Category Archives: field news

Call for D&D Showcase Presenters at NCDD 2016

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NCDD is excited to announce that we’ll once again be holding our popular “D&D Showcase” during the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and we are looking for presenters!

yardsign_300pxThe D&D Showcase is a lively cocktail networking event that provides an opportunity for select individuals and organizations in our field to share some of the leading ideas, tools, projects, and initiatives in dialogue & deliberation with conference participants all in one space. It’s a fun way for conference-goers to meet some of the movers-and-shakers in D&D and hear about the projects, programs, and tools that are making waves in our work.

How the Showcase will work

Showcase presenters display simple “posters” about their work, tools, or projects and bring handouts and business cards to share with participants who are interested in learning more or following up. Showcase presenters will be ready to succinctly express what’s important for conference participants to know about their resource, method, research, program, etc. and to elaborate and answer any questions people may have.

During the 90-minute Showcase event, conference participants will stroll around the ballroom, chatting with presenters, and checking out their displays and picking up Showcase2014-2handouts. We’ll also have finger foods and beverages available as well as a cash bar, adding to the social atmosphere of the session.

The Showcase is a great chance to strike up conversations with leaders in the field and other conference participants who are strolling around the room, perusing the “wares.”

You can get a good sense of what the Showcase is like by watching this slideshow from our 2012 conference in Seattle.

You can also see Janette Hartz-Karp and Brian Sullivan presenting at the 2008 Showcase event here (back when we called it the “D&D Marketplace”), and check out the video of Noam Shore, Lucas Cioffi, and Wayne Burke presenting their online tools here.

Showcase2014-1Becoming a Showcase Presenter

The conference planning team is hard at work planning NCDD 2016, and one of our upcoming steps includes selecting people and organizations who are passionate about sharing tools and programs we know will interest our attendees as presenters during the Showcase. If you are interested in having your tool, project, idea, or work being featured in the Showcase, please email our conference manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org and include: what it is you would like to showcase, a brief description of it, any links to where more information can be found, and any questions you have.

Please note that these slots are very competitive, and we will be favoring Showcase presentations that relate to the conference theme, Bridging Our Divides. So if your work, project, or tool focuses on helping people work across persistent divisions in our society, we definitely want to hear from you!

If you are selected as a D&D Showcase presenter, you’ll be expected to:

  • Register for NCDD 2016 and attend the conference.
  • Prepare a quick spiel or “elevator speech” about your Showcase topic that will get people interested in learning more. Practice it until it comes out naturally. We suggest you prepare several introductions of different lengths (30 seconds, 1 minute, etc.) so you can adjust quickly to different circumstances during the Showcase.
  • Showcase2014-4Prepare a simple, visually interesting poster and bring it with you to the conference.
  • Bring handouts about your program, method, online tool, publication, etc. that include further details.
  • Have any laptop-dependent pieces of your Showcase presentation finished, functional, and ready to share (you’ll need to bring your own computer).
  • Show up for the Showcase session about 20 minutes early so we have time to make sure everyone is set up and has everything they need.

You can find more information and advice for Showcase presenters on our Conference FAQ page here.

We are looking forward to having another informative and inspirational D&D Showcase this year, so we hope you’ll consider applying to be a presenter or urging your colleagues who are doing ground-breaking and critical work in the field to do so. We can’t wait to see all of the cutting-edge projects showcased in October!

NCDD is the New Steward for Conversation Café! – Now What?

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In case you haven’t heard, the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has become the new steward of Conversation Café (CC). Andy has revamped the CC website, which you can check out at www.conversationcafe.org, and we are in the process of reconnecting with the CC network and figuring out how we can best support and grow this important community.

NCDD’s Sandy Heierbacher and Keiva Hummel will be spearheading this effort, so feel free to contact either of us if you have questions or want to help out!

We’ve created a new one-way announcement list to share news about Conversation Café happenings once in a while (no more than monthly). We encourage all of you to subscribe to that list if you have some interest in CC’s by sending a blank email to conversation-cafe-subscribe-request@lists.ncdd.org.

If you’re a Conversation Cafe host or promoter (or want to be) also consider joining the new Cafe-Community listserv – a discussion list we’ve modeled after the NCDD Discussion list to encourage CC leaders to network, share information, and discuss key issues facing the CC community. To join that list, send a blank email to cafe-community-subscribe-request@lists.ncdd.org.

Why does NCDD feels it’s important to support Conversation Café?

Back in March 2014, we had an amazing conversation with the NCDD community on the blog here about whether we should play this role, and though there were many eloquent arguments both for and against NCDD becoming the new stewards for the CC method, we decided in the end that it was important to help this elegantly simple approach survive and thrive – and we hope you can support our decision!

We think Conversation Café is a wonderful model for dialogue that can and should be widely adopted across the U.S. and the globe. Our vision for Conversation Café, in part, is that it be used to help communities address national and local crises that call for immediate dialogue.

We think CCs are nimble, accessible, and elegantly simple enough to be used very quickly by many people, and NCDD is particularly well equipped to help new CC groups use other forms of dialogue and deliberation when the time is right.

We also just want to see more people, in more places, engaging regularly in conversations that matter, and feel that Conversation Café is uniquely suited to helping make this happen.

In addition to subscribing to the announcement list or discussion list mentioned above, we strongly encourage any of you who have hosted CCs to take a minute and complete the quick form at www.conversationcafe.org/main-survey to tell us a little about your work and interests. Our main interest right now is to learn about what is currently (and has been) going on in the Conversation Café community, and this would help us a great deal!

Don’t Forget to Contribute to Our Survey of the D&D Field!

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Small green NCDD logoAs we recently announced, NCDD is teaming up with the Kettering Foundation to conduct an Inventory Survey of the D&D and public engagement field, and you’re all encouraged to participate! In addition to just getting a better sense of the state of our field, our hope is to use the results to create a map of facilitators and organizations that can be searched by location, the approaches you use, and the issues you specialize in. The map would be designed to help folks outside of the field connect with your consultancy or organization.

But we can’t build this amazing resource for the field without practitioners taking this easy 15-minute survey, so please fill it out today!

Click here to complete the Inventory for Individuals

Click here to complete the Inventory for Organizations

If you or your organization does any kind of dialogue or deliberation work, we ask that you take the time to complete this survey as soon as possible. Remember, you do NOT have to be a member of NCDD to participate – we want perspectives from as many practitioners as possible.

We look forward to hearing all of your insights in the survey!

Participate in NCDD’s Field-Wide Inventory!

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What if we knew how many dialogue and deliberation events took place in a typical year? (Or at least had SOME way to guess!) What if we had a sense of which approaches people in the D&D community specialized in and had training in? What if we had a sense of when practitioners and organizations in our field were more likely to collaborate with their peers?

NCDD2012-wFranKorten-borderNCDD’s Inventory Survey was designed to get answers to these questions and more, and we invite you to participate! The results will be shared with our partner in this project, the Kettering Foundation, and will be summarized and distributed widely in the field.

It is our hope to also use some of this data to create a broad-based map of facilitators and organizations, searchable by location, approach used, and issues you specialize in. This map is part of our strategy to connect more people to the facilitation expertise they need, much more quickly than is possible today. We believe that now, more than ever, the skills of dialogue and deliberation are needed to address pressing issues in communities across the country, often in a very quick time frame.

If you or your organization does any kind of dialogue or deliberation work, we ask that you take the time to complete this survey as soon as possible. It should only take you 15 minutes or less to complete and is NOT limited to members of the NCDD community or those based only in the U.S.

Let’s see what we can learn about this vital field!

Take the Survey on the State of Public Participation Practice

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Recently, NCDD member supporting member John Godec shared on the NCDD Discussion Listserv that he is conducting a survey of public participation practitioners on the state of the profession. The survey is a valuable way to gain some insight into the current state of public engagement, and John is willing to share the final results, so we encourage you to complete the survey before the Aug. 31 deadline! You can read more in John’s announcement below or find the original version here.

Public Participation in the Age of Smartphones & Brexit: Dead or Alive? – A Survey of the State of the Practice‏

We need your help.  When everyone is connected to everyone else and opinions can be posted to the world from your phone, does anyone really care about public participation anymore?  Do those in power really have any interest in sharing their power?  Does the public truly think that they have any real voice in governance?

We want to understand the state of the practice from your expert view.  Tell us how healthy – or not – the profession is from your perspective. Has the craft changed, and how, and what do you think the future holds?

This survey is easy and brief. We’ll present and discuss the results at the IAP2 North American Conference in Montreal in late September and send you a report copy if you’re interested.

So please take a couple of minutes, click on and complete the survey now while you’re thinking about it and also please forward this or send the link to anyone else that you know that has a role in this profession.

Our deadline is August 31.  And thanks very much.

Start the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PublicParticipation2016

You can find the original version of this announcement from Godec Randall & Associates at www.godecrandall.com/2016/07/19/public-participation-in-the-age-of-smartphones-brexit-dead-or-alive-a-survey-of-the-state-of-the-practice.

NCDD Members Host 4-day Transpartisan Tele-Summit

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As you may have seen on the NCDD Discussion Listerv recently, several NCDD members are hosting a “virtual roundtable” focused on transcending partisan divides this Aug. 1-4. The American Citizens Summit event will be co-hosted by NCDD members Amanda Roman and John Steiner and will feature many more members and D&D leaders as speakers. We encourage our members to learn more in Amanda’s announcement below or visit www.americancitizenssummit.com.

Join The American Citizens Summit for 3 Days of Political Cross-Training

As you may know, the first decade of my career was dedicated to the center-right political coalition. While my values and philosophical leanings remain. I have spent the second decade getting to know and working to support amazing organizations and innovative individuals that are focused on moving beyond typical political boundaries and getting results.

Just after the RNC and DNC conventions, I will be co-hosting a tele-summit that will recognize and spotlight this transpartisan dynamic. We are anticipating 50,000+ registrants and I would love to have you join us for three days (and an extra evening) of energetic political cross-training!

Are you concerned by our nation’s current political climate? Discouraged that infighting and bitter partisanship is affecting our ability to move forward? Do you feel discouraged and without a place in the political process? Wondering if your vote really counts?

You’re not alone.

Like many Americans, you may feel like a bystander, powerless to make a difference. And while media would have us believe that bitter polarization and gridlock is the norm, that’s only one overplayed perspective of the story.

There are MANY passionate and dedicated Americans engaged in and working to reform our democratic system – citizens just like YOU! – developing bold solutions that transcend partisan politics and creating platforms where everyone’s voice CAN be heard and everyone’s vote DOES count.

You’re invited to take your place among them during the American Citizens Summit, August 1-4!

I’m honored to have served as the lead designer for this event and to be co-hosting conversations with over 45 respected political leaders, grassroots visionaries, business pioneers, change agents and advocates – including Gavin Newsom, Marianne Williamson, Grover Norquist, Jackie Salit, Eric Liu, Joan Blades, John Robbins (and so many more!) – who are committed to putting democratic principles before politics-as-usual to help reclaim the full power of our democracy.

During this unprecedented 4-day event you’ll discover opportunities to bring about the change you believe is possible, ways to navigate political conversations without polarization, and alternatives that build momentum toward a brighter future for us all.

We’ll chart the course toward more positive politics. We’ll build bridges across divides and learn about effective solutions for our communities and our country.

I hope you’ll participate in this special online gathering presented by The Shift Network.

RSVP here for The American Citizens Summit — at no charge!

The American Citizens Summitwill serve as a “virtual roundtable” where diverse thought leaders representing the full spectrum of political ideologies – each with valuable insights and contributions, and united in their desire to bring greater wisdom and compassion to our country through this process – will come together to model a respectful dialogue in an effort to shift our political paradigm.

Join us for 4 days of energetic political cross training on how to get results, respect differences and strengthen our democracy. You’ll discover:

  • Ways to navigate political conversations without polarization
  • Bold solutions that transcend partisan politics
  • How to help reclaim the full power of our democracy
  • Innovative & inspired actions you can take immediately
  • A larger community with resources & connections for you to tap into
  • Pathways to channel your energy, passion & interests
  • Ways to make your voice heard & your vote count
  • Your contribution in peacefully fulfilling our highest promise as a nation
  • Network with like-minded people who share your desire to move forward in UNITY
  • Effective solutions that are working for our communities & our country
  • Processes that allow us to see opposing sides & possibilities for common ground

RSVP here for The American Citizens Summit – at no charge!

Yours truly,

Amanda Kathryn Roman

Become a Sponsor of NCDD 2016 Today!

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NCDD is working hard on putting together our 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation this October 14-16 in the Boston metro area. It’s shaping up to be our best conference yet, and like all of our conferences, NCDD 2016 will be a great opportunity to gain recognition while supporting the field by becoming a conference sponsor!

Looking to heighten the profile of your organization and work in the field? Being a sponsor is a great way to do it! NCDD conferences regularly bring together over 400 of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada (plus practitioners from around the world), and being a sponsor can help your organization can reach them all.

Being an All-Star Sponsor ($3000), Co-Sponsor ($2000) or Partner ($1000) will earn you name recognition with potential clients, provide months of PR, and build respect and good will for your organization every time we proudly acknowledge your support as we promote the conference. Plus you’ll be providing the crucial support that NCDD relies on to make our national conferences so spectacular, including making it possible for us to offer more scholarships to the amazing young people and other deserving folks in our field. You can learn more about the details in our sponsorship document.

The earlier you commit to being an NCDD 2016 sponsor, the more exposure you earn as we begin to roll out our sponsor logos on our website. But the benefits go way beyond that – just look at all the perks you get for being a sponsor!

By supporting an NCDD conference, our sponsors are demonstrating leadership in D&D, showing commitment to public engagement and innovative community problem solving, and making a name for themselves among the established leaders and emerging leaders in our rapidly growing field. We expect to have between 400 and 450 attendees at NCDD 2016, and all of them will hear about our sponsors’ work!

When you sign on as a sponsor or partner of NCDD 2016, you’ll be joining an amazing group of peers you can be proud to associate with. To give you an idea, check out our sponsors and partners for our 2014 national conference in Reston:

SponsorLogosAsOf9-7-14

Interested in joining their ranks and sponsoring the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation? We encourage you to consider investing in yourself, in NCDD, and in the field by becoming a sponsor today! We would deeply appreciate your support – plus you get so many benefits.

Learn more about sponsor benefits and requirements here, or send an email to sandy@ncdd.org to let us know you are interested in supporting this important convening through sponsorship. And thank you for considering supporting the conference in this critical way!

Engaging D&D’s Young Leaders in NCDD 2016

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As many of you know, NCDD’s 2014 conference in Reston, VA had more students and young people in attendance than any conference before it, and it made a huge difference – the energy and fresh thinking that young people bring to our conferences and to our field was and is inspiring and indispensable. NCDD continues to be committed to cultivating the next generation of leaders in our field, and that’s why we are aiming to have even more youth and student attendees at NCDD 2016 this Oct. 14th-16th in Boston!yardsign_300px

As part of that commitment, we are pleased to announce that NCDD is offering a super-low student registration rate of $250 (that’s $200 off!), and we have opened up our application for NCDD 2016 scholarships. These scholarships are intended to help young people in D&D and other deserving applicants who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend by offsetting the costs of travel, housing, and registration as needed.

The scholarship application can be found at www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCDD2016-scholarship-app.

But we need our NCDD members’ help encouraging the promising and engaged young people and students in this field to attend the conference! Do you work with an outstanding young person who is passionate about the work of dialogue and deliberation? Are you connected to a student who is working to bridge divides in their community? Make sure to tell them about NCDD 2016 and encourage them to register today!

Also, please note that we are offering group discounts to incentivize teachers and other practitioners who are bringing groups of students or youth from their programs or organizations. The group rate will be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but the more Martins-Students-border-600pxpeople in your group, the bigger the discount! Contact our Conference Manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org with questions about group rates.

We also encourage you to recommend young people you think NCDD should support to our Youth Engagement Coordinator Roshan Bliss at roshan@ncdd.org so we can reach out and invite them directly.

Lastly, don’t forget that NCDD offers a discounted Students & Young Professionals membership rate of just $30/year that is designed to make NCDD membership more affordable for students, recent graduates, and folks 35 and under still getting established in the field. We encourage you to learn more and sign up to become a member today at www.ncdd.org/join.

We are looking forward to another great intergenerational conference, and we’re counting on our members to help us make sure the best and brightest are there. We can’t wait to see you all in October!

NCDD2016 Early Bird Registration Extended to Monday!

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IMG_8080This post is just a friendly reminder for all of our members that we’ve decided to extend the Early Bird registration deadline for NCDD2016 until THIS Monday, July 18th!

This is the last time that you’ll be able to take advantage of the lower registration rate of $375 and lock in your spot with 400+ leaders, innovators, and practitioners in dialogue and deliberation as we work, vision, and learn together about Bridging Our Divides this October 14th-16th in the Boston metro area. After Monday, it will be the regular registration rate of $450, and the late registration rate will kick in on October 1st.

Don’t miss your chance to save $75 on registering for one of the premier learning and networking events for our field! You can learn much more about this year’s national conference at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016, and register today at www.ncdd2016.eventbrite.com to take advantage of the Early Bird rate.

Want to get a better sense of what our conferences are like? Check out the Storify page the features great pictures and comments about our 2014 conference by clicking here.

NCDD2016 Session Proposal Deadline Extended!

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As we hope you’ve heard, we announced that we were opening the call for NCDD2016 conference session proposals earlier last month. We’ve had lots of great proposals come in so far, and we thank everyone who has submitted session ideas so far!

bumper_sticker_600pxWe’ve also received quite a few requests this week for extensions as folks firm up ideas and finalize plans with collaborators, so in honor of all the hard work our members are doing to make the conference an amazing experience, we are extending the deadline for session proposals! We are now accepting submissions until the end of the day on Wednesday, July 13th! 

If you’re rushing to finish up a proposal, you’ve got a few more days now, but don’t delay! There is going to be some stiff competition for session spots this year.

If you’re still looking for collaborators on your sessions, you can review the calls for session partners that some of our members have put out on our NCDD discussion listserv checking out the discussion topics from the last few weeks in our listserv archives – you could also join the listserv and ask for collaborators yourself!

We recommend that you read over the initial call for proposals one more time before submitting, but once you’re ready, visit the Application Form and submit your proposal!

We look forward to seeing all of your great ideas!