participation.
  • Map out the future tools of democracy that enable a thriving culture of engaged citizens and communities everywhere.

This “next generation” of democracy is the future that embodies the best of what we have to offer the world. Session presenters are strongly encouraged to help us explore these critical elements in moving the work of our community forward. Your proposal will be evaluated, in part, by its relevance to our theme and goals.

Some advice from the NCDD 2014 planning team for potential session leaders:

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

Portland2010-cafetableNot quite ready to draw up a proposal yet?
Use the comment field (and/or the NCDD listserv) to float your ideas by NCDDers and members of the planning team. We may be able to match you up with potential co-presenters who can address the same challenge or issue you’re interested in focusing on.

Look over the results of our March engagement project, where we used Codigital to get 122 members of the NCDD community contributing 95 ideas for the NCDD conference, editing the ideas 174 times, and ranking the ideas through 5290 votes. There is a wealth of ideas and insight in those results!

Deadline for submissions

Complete the session application at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2014/session-app by the end of the day on Monday, June 16th.

Members of the conference planning team will review the proposals and respond by email to the first contact listed in your proposal by the end of the day on July 9th.

A Public Voice 2014

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The Kettering Foundation’s annual DC event, “A Public Voice,” took place yesterday at the Newseum in Washington DC. The content of the event is off the record, so those from government can feel comfortable engaging in a deeper conversation in front of the audience that attends.

This year’s topic was Health Care: What Do We Want and How Can We Pay For It?, and the proceedings will inform the development of a National Issues Forums Institute discussion guide on this very timely and contentious issue. This roundtable panel bought together leaders with a deep understanding of healthcare policy, along with others who have similarly deep experience in engaging citizens on contentious public issues.

I was honored to have been asked to invite a dozen NCDD members to attend — members representing prominent organizations in our field and large networks of facilitators:

  1. Kyle Bozentko, Director of Policy and Research, Jefferson Center
  2. Courtney Breese, Board Member, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD)
  3. Steve Brigham, Former Executive Director, AmericaSpeaks
  4. Steve Clift, Executive Director, e-democracy.org
  5. David Isaacs, Co-Founder, The World Cafe
  6. Steven Kull, Founder and President, Voice of the People
  7. Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Executive Director, University of Arizona National Institute for Civil Discourse
  8. Martha McCoy, Executive Director, Everyday Democracy
  9. Bill Potapchuk, President, Community Building Institute
  10. Sarah Rubin, Program Manager, Institute for Local Government
  11. Steve Waddell, Executive Director, Networking Action
  12. Wendy Willis, Executive Director, Policy Consensus Initiative

I serve on the planning committee for A Public Voice, and also helped select the four panelists who represented the deliberative democracy community: Jean Johnson of Public Agenda and NIF, Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Val Ramos of Everyday Democracy, and Gloria Rubio-Cortes of the National Civic League.  In addition, I facilitated and helped organize a planning meeting at Kettering in February with about 8 of the NCDD representatives, to talk about their role in Public Voice and glean their valuable input for Kettering.

Here is a snapshot of most of the NCDD members who were present yesterday, including my invitees, the panelists, and some Kettering guests who are members of NCDD.

NCDD Group Attending Public Voice 2014

I also helped with the content of the event brochure and some great postcards that were distributed yesterday.  The event brochure included descriptions of the deliberative democracy organizations represented by my invitees.  It was designed to give policymakers who were present a sense of the breadth and expertise available to them if they are interested in engaging citizens more deeply.

The postcard (which I’m really excited about) features a map of the United States that highlights the areas where you will find members of the NCDD community, the National Issues Forums network, and Everyday Democracy community leaders. Look at all of the blue circles that represent NCDDers! The larger circles indicate a larger cluster of contacts.

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I really enjoyed yesterday’s event, and loved having the chance to introduce some new NCDD members to the Kettering crowd. NCDD is proud to be developing such a strong partnership with the Kettering Foundation, and we look forward to engaging more and more of you in our work with Kettering.

Registration open for our June 12th Confab with Peter Levine

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Confab bubble imageWe’re excited to have Peter Levine as our featured speaker on our next NCDD Confab call. Sign up today to reserve your spot on June’s Confab, which is set for 2-3pm Eastern (11-noon Pacific) on Thursday, June 12th.

We’ll be talking to Peter about his new book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America. This is an important book for us to discuss, and you have time to get your hands on a copy before the confab if you’d like (here’s the Amazon link).  I especially encourage you to check out Chapter 7, titled Strategies: How to Accomplish Civic Renewal, which is what we’ll dig into deepest on the call.

WeAreTheOnes-cover

Peter Levine is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Peter Levine’s We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For is a primer for anyone motivated to help revive our fragile civic life and restore citizens’ public role. After offering a novel theory of active citizenship, a diagnosis of its decline, and a searing critique of our political institutions, Levine–one of America’s most influential civic engagement activists–argues that American citizens must address our most challenging issues. People can change the norms and structures of their own communities through deliberative civic action.

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

More about the book…

In the book, Peter illustrates rich and effective civic work by drawing lessons from YouthBuild USA, Everyday Democracy, the Industrial Areas Foundation, and many other civic groups. Their organizers invite all citizens–including traditionally marginalized people, such as low-income teenagers-to address community problems. Levine explores successful efforts from communities across America as well as from democracies overseas.

He shows how cities like Bridgeport, CT and Allentown, PA have bounced back from the devastating loss of manufacturing jobs by drawing on robust civic networks. The next step is for the participants in these local efforts to change policies that frustrate civic engagement nationally. Filled with trenchant analysis and strategies for reform, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For analyzes and advocates a new citizen-centered politics capable of tackling problems that cannot be fixed in any other way.

A little more about Peter…

PeterLevine

Peter graduated from Yale in 1989 with a degree in philosophy. He studied philosophy at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, receiving his doctorate in 1992. From 1991 until 1993, he was a research associate at Common Cause. In the late 1990s, he was Deputy Director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal. Levine is the author of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America (Oxford University Press, fall 2013), five other scholarly books on philosophy and politics, and a novel.

He has served on the boards or steering committees of AmericaSpeaks, Street Law Inc., the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, Discovering Justice, the Kettering Foundation, the American Bar Association Committee’s for Public Education, the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium.

NCDD / IAP2 gathering at APA conference in Atlanta this Tuesday night

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For those of you attending the American Planning Association (APA) conference this week in Atlanta (and those of you based in/near Atlanta but not attending APA), be sure to participate in Tuesday night’s joint meetup for members of APA, NCDD and/or IAP2 USA who are interested in bridging the fields of public participation and planning.

The idea began with a listserv post by Ron Thomas on the NCDD Discussion list, where he expressed a desire to infuse the planning profession (and APA conferences) with a stronger understanding of highly participatory public engagement work.

NCDD members Myles Alexander (of Kansas State University’s Center for Engagement and Community Development) and Tim Bonnemann (of Intellitics, Inc. and the board of IAP2 USA), worked together to organize an informal gathering at APA — and all NCDD members are welcome to attend.

Tuesday, April 29 at 5pm
McCormick & Schmick’s  (http://bit.ly/QlnK1d/)
(One CNN Center)
190 Marietta St NW Atlanta

For more information, contact Myles Alexander at mylesks@ksu.edu or Ron Thomas at ronthom@ameritech.net.

Recognizing NCDD’s fabulous Office Manager, Joy Garman

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Today is “Administrative Professionals Day,” and I wanted to take a moment to thank our amazing office manager, Joy Garman.

JoyWithCake-borderMany of you hear from Joy when you first join the Coalition, when it’s time to renew, when you have a question about sending dues or conference registration fees, and when we need a new bio from you. Joy started working with NCDD in 2006 soon after Andy and I moved from Vermont to Pennsylvania, and we’re now completely dependent on her!  :)

Joy manages our Quickbooks, she manages the database, and keeps the membership rolls in good standing. She helps our Board with our financial statements, gets them metrics on membership, and does tons of other things that keep NCDD functioning.

She is a godsend, truly, and she is one of the sweetest and most positive people I’ve ever met.

GarmanKids-border

Joy actually lives right down the street from us, and does most of her work from home like Andy and I do. She comes to our place and does her “office hours” once a week for a couple of hours, when she processes checks and receipts, checks in with me about various tasks, and perhaps most importantly, brings her amazing energy to our workspace. (I love my husband, but working together all the time can be, let’s say, challenging sometimes — and Joy helps more than she knows!)

Joy manages her family of six (she has four adorable kids, all of whom are extraordinary and super-sweet like their mom) and her NCDD work beautifully, and finds time to be active in the community as well. We feel so lucky to have found Joy, and wanted to recognize her today. Thank you, Joy!!!

Important 10-question survey for NCDD volunteers and contractors

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To all members of the NCDD community:

With our small staff and modest budget over the years, we’ve always relied on NCDD members to step forward as volunteers to plan the national and regional conferences, organize our online events, host our book clubs, contribute content to the website, create videos, provide each other with advice, and so much more.  We are a Coalition after all, and that’s part of our culture.

I hope you’ve noticed that NCDD has a lot going on these days — now more than ever before, from my vantage point. We have our new member map and directory, regular confab calls and tech tuesdays, lots of rich collaborative projects like Creating Community Solutions (the national dialogue on mental health project) and the CommunityMatters partnership, a news blog that keeps getting better and better.  And we want to keep up this momentum as well as the high quality of our activities and products.

NCDDSeattle-GRs-borderWe’re looking to create a go-to list of NCDD members we can tap into when we need volunteers — and when we have opportunities to contract with NCDD members.

There are many opportunities on the horizon for you to participate more deeply in NCDD.  We’ll need researchers and report writers, people who can theme and summarize the best listserv conversations and blog threads, people who can help us do systems mapping and geo-mapping, people who can interview leaders in the field for the blog, collect mini case stories for the Dialogue Storytelling Tool, share their own stories and cases, do graphic recording, help manage our social media accounts, and so much more.

Some tasks will be volunteer tasks, of course, but some that require a greater time commitment or a specialized skill set will be compensated.

If you’re interested in volunteering or contracting with NCDD in the coming months and years, please take a few minutes and fill out the 10-question survey that’s up at:

www.surveymonkey.com/s/ncdd-rolodex

This survey will help us develop a rolodex of great members who are willing to be contacted about volunteer and paid opportunities that arise, based on your skills, experience and interests.

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation a key player in Thursday’s Text Talk Act

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We’re excited to announce that Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation is partnering with Creating Community Solutions to promote youth participation in Thursday’s Text Talk Act event! How cool is that?

BornThisWayFdn-Partner

We hope many of you are planning on participating on Thursday. For those of you still on the fence, please join in and hold at least one TTA conversation.  All you need is 3 people, a smartphone, and about an hour, anytime on the 24th.  Anyone can participate, though involving young people is especially encouraged.

If you are planning on hosting a Text Talk Act conversation on Thursday, do us a favor and add yourself to the Creating Community Solutions map! After logging in/creating an account on the Creating Community Solutions site, click on the “Add your dialogue to the map” button under the “Dialogues” tab — or just click here).

Learn more about Text Talk Act here, and sign up today.

NCDD is part of the collaboration running the Creating Community Solutions national dialogue effort aimed at tackling mental health issues in our communities, along with these other NCDDers:  National Institute for Civil Discourse, Everyday Democracy, National Issues Forums Institute, AmericaSpeaks and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Check out all of our previous posts on Creating Community Solutions here.

Free online events coming up from the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation

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We’ve got some great activities coming up in the next few months, and I wanted to extend a warm welcome to everybody who works in dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement to participate. Our events are not exclusive to NCDD members (though we hope they’d make you want to join!).

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeThis Tuesday at 2pm EST (11 PST), we have a 1-hour “Tech Tuesday” event with Colleen Hardwick, who will walk us through a cool engagement technology called PlaceSpeak (learn more and register at www.ncdd.org/14552).

This Thursday you don’t want to miss the opportunity to participate in Text Talk Act — a project of Creating Community Solutions, a partnership we’ve involved in that’s part of Obama’s national dialogue on mental health. This innovative project uses the fun and convenience of text messaging to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people. Learn more here about our strategy this round for working with youth organizers.

Next month on May 27th at 1pm EST (10am PST), our Tech Tuesday focuses on Ethelo Decisions, an exciting new tool that helps people weigh options and make decisions about public problems (www.ncdd.org/14562).

And we’re excited that for our June “confab call” (on the 12th at 2pm EST), our special guest is leading scholar Peter Levine, who will be talking with us about his new book on the democracy movement, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America. (Registration will be up soon for this special confab.)

You can see a list of all NCDD’s upcoming events at www.ncdd.org/events (including our national conference in the fall!), and you can always go to www.ncdd.org/tag/confab-archives to check out recordings of past confabs and tech tuesdays.

ThankYouImageAlso, I want to give a special shout-out to NCDD Board member Susan Stuart Clark, who is helping to manage the Tech Tuesday events, and to supporting member Ben Roberts, who is working with us to use Maestroconference with Tech Tuesday presenters who don’t have their own webinar protocol.  Thank you, Susan and Ben!!!

Request your free copy of David Mathews’ new book The Ecology of Democracy

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Our friends at the Kettering Foundation are offering to send complimentary copies of David Mathews’ new book out to anyone in the NCDD community who requests one.

Ecology-coverAs you may know, David Mathews is president of the Kettering Foundation and former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Ford administration. I know him personally, and he’s an extremely kind, thoughtful, intelligent, and humble guy.

The Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future is for people who care deeply about their communities and their country but worry about problems that endanger their future and that of their children. Jobs are disappearing, or the jobs people want aren’t available. Health care costs keep going up, and the system seems harder to navigate. Many worry that our schools aren’t as good as they should be. The political system is mired in hyperpolarization. Citizens feel pushed to the sidelines.

Rather than giving in to despair and cynicism, some Americans are determined to have a stronger hand in shaping their future. Suspicious of big reforms and big institutions, they are starting where they are with what they have.

From the introduction:

This book is about people who are trying to help our country realize its dream of democracy with freedom and justice. However, they would never describe themselves that way: it would be far too grandiose. They would just say they are trying to solve a problem or make their community a better place.

This book is also for governmental and nongovernmental organizations, as well as educational institutions that are trying to engage these citizens. Their efforts aren’t stopping the steady erosion of public confidence, so they are looking for a different kind of public participation.

The book is divided into three sections — Democracy Reconsidered (Part I), Citizens and Communities (Part II), and Institutions, Professionals, and the Public (Part III).  It is chock-full of ideas about how the work of democracy can be done in ways that put more control in the hands of citizens and help restore the legitimacy of our institutions.

The 230-page book can be ordered from the Kettering Foundation here for $15.95. A 16-page preview is also available as a free download.

To get a free copy of the book mailed to you, send an email to customerservice@ait.net with your mailing address and a note that you’re affiliated with NCDD.