Category Archives: member benefits

Looking Back at NCDD 2016 and What Has Happened Since

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ncdd2016-logoThe 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation brought together 350 innovators in dialogue and deliberation to discuss the conference theme of Bridging Our Divides. Over the course of three days we discussed how to tackle some of today’s toughest divides, including partisan, racial, economic, and more. For a recap of the conference in numbers, see our earlier blog post.

Since the conference, NCDD has been producing and gathering media that captures our time together and the stories of our work. And, we’ve been following up on the conversations that happened at the conference and continuing the important work that began or was renewed in our time together.

Sharing the Stories of the Conference

At NCDD 2016 Keith Harrington of Shoestring Videos recorded our plenary sessions as well as short videos of participants. Keith is in the process of producing several videos, and has shared with us the following two videos:

Panel on Philanthropy and Fundraising

Mark Gerzon of the Mediators Foundation moderated a discussion among a panel of philanthropists about the constraints and opportunities facing our field’s efforts to bring people together across divides. Panelists shared their experiences funding bridge building efforts and answered participant questions about how we can all be better advocates for our work.

Panel on Journalism and Public Engagement

Peggy Holman of Journalism that Matters moderated a panel discussion among journalists, discussing both their work in engaging the public and discussing the opportunities they see for public engagement practitioners to partner with journalists.

ncdd_podcast_200x200Sharing More Personal Stories

In addition to video, for the first time ever at an NCDD conference we offered participants the chance to record stories and conversation in an audio room, run by sound designer Ryan Spenser. We recorded several conversations that would become our first episodes of our new NCDD Podcast. Check it out on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Google Play. Our first episodes are now live:

  • Listen to Barbara Simonetti, NCDD’s Board Chair, and myself discuss her metaphor for the D&D field as a utility
  • Hear the story of Conversation Café from co-creator Susan Partnow and past steward Jacquelyn Pogue, as they speak with NCDD Resource Curator Keiva Hummel about the process and their hopes for it under NCDD’s stewardship

Stories of bridging our divides were shared throughout the conference – in workshops, informal gatherings, and particularly in our first plenary session where we asked all participants to share a story of a time they witnessed divides being bridged.

We welcome additional stories of how you or those you are working with are bridging divides. In particular, we’d love to have people share using our Storytelling Tool. Using the tool gives NCDD the details for a great case story that we can share on our blog, so your story is shared with more people!

Last but not least, last week we shared our Storify page – take a look at that for a great recap of the social media activity during the conference, along with great photos and quotes!

Continuing this Work

Lots of inspiration was drawn from our time with you all at NCDD 2016, and we have been working to continue to address the needs and desires that arose at the conference. Some of the ways we’ll continue to do that include:

  • The Race, Police and Reconciliation Discussion List: The racial divide was a central part of the conference theme. Many workshops addressed this divide and we heard from three panelists in our first plenary about their work in this area (video coming soon!). Many participants expressed a desire to connect with others on this work, and so NCDD has launched a discussion listserv for folks interested in connecting with one another. So far, more than one hundred of you have joined! Learn more here and then join the listserv.
  • Our #BridgingOurDivides campaign: NCDD has continued our conversation at the conference over the past several months through our #BridgingOurDivides campaign. We’ve been sharing information and resources on social media and the blog. We also hosted a call for our community to talk about our post-election work. We’ll keep this conversation going in 2017, as this work is more important than ever.
  • el_badge_web_03The Emerging Leaders Initiative: NCDD has worked hard to bring students and youth to our conferences in 2014 and 2016, and in between we have been talking with these young and emerging leaders about how to get them involved in NCDD. This has all culminated in our new Emerging Leaders Initiative, which we’ll be more formally launching in 2017. We need to foster long-term resilience for the field of dialogue & deliberation, and we can do that best by intentionally cultivating our field’s next generation of leadership.

We had such a great time at NCDD 2016 connecting and re-connecting with you all and discussing how we can continue to do this important work of bridging our divides in today’s world. Let’s use what has been generated from the conference and continue to build upon it – our communities and our country need dialogue and deliberation right now.

Join our Confab on “What’s Next?” Post-Election, 11/29

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As we posted about earlier this week, the Presidential election has brought forth new needs for dialogue and deliberation, as well as renewed importance of the work to bridge divides that our field has been doing for many Confab bubble imageyears. We’ve been appreciating the responses our community have had so far to this post, and we’d like to provide an additional opportunity for us all to discuss this important time in our work.

Join us Tuesday, November 29th at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific for a 90-minute Confab Call to talk together as a community about what’s next after the election. This will be an open call, allowing community members to talk about their bridge building work, or ideas for what they can do post-election. NCDD staff will lead the call, but we won’t have any featured presenters – we want to hear from you!

The need for dialogue and deliberation is stronger than ever, and our network is poised to help our communities and nation come together across divides to tackle our toughest challenges. Join us as we talk about what’s being done now, and what’s possible for us in our work individually and collectively.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

NCDD Launches Listserv on Race, Police, & Reconciliation

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Link to NCDD listservsThere were many connections made, collaborations started, and projects launched during our NCDD 2016 conference last month in Boston. But there’s one initiative that we want to specifically highlight today and encourage our NCDD members to support.

As NCDD 2016 participants dug into the conference theme of Bridging Our Divides, two important and related divides were clearly feeling urgent for participants – our nation’s racial divides, and the parallel divide between police and the communities they work in. During several conference workshops, conversations in the hallways, and during the plenaries, our NCDD members were also exploring and sharing ideas about the power of truth & reconciliation processes to possibly help our nation address such issues, asking themselves not only what D&D practitioners can do to play a more active role in growing work aimed bridging these fraught divides, but also, what are we already doing?

That’s why NCDD is launching a new email discussion listserv that we hope will serve as a space where we can continue to share and discuss ideas, tools, projects, and resources about race dialogue, community-police dialogue, and truth-telling & reconciliation work. We encourage anyone in our network who works on, studies, or has an interest in race relations, community-police relations in the face of violence, or broader truth-telling and reconciliation processes to join this email list to network and share with others who work in these areas.

Join the Discussion Today

You can subscribe to the Race, Police, & Reconciliation Discussion List by sending a blank email to race-dialogue-subscribe-request@lists.ncdd.org. Then once you’re subscribed, you can send messages to everyone on the list by emailing race-dialogue@lists.ncdd.org.

We know that there many NCDD members – and even more outside of our network – already engaged in ongoing dialogue efforts across historical racial divides and doing the difficult work of trying to help everyday people angry with police to hear and be heard by law enforcement officials. And we at NCDD want to try to harness that collective energy and catalyze even more collaboration among those who are seeking to strengthen that work or move it towards real healing and reconciliation.

We believe that our D&D field has a special role to play in making substantive progress about how we move forward together as a country on these difficult divides, and we invite you to join us on this new discussion listserv to begin figuring out just how we do that.

Learn more about NCDD’s many other discussion and updates listservs at www.ncdd.org/listservs.

Contribute to the Youth Scholarship Fund for NCDD 2016!

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The 2016 NCDD national conference on Bridging Our Divides is getting closer and closer, and we couldn’t be more excited! But there’s still a lot of work to do in the lead-up to this amazing event, and1398790_744145238968706_3393677302500008784_o we need to ask for our NCDD community’s help with one important task!

As we recently announced, NCDD is offering scholarships to help make sure that young people, students, and others who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend the NCDD 2016 conference can join us. Before our 2014 conference, we received an incredible $10,000 anonymous donation to help ensure we had plenty of resources to offer scholarships to young people and low-income folks – but we can’t count on that kind of support this year.

That’s why we are calling on our amazing NCDD community to donate to our NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund to make sure that this year’s conference is brimming with the next generation of emerging D&D leaders. We are hoping to raise at least $10,000 for scholarships, if not more, by October 7th and we can’t do it without you! Whether you can give $5 or $500, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Scholarship Fund today.

Your tax-deductible donation will go directly to helping us provide travel reimbursements, shared hotel rooms, and registration for scholarship hopefuls. Plus, anyone who donates $50 or more will have their contribution acknowledged in the printed conference guidebook!

The Importance of Young People Attending NCDD 2016

YoungPeopleAtNCDD2014Our last NCDD conference in Reston, VA had more young people than any before it — a dynamic that was universally seen by the attendees as making the conference experience much more engaging and exciting. Ensuring that young people are involved in our conferences adds a great deal of fresh energy and perspectives to our field’s work, and it helps us diversify our field, spark new partnerships, bring in new volunteers and researchers, and foster mentoring relationships between emerging leaders and seasoned practitioners.

Additionally, NCDD recognizes that one of the important divides in our society that needs to be bridged is the divide between the younger generations and their elders whose are still in charge of the nation’s direction. That recognition is part of what animated our 2014 conference theme, Democracy for the Next Generation, and we continue to be committed to helping foster positive, collaborative relationships between older and younger people as a way to continue to strengthen our democracy. Being sure that younger folks are at the table for our conversation about about Bridging Our Divides is part of that ongoing commitment.

But maybe most importantly, engaging young people and students in our work helps us foster long-term resilience for the field of dialogue & deliberation. In coming years, we will continue to see many of the pillars and pioneers of the field exiting the work, and so it is critical for us to be making a conscious decision today to begin developing the D&D leaders and practitioners of tomorrow. Today’s younger generations will be charged with utilizing our methods to address some of society’s most pernicious issues and to bridge our most persistent divides, which is why it is so vital to ensure that we are intentionally investing in engaging and cultivating their leadership. They already have valuable insights and experiences that can help us forge new paths for our field, but we can’t tap into them if they aren’t with us!

That is why we feel it’s so important that we are successful in reaching our goal of $10,000 for the NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund, and why we urge you to make a contribution now.

How You Can Support This Effort

IMG_1562We at NCDD are putting our money where our mouth is with incentives for students and young people to attend NCDD 2016: we have reduced the registration rate to just $250 for students (a $200 discount!), and we are offering even lower group rates for teachers and other practitioners who are bringing groups of students from their youth-oriented programs! So we’re counting on our NCDD community to join us in helping make sure every young leader in our field is able to join us at the conference.

There are several other ways that you can support youth and student engagement during NCDD 2016:

  1. Invite your friends and colleagues to support our scholarship drive and share this call for donations on social media using the buttons at the bottom of this post. Help us spread the word far and wide!
  2. Become a sponsor of NCDD 2016! Donations from our field-leading sponsors help us make our great NCDD conferences possible, and you or your organization could become a champion of youth engagement by sponsoring the NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund. Learn more about being a sponsor at www.ncdd.org/sponsor.
  3. Encourage the promising young people who you work with, bright students at your school, or other young people who might be interested in attending to register to join us at NCDD 2016! They can apply for a scholarship by clicking here.
  4. Bring a group of young people or students to the conference yourself! The group rate is applied on a case-by-case basis, but at past conferences, a group that came with eight students received two free student spots on top of the cheaper student rate. The more youth you bring, the bigger the discount! Email NCDD’s Director Sandy Heierbacher at sandy@ncdd.org or our Conference Manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org for info about group discounts.
  5. Recommend students or young people that we should reach out to! Send an email with their names and contact info to our Youth Engagement Coordinator Roshan Bliss at roshan@ncdd.org so he can invite them to come.
  6. Encourage ALL the students you know to take advantage of NCDD’s Student Membership rate, which is only $30/year for full access to all of our great NCDD membership benefits.
  7. At the conference, you can help the young people who are with us feel welcomed, valued, and engaged.
  8. And of course, you can make a donation to the NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund by visiting at www.ncdd.org/donate. Or just use the form below!

Your tax-deductible donation will help us continue to cultivate the next generation of D&D leaders, and ensure the long term sustainability of our field. Won’t you contribute today?

Thank you for supporting NCDD’s efforts to engage our emerging leaders!

Contribute to our NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fundbumper_sticker_600px

Please complete the short form below to send in your donation. Be sure to put “Scholarship Fund” in the box where we ask if your donation is earmarked for a particular program!

  • If you'd like to donate a different amount than what's listed above, select a baseline from the list and then use this field to specify an additional amount for your contribution.
  • $0.00

Join Our Aug. Confab Call on Building an Online Commons!

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You’re invited to join us for our next NCDD Confab Call on Thursday, August 25th from 1-2 PM Eastern (10am-12pm Pacific)! This interactive conference call will feature John Gastil, a democracy scholar and long-time NCDD member, and Luke Hohmann, CEO of Conteneo, Inc., who will share about a ground-breaking civic tech idea that they are working together to make into a reality. Register today to save your spot!Confab bubble image

John and Luke are gathering together software designers, civic reformers, academics, and public officials to envision and build an integrated online commons – a commons that would link together the best existing civic tech and other online deliberation and engagement tools by making them components in a larger “Democracy Machine.”

The purpose of the call is to discuss ideas about the design and development of the machine in advance of a session on the same topic during NCDD 2016 this October. The aim is to draw new people into the civic sphere, encourage more sustained and deliberative engagement, and send ongoing feedback to both government and citizens to improve how the public interfaces with the public sector. In advance of the call, we encourage participants to read about the basic concept in John’s recent post on the Challenges to Democracy blog or read his full essay, “Building a Democracy Machine: Toward an Integrated and Empowered Form of Democracy,” by clicking here

John Gastil is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, particularly as it relates to how people make decisions in small groups on matters of public concern. His recent books include The Jury and Democracy, The Group in Society, and Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making, and Communication (2nd ed.).

Luke Hohmann is CEO of Conteneo, Inc. Conteneo is the leading provider of collaboration – not communication – solutions for the public and private sector. Through their cutting-edge technology and customized services, Conteneo enables employees, customers, and partners to work better together – no matter where they are in the world. Thousands of business leaders are using the Conteneo Collaboration Cloud and our Collaboration Consulting services to be more productive, innovative and competitive.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls…

Confab bubble imageNCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

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!

Super Early Bird Registration for NCDD2016 Ends TODAY!

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We wanted to post a reminder for you all that, as we mentioned previously, our “Super Early Bird” discount rate on registration for NCDD 2016 ends today!

bumper_sticker_600pxToday is the last day to save $100 on registering for one of the premier learning and networking events for our field! This is the last time that you’ll be able to take advantage of the lower registration rate 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 – don’t miss it!

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 Super 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.

Also, don’t forget that our call for NCDD2016 session proposals is open! You can learn more about what we’re looking for by clicking here or find the application here.

Register for June Tech Tuesday featuring Trusted Sharing

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Registration is now open for June’s Tech Tuesday event featuring Trusted Sharing. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, June 28th from 12:00-1:00pm Eastern/9:00-10:00am Pacific.

Trusted SharingTrusted Sharing logo is a free, asynchronous platform that allows people to host deeper, more coherent online conversations using specific facilitation methods such as World Café, TOP and Open Space.

Contemporary research highlights how essential high quality conversations are in our complex Information Age; yet our current online exchanges often fall short of our hopes and expectations. Trusted Sharing is trying to change that. Early adopters of this new platform have been educators, consultants, bloggers, facilitators and small businesses. It is user-friendly and good for informal groups that want to extend their interaction time through online conversations.

Teachers have used Trusted Sharing to launch the learning experience prior to the first in person class. A consultant commented that she could cut the amount of in person time down by 40-50% by using Trusted Sharing to gather online thoughts first. A blogger was able to answer questions that readers had and add depth to his blog. A coaching training academy is using Trusted Sharing as a way to catalogue conversations and make decisions across multiple informal groups they interact with.

Joining us for this call will be NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, and Ruth Backstrom, Director of Marketing and Outreach. Duncan and Ruth will provide a brief overview of the tool and demonstrate how it can be used with several case studies. They are collaborating with a number of facilitators, thought leaders, educators, and others to bring more coherent, effective conversations into old and new realms like nonprofits, schools, businesses, blogs and public online spaces, and they will talk more about this on the call.

For an overview of the benefits and potential for Trusted Sharing in different contexts, you may peruse this overview and the Trusted Sharing website.

Don’t miss this opportunity – register today!

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeTech Tuesdays are a series of learning events from NCDD focused on technology for engagement. These 1-hour events are designed to help dialogue and deliberation practitioners get a better sense of the online engagement landscape and how they can take advantage of the myriad opportunities available to them. You do not have to be a member of NCDD to participate in our Tech Tuesday learning events.

NCDD Discount on Engagement Strategy Workshop, 6/23

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Our colleagues at Public Agenda, an NCDD member organization, are hosting a great workshop on engagement strategy this June 23 in Boston, just before the Frontiers of Democracy conference, and they are offering a $25 discount for NCDD members! That means the workshop is only $250 when you register before for the May 15 early bird deadline. It will be a chance to hone your skills and learn new methods and tools!  You can learn more and find the discount code in the announcement from Public Agenda below, or find the original version here.

Workshop: Public Engagement Strategy Lab

PublicAgenda-logo

Looking for assistance with organizing and sustaining productive public engagement? Struggling to decide how to combine online and face-to-face engagement? Frustrated with the standard “2 minutes at the microphone” public meeting? Want to know about the latest tools and techniques? Need expert advice on bringing together a diverse critical mass of people?

Join the Public Engagement Strategy Lab!

Who:
Leaders looking to revamp or strengthen their engagement strategies, structures, and tools

Date:
Thursday, June 23, 2016

Time:
9:30am – 4:30pm

Location:
Tufts University Medical School
145 Harrison Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02111

Cost:
Early Bird $275 (by May 15, 2016) or Regular $350 (after May 15, 2016)
Use the promo code NCDDMEMBER to get $25 off!

Registration Deadline:
Required by June 16, 2016, pending availability

Contact:
PE[at]publicagenda[dot]org or call Mattie at 212-686-6610 ext.137

Space is limited. Register today!

During the workshop, Public Agenda trainers Matt Leighninger and Nicole Hewitt will:

  • Provide an overview of the strengths and limitations of public engagement today
  • Help you assess the strengths and weaknesses of public engagement in your community
  • Explore potential benefits of more sustained forms of participation
  • Develop practical skills for planning for stronger engagement infrastructure, and
  • Demonstrate a mix of small group and large group discussions, interactive exercises, case studies, and practical exercises

This Strategy Lab is hosted by Tisch College, Tufts University as a preconference session for Frontiers of Democracy 2016. Participants in the Public Engagement Strategy Lab have the option of staying for the Frontiers of Democracy Conference. To register for the conference, click here.

The Public Engagement Strategy Lab will provide you with the tools and resources you need to authentically engage stakeholders in thoughtful, democratic processes. No more public forums and community meetings that lack impact. Move your public engagement planning forward with approaches based on the ideas and examples found in Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).

To register, follow this link. We hope to see you there!

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda announcement at www.publicagenda.org/pages/workshop-public-engagement-strategy-lab#sthash.wCLJLYPK.dpuf.

Change for the Audacious: A Doer’s Guide

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We are happy to share the announcement below about a new resource available at a 25% discount for D&D practitioners. NCDD Member Steve Waddell of NetworkingAction shared the announcement below via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Those working for large systems change have a new resource with the book Change for the Audacious: a doer’s guide.

It presents “large systems change” as an emerging field of practice and knowledge united by the need to involve many, many people and organizations in transformational change in contrast to incremental change. It draws on the author’s more than 30 years experience and the experience of leading practitioners around the world from diverse traditions such as community development, environmental concerns, peace building, corporate social responsibility, and spirituality / psychology.

The heart of the book is five examples of large systems change work: a global network developing “human revolution”, the German electricity transformation, apartheid in South Africa, marriage equality in the US, and our global environmental epochal shift to the anthropocene.

The book aims to present a comprehensive view of the large systems change behind this cases by identifying four core strategies, organizing structures and processes, a typology of tools that integrates NCDD’s Streams framework, and personal guidance for practitioners.

NCDD members can get a 25% discount by using the code “NCDD” by June 1st when they order here: www.networkingaction.net/product/change-for-the-audacious.