We posted some of our favorite photos from the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation on Facebook yesterday. About 415 amazing people came together in Reston, VA for networking, learning and field-building. So much fun! Thank you to John Daly of DalyPhotography for taking almost all of these gorgeous photos.
At the 2014 NCDD conference in the DC area this past weekend, 415 leaders and emerging leaders in our field explored what they’d like dialogue and deliberation work to look like a generation from now. While it’s important to have a clear vision of the future we hope for, it is equally important to be clear about what stands in our way and devise plans for getting around those obstacles.
Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, we invite you to join conference attendees in identifying existing strategies and co-creating new strategies for overcoming persistent barriers to effective dialogue and deliberation work.
What do you think are the best strategies for addressing the following four key barriers?
These barrier categories actually emerged when we themed the results of the popular Cogitial project we ran back in April that asked the NCDD community “What do you want to see happen at NCDD 2014?” So the barriers themselves came from our community, and we are now seeking leading edge solutions and strategies for overcoming those barriers from within our community.
We’re using Codigital once again to help you add new ideas, vote on ideas to prioritize them, suggest edits to the ideas, and vote to resolve edits as a group.
All NCDD members and all NCDD 2014 attendees (except those that registered at the last minute – which we’ll take care of soon) will receive an email today inviting you to a page on Codigital where this will be happening. We hope you will participate, even if you weren’t with us at the conference, as these are important considerations for our whole community!
Please try to visit the site at https://ncdd.codigital.com/project/browse for a few minutes each day during the project, which will run from now through midnight on Halloween (October 31st).
Thank you in advance for providing guidance to NCDD and many others who are interested in helping pave the way for this important work!
Before our wonderful community starts arriving in droves for NCDD 2014, we wanted to make sure you all see a message from our co-emcee, John Gastil. NCDD has inspired John to complete revisions on his best-selling book on democratic methods, and he’s using it to help NCDD continue our work. Read more about it below, and we’ll see in Reston this week!
Serving as co-emcee of the NCDD conference spurred me to bring to the finish line a project three-years in the making. I’ve brought into the digital world my very first (and best selling) book, Democracy in Small Groups. And in celebration of NCDD’s conference, all royalties from the first week of sales – from Oct 14-21 – go to NCDD.
Yup, all of ‘em.
Then again, it was NCDD attendees who convinced me to make my next book cheap enough for anyone to buy, so the royalties on a $2.99 book won’t go too far. But everyone needs to buy new office supplies, so it’ll pay for somethin’.
The book’s now available in Kindle format (which can be read via a free Kindle app on phones/PCs/Macs) at http://tinyurl.com/DSG2Kindle
The new edition is expanded and revised, with a special feature built just for online reading. As much as the Internet makes possible, the references link to original sources, so you can drill down as deep as you want while you read.
Twenty one years have passed since the first edition (blackjack!), so there are more than two decades worth of new sources filling out the book’s argument. If you want to make your own groups more democratic or better understand how small groups can change our larger world, this book might help you get there.
Versions for iBooks (I hear ya, iTooners), Nook (anyone using that?), and print will be following shortly.
John Gastil
We know that amazing work in our field often begins with the connections made and synergies ignited during NCDD conferences, and we are so pleased to share a great example of how that happens. The piece below from NCDD supporting members Mary Thompson and Martha Cox tells the story of how, from a conversation at NCDD’s 2012 conference, the new San Diego Deliberation Network was born. We can’t wait to see what other great work will begin this week at NCDD 2014!
A new twist on a collaborative model of deliberation and dialogue has emerged in San Diego, based on the old adage: begin with the end in mind. In this hotbed of bio-science, communications technology, security and defense innovations, San Diego has incubated a new development, a network of networks, to benefit the region by helping citizens develop their role as producers in the region’s democracy, building stronger communities.
The seedlings of the San Diego Deliberation Network: A Regional Collaboration for Civic Conversation were planted when Kettering Foundation fellow and NCDD Board member Dr. Martín Carcasson connected with NCDD supporting member Henry Williams at NCDD’s 2012 conference in Seattle. The two soon collaborated to have Martín give a talk on deliberative democracy at a local library in San Diego in the summer of 2013. Among the attendees were a few representatives of local universities as well as the League of Women Voters who, excited by the ideas and potentials discussed during the event, began working together on bringing more deliberative practices to San Diego.
A couple months later, a meeting was convened where Martín, San Diego Mesa College political science professor Dr. Carl Luna, and executive director of the San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement B.H. Kim sketched a vision of a network of academic institutions and good governance groups which would leverage each node’s strengths, factor in each node’s needs for affiliation and publicity, and ensure the robustness of the overall network, including a plan for growth.
The built-in network would encompass the San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement, the League of Women Voters, and representatives from all of the major academic institutions in the San Diego region:
The result was recognition of the San Diego group – the largest cohort ever accepted by the Kettering Foundation – as a learning exchange and member of their 2014-15 New Centers for Public Life.
A team of nine people representing six of the network’s members have traveled to three Kettering workshops, conducted community surveys and conversations, and laid its institutional framework.
Feb. 26, 2014 • The San Diego Deliberation Network at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, OH. From left: Dr. Leroy Brady, San Diego City College; Dr. Lindsey Lupo, Point Loma Nazarene College; Dr. Karen Shelby, University of San Diego; Mary Thompson, Martha Cox, League of Women Voters; BH Kim, Former Director, San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement; Dr. Nancy Fredericks, San Diego City College; Dr. Kimber Quinney, California State University San Marcos; Tiveeda Stovall, University of California San Diego.
Mindful of another adage, the greatest strength can be the greatest weakness, the Network has worked hard to overcome its biggest challenge: a working organizational structure that would allow accountability of both the representing individual institution and the Network itself. At monthly sessions, the Network has mapped out how decisions will be made in the network’s name.
Committed to the goals of strengthening communities through a partnership with academia and community, the prediction is that the Network will continue to grow. Many of the Network members have joined NCDD as individuals and view NCDD in bio-science terms as an extension of its “genetic make-up!”
Though still in its infancy (neither a website nor a home base exists), given the San Diego Deliberation Network’s origins from NCDD 2012 onward and its growing affiliations, the future is so bright you’re going to need shades!
Mary Thompson & Martha Cox
League of Women Voters North County San Diego
San Diego Deliberation Network
Thanks so much to Martha & Mary for putting together this great piece and to Martín Carcasson for helping with it!
NCDD’s 6th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is right around the corner, and we couldn’t be more excited!
Part of the reason we chose our theme Democracy for the Next Generation is that we are committed to encouraging and cultivating the young leaders who are emerging in our field. We will have more students and young people joining us at NCDD 2014 than at any previous conference.
We’ve made this happen through our $250 rate for full-time students (35 students have registered using this option), and through granting an additional 50+ scholarships for students and youth that need help with registration, and often travel stipends and lodging too.
This was made possible through an anonymous donation of $10,000, but we have tapped out these funds and then some. We just couldn’t turn away the amazing young leaders who showed sincere interest in joining us, and passion about building their future careers in this field. Plus, we know this is one of the smartest investments we can make, for the conference and for our field.
Will you help show our community’s support for these emerging leaders by donating to the youth scholarship fund? At this point, we need to cap new scholarship requests (which keep coming in!) – unless we get your support.
So we are calling on our fabulous community to help us raise another $4000 to support the literal “next generation” in joining us in Reston, VA later this month.
Please contribute to our student & youth scholarship fund today by completing the short form at www.ncdd.org/donate – NCDD, and all of these promising young people, could really use your support right now!
Your tax-deductible donation will go directly to helping us provide travel reimbursements, shared hotel rooms, and registration for the last batch of scholarship hopefuls. Plus anyone who donates $50 or more will have their contribution acknowledged in the printed conference guidebook.
Additionally, we are thrilled that NCDD Board member and Colorado State University professor Martin Carcasson is bringing a whopping 15 of his students to join us all the way from Colorado! Though we’re helping them with registration, Martin and his students are raising funds for their travel and lodging expenses through a Kickstarter-style campaign here. Check out their great video and support them as well!
New to this year’s NCDD national conference, Friday’s Short Talks will provide conference participants the opportunity to hear directly from leading innovators and thought leaders in the field. Scheduled from 1:00 to 2:00 pm on our first day, we’ll have ten rooms set aside for two “back-to-back” repeated sessions, so that attendees can choose two of the ten short talks.
With topics including “lessons learned in the course of carrying out a multi-year, multi-project CDC public engagement initiative” presented by Roger Bernier and Caitlin Wills-Toker and Vinita Singh’s talk on “adapting the World Café method to an Indian context,” conference-goers will be exposed to a wide variety of pratical, on-the-ground dialogue & deliberation experiences.
Our presenters have been asked to prepare a 10- or 15-minute talk, facilitate some Q&A, and then repeat the talk and Q&A with a new group after a 20-minute break during which attendees can move to another room. These speakers represent a wide variety of agencies including the Hawaii State Senate and the Center for Disease Control, are joining us from throughtout academia with faculty from Penn State, Colorado State, and the Universities of Georgia & Arizona, and are sharing the experiences of a variety of non-profits such as Journalism that Matters, the National Dialogue Network and We the People.
For a full list of topics and speakers, visit the Short Talks page in the event’s section. For an overview of Day One activities, including our plenary on “mapping our field” and our always popular D&D Showcase, check out the conference schedule.
We recently received a newsletter from NCDD supporting member Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC), and we wanted to share it with you. The DDC has been working on some important and exciting projects, and they have 3 big announcements.
First, the DDC has released a significant new white paper:
Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connection is the latest white paper from PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement). Written by the DDC’s Matt Leighninger, the report – downloadable here - describes the innovative collision of journalism, technology, and public engagement. It is based on interviews with PACE members and many other leading thinkers, and presents the main arguments in the form of six sections, a series of charts, and a two-act play. Leighninger, Paula Ellis, and Chris Gates will discuss the report in a PACE webinar next Tuesday, September 16th – register at www.pacefunders.org/events.html.
Second, the DDC is part of hosting a new round of the wonderful Text, Talk, Act initiative, which is jointly supported by NCDD:
Monday, October 6th, will be the next big day for “Text, Talk, and Act” – a nationwide, text-enabled, face-to-face on mental health. Thousands of people have taken part in “Text, Talk, and Act,” which is a Creating Community Solutions event in the National Dialogue on Mental Health. Participating is easy: just get together with 4-5 other people on the 6th and text “START” to 89800. For more information, see www.bit.ly/texttalkact.
Lastly, Matt is releasing a great new textbook soon that is sure to be a key work for those teaching about our field’s work:
Coming soon: Matt Leighninger and Tina Nabatchi (Maxwell School, Syracuse University) are hard at work on a textbook on Public Participation in 21st Century Democracy, to be released in early 2015 by Wiley/Jossey-Bass.
We encourage you to learn more about the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and their work at www.deliberative-democracy.net.
We’re excited to share the almost-final list of our featured presenters in this year’s “D&D Showcase” — a highly anticipated, high-energy event held on the first night of the 2014 NCDD conference. The Showcase is a fun way for you to meet some of the movers-and-shakers in our field and learn about their leading-edge projects, programs and tools.
Showcase presenters are asked to prepare a brief spiel to use as a conversation starter during this un-timed session, to provide handouts so you can follow up after the conference, and to prepare an eye-catching poster so people can easily identify their topic. More about how the Showcase works is up at www.ncdd.org/15606.
John Genette, President of the Institute for Civil Dialogue and Clark D. Olson, Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University
For the past decade, Civil Dialogue has been used nationally as a technique to help people with varying opinions on controversial issues unstop the many blockages that preclude civil conversation and invites guided dialogue to increase understanding.
Palma Strand and Malka Kopell, Co-Founders of The Civity Initiative
“Civity” is people working together to solve important civic problems — building and strengthening relationships to reach across social, political and organizational divides. The Civity Initiative offers the story of civity to counter prevailing stories of division and disempowerment. We also conduct projects that focus on bridging relationships, such as our current project in Silicon Valley with young leaders that uses transformative one-on-one Civity Conversations to reach across the tech/non-tech divide.
Amy Lee, Program Officer at the Kettering Foundation and April McKay, Product Manager at Conteneo
Common Ground for Action (CGA) is a new online platform that is infused with the Kettering Foundation’s proven techniques for framing issues and practices of thoughtful deliberation.
Laura Perrault, Director of Operations at Convergence
Convergence convenes diverse and influential stakeholders – who are either in conflict or working at cross purposes — to build trust, identify solutions, and form alliances for action on critical national issues. We call our process “dialogue-leading-to-action” and are currently organizing projects on nutrition, education, long-term care, and US-Pakistan relations. Learn more at www.convergencepolicy.org.
Kathryn Thomson, Consultant with Ethelo Decisions
Ethelo is an online decision making tool designed to promote group harmony by finding and ranking outcomes that optimize satisfaction and minimize the resistance due to unfairness and polarization. It can be used for corporate board decisions, large scale community stakeholder engagement and for any process where you have complex, contentious issues and need people’s input to provide a solid, inclusive way to move forward on the issue.
Kimberly Bain, Global Chair of the International Association of Facilitators
Launched last year and taking place the week after the NCDD conference in 2014, International Facilitation Week is spearheaded by the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) to publicize the power of facilitation and create an international sense of identity and cohesion.
Amanda Buberger, Assistant Director, Academic Community Engagement Partnerships at the Center for Public Service, Tulane University and Julianna Padgett, Assistant Dean in the School of Social Work at Tulane University
Liberating Structures introduce tiny shifts in the protocols of how we meet, plan, decide and shape the future together. They put the innovative and facilitative power once reserved for experts only in the hands of everyone.
Dave Biggs, Co-Founder of MetroQuest
MetroQuest is an online community engagement platform for planning projects. It’s a powerful, flexible and cost-effective way to collect informed input from the public and stakeholders. MetroQuest software enables the public to learn about your project and provide meaningful feedback using a variety of fun and visual screens.
David Nevins, National Grassroots Coordinator at No Labels
No Labels is an American political organization composed of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, whose mission is to move America from the old politics of point-scoring toward a new politics of problem-solving.
John Gastil, Director of Penn State University’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy and Katherine Knobloch, Associate Director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University
Support from the National Science Foundation, Kettering Foundation, and public universities has enabled the intensive study and evaluation of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review in 2010 and 2012. This showcase presents some of the research findings and explains how the research team built a successful research partnership with a not-for-profit organization and the Oregon state government.
Jim Kumon, Executive Director of Strong Towns
Strong Towns is a national non-profit who mission is to advocate for policies and actions that allows America’s cities and towns to become financially strong and resilient. A Strong Town approach emphasizes obtaining a higher return on existing infrastructure investments, and ultimately requires a renewed understanding of what it takes to build and maintain a town or a neighborhood. Preview their work at curbsidechat.org and strongtowns.org
Caroline Lee, Associate Professor of Anthropology & Sociology at Lafayette College
Based on 6 years of research on NCDD and other public engagement organizations, my forthcoming book Do-it-Yourself Democracy studies the everyday and extraordinary challenges of dialogue and deliberation practitioners.
Sarah Giles, Special Projects Manager for Policy Consensus InitiativeJohn B. Stephens, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Government
The University Network for Collaborative Governance has identified specific collaborative competencies to help public officials and managers improve their own or their staff’s collaborative competence through continuing education and training.
Tom Murray, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
There are a number of process frameworks based on Polarities that help participants see a broad range of possibility, identify assumptions, manage tradeoffs, gain systemic perspectives, cope with paradox, and see more deeply and empathically into other’s views. The polarity framework can be applied in many ways, and can be added to many other methods to complement them.
Jim Rough, Co-Founder of the Center for Wise Democracy
The Wisdom Council is a social innovation that has the potential to facilitate the people of a community, state or nation, to get involved in solving difficult public issues, where “We the People” take thoughtful responsibility for our collective choices.
Do you know an exceptional student or young person who has the potential to become a leader in the dialogue and deliberation field? Someone who really embodies the “next generation of democracy”? We want them to join us at NCDD 2014!
Two of our great student attendees at NCDD 2012
NCDD is committed to helping students and youth attend this year’s NCDD conference (October 17-19 in Reston, VA) because part of our conference theme, Democracy for the Next Generation, is about getting tomorrow’s leaders in our work involved with us today. And as part of that commitment, we are helping cultivate youth leadership in the field by providing our student and youth attendees with special support and mentorship during and after the conference.
We are also offering a number of scholarships, thanks to generous donations from our community, for young people and students who would be unable to join us at NCDD 2014 without support. Depending on what is needed, we can offer help with lodging, travel costs, and registration fees. and the application form can be found here.
As Dr. Martin Carcasson of Colorado State University said after bringing 8 of his undergrad students with him to the last NCDD conference, “Clearly NCDD is the ideal conference for college and university students interested in dialogue and deliberation. It provides students with an excellent overview of the overall field, and a chance to meet and work with many of the national leaders.” You can read more about Martin’s and his students’ NCDD 2012 experiences at http://ncdd.org/15260.
We are encouraging students and young people (which we are defining for the sake of the conference as age 25 and under) to apply for the scholarships at www.surveymonkey.com/s/NCDD2014-scholarship-app. Make sure to apply as early as possible – the funds will go quickly!
We also encourage you to send your recommendations for young people you think NCDD should support to our student outreach coordinator Roshan Bliss (me!) at roshan@ncdd.org so we can reach out to them directly. Please also let us know if you’re already planning to bring students with you to NCDD 2014 and you’d like to make sure they’re part of our mentorship and orientation efforts at the conference!
We look forward to seeing you in October at our most generationally diverse NCDD conference yet!
I want to draw your attention to the important work being done by the Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice in communities like Ferguson that are in crisis. The director of the Community Relations Service, Grande Lum, is one of our featured speakers at the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation coming up in October, and we’re honored to be following his work and to be able to hear from him at the conference.
The Community Relations Service (CRS) is often called “America’s Peacemaker.” Over the years, CRS has worked with thousands of communities, many of whom came together in crisis and emerged stronger and more unified. CRS delivers four services: mediation of disputes, facilitation of dialogue, training, and consulting.
Their must-see resource page provides tips and best practices for police, schools, community leaders, and others who find themselves at the center of crises revolving around division and inequity.
In an August 18th press release from the Department of Justice on the federal civil rights investigation into the death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder highlighted the work of the Community Relations Service in Ferguson, Missouri:
In order to truly begin the process of healing, we must also see an end to the acts of violence in the streets of Ferguson. Those who have been peacefully demonstrating should join with law enforcement in condemning the actions of looters and others seeking to enflame tensions.
To assist on this front, the Department will be dispatching additional representatives from the Community Relations Service, including Director Grande Lum, to Ferguson. These officials will continue to convene stakeholders whose cooperation is critical to keeping the peace.
And an August 20th post on BuzzFeed covers how the mayor of Sanford, Florida (the town where Trayvon Martin was shot not long ago) has urged Feruson to welcome the help of the Justice Department and especially its Community Relations Service, saying it “saved the day” in Sanford.
Triplett, who is white, was the man in charge a year-and-a-half ago when the killing of Trayvon Martin spiked racial tensions in the area and far beyond. A situation that many expected to explode into violence, didn’t. Peaceful protestors were met with respectful police and public officials.
Triplett credits the the Department of Justice for the calm and in an interview Tuesday he urged Ferguson leaders to embrace the help the feds have to offer. In his town, Triplett said federal officials arrived with experience on how to handle large crowds and engage with protest movements.
They had tips on police tactics, too. “The best thing that you can do is use your mind and your mouth versus an nightstick and a gun. You know, ‘violence breeds violence’ type thing. These guys [Justice Department advisers] have been there, done it, they’re very astute,” Triplett said.
“We on the city side, we fix roads. We make sure your lights turn off and on. We make sure your toilets flush. We cut ribbons for new businesses. So you’ve got to rely on those that know.” Justice Department officials are engaged in Ferguson in full force, with six agencies on the ground in the Missouri town coordinating a federal investigation into the death, monitoring police behavior and trying to build a bridge between authorities and protesters through a previously little-known department branch called the Community Relations Service.
The agency, which has ten regional offices across the country, is specifically designed to diffuse tension after discrimination-charged events and was established as part of the 1964 Civil Rights act. On Wednesday, the head of CRS, Grande Lum, will be in the Justice Department party accompanying Attorney General Eric Holder on his trip to Ferguson.
Holder has been very critical of the police response to protests in Ferguson, and Justice Department officials have pointed to the early involvement of CRS as proof the feds have a better handle on how to deal with the Ferguson protests than local authorities do.
Read the full BuzzFeed article at http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/doj-in-ferguson#1gu9nsk for LOTS more interesting content.
CRS has 10 Regional Directors who supervise conflict resolution specialists (also called conciliation specialists) in regional offices and 4 smaller field offices. These offices are strategically located throughout the country to meet the unique needs of the states and communities they serve.
The Regional Directors are highly trained professional mediators, facilitators, trainers, and consultants who are experienced in bringing together communities in conflict to help them enhance their ability to independently prevent and resolve existing and future concerns.
Regional Directors oversee the regional conflict resolution teams in the development of customized and proactive local solutions. The 10 regional offices are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The field offices are located in Miami, Detroit, Houston, and San Francisco. The regional and field offices increase the availability of CRS services to rural communities and aid in rapid deployment during crises.
Grande Lum will be speaking during the closing plenary at the 2014 NCDD conference. Learn more about Grande here, and register today to join us at the conference!
Grande is also a Supporting Member of NCDD, and you can learn more about him on his member page. Also see NCDD’s previous blog post about Top #NCDD Resources for Addressing Racial Conflict & Inequality.