Category Archives: NCDD Events

Join us TODAY for our Special Confab Call on Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall!

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In just a few hours, NCDD is excited to host a special Confab Call on Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall: Using this as a time to collaborate, discover, and create shared resources!  

Register ASAP for this free event happening TODAY from 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific. All who are working with students using dialogue & deliberation are welcome to join. We encourage participants to complete this survey so that we can better tailor the session to respond to your needs!

The upcoming fall semester is full of uncertainties. Even if there will be in-person instruction, it seems for many in Higher Education that online components will be a significant part of courses. For those who teach dialogue and deliberation to students, this presents some challenges. How can we do this work with students smoothly in a hybrid or fully online format?

The special NCDD Confab Call is intended to help Higher Ed folks – faculty and student affairs staff working with dialogue & deliberation pedagogy – share and explore together resources for transitioning to a predominantly online format in the fall (and perhaps beyond). On the call, participants will share resources they have been using, as well as talk about what the kinds of resources are needed to assist in this new format. NCDD hopes to utilize this event to help boost collaborative efforts and identify many resources, tools, and approaches that can be cataloged as a resource for everyone going forward.

If you have developed lessons, or tools, or have experience with student dialogues in an online format, join us and share! If you are still figuring out what you will do, bring your questions and needs to the discussion! This Confab is all about working together to make everyone’s work easier, as well as to help show just how connected and vibrant this field is and reinvigorate D&D studies in Higher Ed. We’ll share and explore perhaps what still needs creating for the fall and beyond.

Unable to join us? Fill out the brief survey we have created so we can learn more about your needs and offerings.

Don’t miss this collaborative event – register today!

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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

NCDD Confab: Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall

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NCDD is excited to announce a special Confab Call for folks using dialogue & deliberation pedagogy in Higher Education:

Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall
Using this as a time to collaborate, discover, and create shared resources

This free event takes place Thursday, July 30th from 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific. All who are working with students using dialogue & deliberation are welcome to join. Register today to secure your spot and complete a survey that will help us shape the session to respond to needs!

The upcoming fall semester is full of uncertainties. Even if there will be in-person instruction, it seems for many in Higher Education that online components will be a significant part of courses. For those who teach dialogue and deliberation to students, this presents some challenges. How can we do this work with students smoothly in a hybrid or fully online format?

The special NCDD Confab Call is intended to help Higher Ed folks – faculty and student affairs staff working with dialogue & deliberation pedagogy – share and explore together resources for transitioning to a predominantly online format in the fall (and perhaps beyond). On the call, participants will share resources they have been using, as well as talk about what the kinds of resources are needed to assist in this new format. NCDD hopes to utilize this event to help boost collaborative efforts and identify many resources, tools, and approaches that can be cataloged as a resource for everyone going forward.

If you have developed lessons, or tools, or have experience with student dialogues in an online format, join us and share! If you are still figuring out what you will do, bring your questions and needs to the discussion! This Confab is all about working together to make everyone’s work easier, as well as to help show just how connected and vibrant this field is and reinvigorate D&D studies in Higher Ed. We’ll share and explore perhaps what still needs creating for the fall and beyond.

Unable to join us? Fill out the brief survey we have created so we can learn more about your needs and offerings.

Don’t miss this collaborative event – register today!

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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Watch the May Confab: Envisioning a More Intentional Future

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Last week NCDD hosted our May Confab Call, led by NCDD Board Member Lori Britt. On the call, over 60 participants identified topics their communities are discussing or will need to discuss in planning for the future after COVID. Thanks again to all who participated, and to those who shared report-outs and notes at the end, so we could capture these conversations!

During this event twenty topics were identified by participants as important to their communities in envisioning a more intentional future. Of these twenty, twelve were discussed by small groups and notes were taken to capture these conversations, including sharing opportunities, ideas, and potential actions. The full list of topics, as well as the notes from the small groups have been captured in the Google Doc accessible here. NCDD hopes this is the start of many conversations, so we encourage those interested to use to document to connect with one another and continue these conversations. You can also use our listservs as applicable – learn more about that here.

In addition to the notes, the event recording includes report-outs from each of these groups on their discussions. Check out the recording here.

Our sincere appreciation to Lori for leading this conversation, and for all participants for engaging thoughtfully with one another! We hope this conversation was the start of many to come, and NCDD will reach out in the future to follow-up about some of these conversations and how they have progressed as our communities begin to reopen and plan for the future. In the meantime, feel free to share what your community is grappling with or what you are working on in the comments below.

Confab bubble imageTo learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and hear recordings of others, visit www.ncdd.org/events/confabs. We love holding these events and we want to continue to elevate the work of our field with Confab Calls and Tech Tuesdays. It is through your generous contributions to NCDD that we can keep doing this work! That’s why we want to encourage you to support NCDD by making a donation or becoming an NCDD member today (you can also renew your membership by clicking here). Thank you!

Register ASAP for Today’s Confab Call on Envisioning an Intentional Future

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NCDD’s May Confab call is happening TODAY and we are looking forward to digging in with participants on envisioning an intentional future! Register now to join us for this call at 1:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM Pacific. Courtney will present this session with NCDD Board Member Lori Britt. 

Earlier in the pandemic, NCDD hosted conversations to help the dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement community explore how to respond to the needs arising immediately in our own communities. These conversations primarily focused on how to continue our work in a virtual format and how to help our communities stay connected while physically distanced. Now, two months into this experience, we would like to launch a conversation on what we are learning about our communities, and how we might help community members recognize what they see as important to sustain or nurture going forward.

In this interactive session, which is free and open to all, participants will share what they are noticing about their communities during the pandemic and what topics they want to engage around further. More specifically, we’ll discuss: What are you noticing about your community that you want to make more space for as you go forward? What are you noticing that is essential and needs support going forward? We’ll share some of our reflections as a group, and then break into smaller groups to discuss different topics of importance to our communities.

We hope that this session will be a jumping-off point for many of us to engage our own communities around the issues that matter most to them. We’ll keep in touch to see how things go, and how we might learn from each other!

Join us to share what you’re observing and what you’re hoping for in your own community! Let’s plan for what comes next. Don’t miss this opportunity – register today to secure your spot!

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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Leaning in to this moment: Helping our communities envision an intentional future

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Earlier in the pandemic, NCDD hosted conversations to help the dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement community explore how to respond to the needs arising immediately in our own communities. These conversations primarily focused on how to continue our work in a virtual format and how to help our communities stay connected while physically distanced. Now, two months into this experience, we would like to launch a conversation on what we are learning about our communities, and how we might help community members recognize what they see as important to sustain or nurture going forward.

NCDD is excited to announce our May Confab will focus on this discussion. The Confab will take place Wednesday, May 27 at 1:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM Pacific. Courtney will present this session with NCDD Board Member Lori Britt. Register now to join us for this call!

In this interactive session, which is free and open to all, participants will share what they are noticing about their communities during the pandemic and what topics they want to engage around further. More specifically, we’ll discuss: What are you noticing about your community that you want to make more space for as you go forward? What are you noticing that is essential and needs support going forward? We’ll share some of our reflections as a group, and then break into smaller groups to discuss different topics of importance to our communities. 

We hope that this session will be a jumping off point for many of us to engage our own communities around the issues that matter most to them. We’ll keep in touch as see how things go, and how we might learn from each other!

Join us to share what you’re observing and what you’re hoping for for your own community! Let’s plan for what comes next. Don’t miss this opportunity – register today to secure your spot!

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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Check Out the April Tech Tuesday with EnCiv!

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Last week, we held the April Tech Tuesday featuring EnCiv and the Undebate platform! We were joined by 40 participants as Will Ferguson, David Fridley, and Adolf Gundersen of EnCiv walked us through their Undebate platform, and the newer Unrountable they are developing. If you weren’t able to make the call, this post includes all of the key link and information – check it out!

EnCiv automates proven human-interaction methods to scale productive democratic discourse. The Undebate is being made available to voters across the country this election season by EnCiv partner Ballotpedia under the label “Candidate Conversations.” In this Tech Tuesday event, EnCiv shared with us an example of how Undebate was used for the San Francisco District Attorney race, which can be viewed at this link.

They also introduced us to the Unroundtable, a platform to allow people to share their thoughts or stories about a topic or issue through brief video responses. You can check out the example they shared with us of an Unroundtable on “What is Democracy?” at this link.

THANK YOU to Will, David, Adolf, and everyone who joined this call! We recorded the whole presentation if you were unable to join us, which you can access here. We had several excellent questions offered in the chat, which you can find the transcript of here.

Tech_Tuesday_Badge

Tech Tuesdays are a series of learning events from NCDD focused on technology for engagement. .To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/tech-tuesdays. If you have an idea for a future Tech Tuesday event, please email keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org with your great ideas!

Finally, we love holding these events and we want to continue to elevate the work of our field with Confab Calls and Tech Tuesdays. It is through your generous contributions to NCDD that we can keep doing this work! That’s why we want to encourage you to support NCDD by making a donation or becoming an NCDD member today (you can also renew your membership by clicking here). Thank you!

Recording Available for Cultivating Community Capacity!

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On April 24th, NCDD hosted a special event from NCDD sponsoring member Susan Stuart Clark of Common Knowledge, titled Cultivating Community Capacity with Four “Deep Wisdom” Practices. The event, attended by more than 60 participants, was the start of a series of activities and collection of resources at sense-us.org, a new pro bono project for Common Knowledge and allies in the arts, healing and community transformation.

Susan shared with us the four practices identified by cross-cultural pioneer Angeles Arrien, which we can use to help deepen our individual and collective capacity for discovering the deeper wisdom in and between us.  Susan outlines the interpretation of these four practices and their importance to us and our work designing and facilitate community engagement during and after this pandemic in this wonderful piece. 

Drawn from ancient and indigenous wisdom, these practices invite us to bring our whole selves – heart, body and mind –  to our work as cultivators of community, dialogue stewards and/or peace builders. During this time of physical isolation, let’s embrace the ways we can bring closeness to one another through sharing our truest selves with each other. Let’s see how we can expand our capacity to understand the patterns and structures that brought us to this current moment and choose more inclusive and collaborative ways to co-create our future.

The event was purposefully held on Arbor Day to acknowledge how trees can teach us a lot about nurturing individual and collective resilience.  After an overview of the four practices, break out groups compared their experiences and what is inspiring their work. Participants had the opportunity to connect more deeply with one another, sharing how the practices resonate for them, as well as how they relate to their work in and with communities.The full group reflection served as a wonderful stepping off point for future discussions.

Julie Gieseke created a wonderful visual map during the event which can be viewed below. The full session can be watched at this link, and the chat transcript can be found here. If you’d like to contribute resources and participate in future discussions, visit www.sense-us.org.

 

Webinar Recording: Social Distancing Meets Public Engagement

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Last week’s webinar, Social Distancing Meets Public Engagement, was our largest to date, with over 325 participants! This webinar, co-hosted with our partners at the National Civic League, featured Wendy Willis, Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and Larry Schooler, Director of Consensus Building and Community Engagement, CD&P.  Wendy and Larry showcased strategies for virtual public engagement in this time of social isolation.

This webinar included information about leveraging government access television to enhance the efforts of local government to connect with their residents and stakeholders.  Presenters also talked about differences in various forms of online engagement and when it might make sense to use them, as well as tips for turning your in-person meetings into virtual ones.

This webinar is full of resources! Check out the recording of this session at this link. The PowerPoint slides, which contain loads of information, can be viewed separately here.

Additionally, a whole host of resources and guidance were shared by presenters and participants alike in the chat.

Thanks to our presenters, Wendy and Larry, the National Civic League for hosting with us, and everyone who participated!

If you have benefitted from events like this one, please consider making a contribution to help support the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation: www.ncdd.org/donate. NCDD is a small nonprofit and we have expanded our programming to be responsive to our community during the pandemic. Any and all contributions are greatly appreciated and go directly to helping support our staff.

 

Event: Cultivating Community Capacity with Four “Deep Wisdom” Practices

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Join the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) and NCDD Sponsoring Member Susan Stuart Clark of Common Knowledge for this free event Friday, April 24, from 2-3:15 PM Eastern/11-12:15 PM Pacific. In honor of Arbor Day, this is an invitation to explore how we cultivate our personal and community capacity for deeper wisdom and healthy interconnectedness. Don’t miss this opportunity – register today!

This event is the start of a series of activities and collection of resources at sense-us.org, a new pro bono project for Common Knowledge and allies in the arts, healing and community transformation. Participants will learn more about the four practices identified by cross-cultural pioneer Angeles Arrien, which we can use to help deepen our individual and collective capacity for discovering the deeper wisdom in and between us.  The four practices and their importance to us and our work designing and facilitate community engagement during and after this pandemic are outlined in this wonderful piece by Susan Stuart Clark. 

The April 24 Zoom session will include different ways of centering ourselves and an overview of the four practices as a stepping off point for group reflection. Participants will have the opportunity to connect more deeply with one another, sharing how the practices resonate for you personally, as well as how they relate to your work in and with communities.

Drawn from ancient and indigenous wisdom, these practices invite us to bring our whole selves – heart, body and mind –  to our work as cultivators of community, dialogue stewards and/or peace builders. During this time of physical isolation, let’s embrace the ways we can bring closeness to one another through sharing our truest selves with each other. Let’s see how we can expand our capacity to understand the patterns and structures that brought us to this current moment and choose more inclusive and collaborative ways to co-create our future.

Join us for this opportunity to explore how these practices can transform our work. Register today to reserve your spot!

About Common Knowledge

Common Knowledge specializes in bringing new combinations of people together to listen to and learn from each other. Leading together. We facilitate powerful new connections across sectors, silos, and social divides that generate breakthrough civic participation, employee and community engagement programs. Learn more at www.ckgroup.org.

About Susan Stuart Clark

Susan Stuart Clark is Founder and Executive Director of Common Knowledge. Susan formed Common Knowledge to pioneer “community-driven design”, demonstrating how inclusion of diverse stakeholders stimulates innovative solutions on issues such as housing, health care, the environment, education outcomes, voting and financial literacy. Susan has over two decades of experience designing culturally responsive communications and engagement programs and presents frequently about increasing participation of lesser-heard voices, multi-sector collaboration and how investments in social cohesion enhance a community’s overall well-being.

About NCDD

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) is a network of innovators who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues. NCDD provides opportunities for members of the broadly-defined dialogue and deliberation (“D&D”) community to share knowledge, inspire one another, build collaborative relationships, and have a greater collective impact. Learn more at www.ncdd.org.

Announcing NCDD’s April Tech Tuesday with EnCiv!

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NCDD is thrilled to announce our next Tech Tuesday event featuring EnCiv and their new tool, the “Undebate.” This free event will take place Tuesday, April 28 from 2-3 PM Eastern/11-12 PM Pacific. Don’t miss this opportunity – register today to secure your spot!

EnCiv is a tech start-up led by NCDD Members Will Ferguson, David Fridley, and Adolf Gundersen. EnCiv automates proven human-interaction methods to scale productive democratic discourse.

In this Tech Tuesday event, these three principals from EnCiv will share with us an exciting new tool for online discourse, the “Undebate,” and the expansive vision that spawned it. The Undebate is being made available to voters across the country this election season by EnCiv partner Ballotpedia under the label “Candidate Conversations.” EnCiv will share with us more about this tool, and also ask for your input on other ways to use Undebate! We’ll also have an opportunity to hear about what else they are working on.

About our presenters

Will Ferguson is co-founder and CEO of Enciv, Inc. and a technology leader involved in numerous successful startups. He is also a co-inventor on eight patents in machine learning solutions.

Adolf Gundersen is co-founder and COO of EnCiv, as well as VP & Research Director at Interactivity Foundation. Adolf has thirty years experience as theorist and practitioner of democratic discussion.

David Fridley is CTO of EnCiv and Founder of Synaccord, LLC. David is a social entrepreneur, product manager, full stack developer, and has 30+ years experience in voice and video over the internet.

This event will be a great opportunity to see a new tool in action and connect with the presenters! Don’t miss it – register today!

Tech 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.