Who do you want to meet at NCDD 2014?

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

We thought we’d create a space for attendees to jump-start their networking efforts before next month’s conference.

For the past 12 years, NCDD events have brought together more than 2,500 people in the dialogue and deliberation field―practitioners, scholars, public leaders, trainers, artists, activists, philanthropists, students and more―to learn, collaborate, and network. NCDD conferences are wonderful networking opportunities, with about 400 of the most active and influential people in public engagement coming together this year in the DC area.

NCDD2012-wFranKorten-border Many friendships, professional relationships, and new partnerships have been hatched at NCDD conferences, and we suspect NCDD 2014 will be no different.

We chose the Hyatt Regency Reston, in part, because there are lots of cozy spaces for you to meet up during our three days together. We’ll help you coordinate your meetings through a whiteboard and signage at various seating areas. But you can also start organizing meetings and dinners NOW!

Thursday night, the night before the conference begins, is a great time to hold 7pm dinner meetings or afternoon mini-trainings. You’re on your own for dinner on Friday night after 6pm (after the reception and showcase), so planning for 6:30 or 7pm that night would work as well. Saturday evening also offers some space for networking, whether you decide to participate in a field trip or not. And breakfast meetings would work on Saturday and Sunday morning.

Check out the conference schedule to determine what might work best for you and your colleagues. And look over the list of registrants at www.ncdd2014.eventbrite.com (scroll down; then click “show more” twice to see everybody).

NCDD2006-SteveAndSusan There are lots of small meeting nooks in the hotel, as well as a nice restaurant, bar, and a Panera Bread. But for larger groups or for something outside of the conference space, check out the restaurant list and map for Reston Town Center. The Hyatt is marked as K on the map — so you can see there are tons of options right by the hotel.

So who do you want to meet up with? Use the comments to propose a breakfast for those interested in tech for engagement, or drinks on Thursday for folks from the West Coast. Perhaps you’d like to organize a dinner on Friday night for those who work in/with local government? Be creative, and make it happen!

We’ll keep pointing people to this post up until the conference.

Did you miss August’s Tech Tuesday event? Watch it now!

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Susan Stuart Clark

The August NCDD Tech Tuesday on Local Governments Adopting Online Engagement looked at how local governments are adopting online engagement as part of their public participation activities. Our two presenters were:

Della Rucker, Managing Editor of EngagingCities and Chief Instigator at Wise Economy
Susan Stuart Clark, Director of Common Knowledge, NCDD board member and consultant to local governments

Della and Susan reviewed examples of how local governments are using online engagement, the state of the industry, key factors to consider in planning and implementing online engagement – and how online engagement can be used to complement and enhance in-person dialogue.

You can you watch the hour-long program above and on YouTube here. You can also download:

Susan’s PowerPoint presentation about the context for how and why local governments are adding online engagement and critical strategies for successful implementation of these tools.
Highlights of questions and helpful comments from the participants, along with additional commentary by Della Rucker.

If this is a topic of interest to you, here are additional resources:

Visit the Tech for Engagement page in NCDD’s Resource Center
Check out Della’s “Online Public Engagement Emporium” with an overview of current prominent tools
Read Susan’s paper on Broadening Public Participation Using Online Engagement Tools written for the Institute for Local Government

Day One “Short Talks” at NCDD 2014

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Andy Fluke

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.

short_talk_one

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.

short_talk_two

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.

On David Mathews… a featured speaker at NCDD 2014

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

We are thrilled to have David Mathews, President and CEO of the Kettering Foundation, joining us at the National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation next month. David is our featured plenary speaker on the first day of the conference, Friday, October 17th. (See the full conference schedule here.)

Mathews-David-12-2009-248x300 Many people in our field know David, and are familiar with his work at the Kettering Foundation. Under David’s leadership, Kettering plays a vital role in our field by advancing and funding leading edge democracy research. Because one of the key ways they conduct research is through in-person “learning exchanges,” Kettering also provides an important convening role in our field.

But I suspect fewer people are familiar with David’s work pre-Kettering, which is quite extraordinary.

Most prominently, David served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) during the Ford administration. We now know HEW as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

As HEW secretary, David was the youngest member of the cabinet and head of the agency with the largest budget. While there, he worked on restoring public confidence in government and reforming the regulatory system. At his swearing in, Gerald Ford said, “Mathews brings to this new mission the strength of youth, a sense of purpose, the skills of a scholar, and the trusted record of a successful leader and administrator. That is an impressive inventory by any standard.”

ford_mathews

Born and raised in Grove Hill, Alabama, David studied history and classical Greek at the University of Alabama and earned a PhD in history from Columbia University. David returned to the University of Alabama to serve as president from 1969-1975 and then again from 1977–1980 after serving as HEW Secretary. This was an era of significant change and innovation, including the integration of the institution. At age 33, Mathews was the youngest president of a major university.

As mentioned above, David currently serves as President and CEO of the Kettering Foundation, a not-for-profit research foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is “What does it take to make democracy work as it should?” Charles F. Kettering, best known for inventing the automobile self-starter, created the foundation in 1927.

Over the years, the foundation expanded its focus to look beyond scientific solutions, recognizing that problems like world hunger are not technical problems, but rather political problems. In the 1970s, the foundation began to concentrate on democratic politics, particularly the role of citizens. Mathews was elected to the Kettering Foundation board of trustees in 1972, and in 1981, he became its president and CEO.

David Mathews has written extensively on such subjects as education, political theory, southern history, public policy, and international problem solving. His books include Why Public Schools? Whose Public Schools? (NewSouth Books, 2003); For Communities to Work (Kettering Foundation, 2002); Politics for People: Finding a Responsible Public Voice (University of Illinois Press, 1999); Is There a Public for Public Schools? (1996); and Reclaiming Public Education by Reclaiming Our Democracy (Kettering Foundation Press, 2006).

His most recent book, The Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future (Kettering Foundation Press, 2014), focuses on how the work of democracy might be done to put more control in the hands of citizens and help restore the legitimacy of our institutions. As you may recall, Kettering generously extended the offer of a free copy of The Ecology of Democracy in April to any NCDD member who was interested in receiving a copy — and I know many of you have been enjoying the book!

This will be David’s first NCDD conference, and we are thrilled he will be joining us. David thinks highly of the NCDD network, so let’s be sure to give him a warm welcome!

Not too late to sponsor the 2014 NCDD conference!

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Leading organizations in the dialogue and deliberation community are really coming out to support the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation. It is so heartwarming to see this support, and we are indebted to our sponsors and partners for NCDD 2014.

Our sponsors are in many ways a “who’s who” in public engagement, and we’re thrilled they want to publicly support this year’s NCDD conference. See the full list of sponsors below the image, or visit this page for full descriptions.

There is still time to join their ranks and sign on as a sponsor or partner of the conference! See this page for details.

The following organizations have signed on as All-Star Sponsors, Co-Sponsors, and Partners of NCDD 2014 — and we are so grateful for their generous support.

So far, our All-Star Sponsors (donated $3000) are the Democracy Fund, the Interactivity Foundation, Penn State’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy and Center for Democratic Deliberation (just heard the news this morning!) and the Public Conversations Project

Our Co-Sponsors ($2000) are the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, Everyday Democracy, the International Association of Facilitators, and the National Dialogue Network

And our Partners ($1000) are the Close Up Foundation, Healthy Democracy, the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy, the Institute for Local Government, the League of Extraordinary Trainers, Mid-Atlantic Facilitators Network (MAFN), PlaceSpeak, Public Agenda, and the William D. Ruckelshaus Center

Interested in joining their ranks and sponsoring the upcoming National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation? We’d greatly appreciate your support — plus you get a lot of exposure and other benefits. Learn more about sponsor benefits and requirements here, or send me an email at sandy@ncdd.org to let me know you are interested in supporting this important convening through sponsorship!

Showcase Sessions at the 2014 NCDD Conference

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

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.

Civil Dialogue

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.

The Civity Initiative

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.

Common Ground for Action

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.

Convergence Center for Policy Resolution

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.

Ethelo Decisions

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.

International Facilitation Week

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.

Liberating Structures

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.

MetroQuest

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.

No Labels

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.

Research & Evaluation of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review

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.

Strong Towns

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

The Next Generation of Democracy Practitioners

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.

UNCG Guide to Collaborative Competencies

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.

Using Polarities to Explore Hidden Assumptions, Paradoxes, and Wholeness in Deliberation

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.

Wisdom Council

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.

Student & Youth Scholarships Available for NCDD 2014!

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

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!

Introducing Grande Lum and his work at the US Dept of Justice’s Community Relations Service

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

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.

NIF for the Skilled Facilitator: An NCDD 2014 Pre-Conference Training

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Join Craig Paterson of the California NIF Network, Patty Dineen of the National Issues Forums Institute and Pennsylvania NIF and others (TBA) on Thursday, October 16 for a 6-hour workshop on moderating National Issues Forums to your skill set.

This session, titled NIF for the Skilled Facilitator, is designed for experience facilitators who would like to add National Issues Forums to their répertoire. The aim of this workshop is to expand the use of NIF, grow the NIF network and, of course, add another ‘tool’ to the experienced facilitator’s dialogue and deliberation toolkit.

NIF is known for its amazing issue books and skilled “issue framing,” and for its close relationship with the Kettering Foundation. Check out many NIF resources in NCDD’s Resource Center on NIFI or visit the NIFI site at www.nifi.org for more information.

A modest fee of $25.00 will be charged to cover food and materials. The group will be intentionally kept small, with a maximum of 25 participants.

Please add this to your calendar if you’re interested — and make your travel plans for the 2014 NCDD conference accordingly. (You’ll want to arrive on Wednesday, October 15th if you’re flying in.) A registration form will be online soon; just keep an eye on the conference schedule page.

Questions about the pre-conference workshop? Contact Nancy Gansneder at njg5w@virginia.edu.

So many ways to use technology, so many ways to learn at NCDD 2014

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Past conference attendees* have approached technology for public engagement, dialogue, and deliberation in so many different ways:

Kira is hands-on and pragmatic, interested only in tools that fit into her work, today.
Bob’s a skeptic, so it’s tough to convince him that online technology can play a role in his work.
Ashante seeks technology that’ll make her dream process a reality.
Andrés has just scratched the surface, unsure where to begin.

Laptops And they’ve all found sessions to expand their vision and knowledge at past NCDD conferences.

For all of his skepticism, Bob remembers Steven Clift’s presentation at NCDD’s 2012 conference in Seattle fondly. Clift’s 15 years of experience with email- and web-based community forums, particularly in immigrant and low income communities, and the way Clift’s work has been put to use in communities across the globe, resonated with him. Indeed, Bob surprised friends by asking Clift to help redesign an upcoming neighborhood summit using email to make it more inclusive. And he loves to tell the story of how some of his most important learning was about the value of going door to door and posting sign-up sheets at street fairs.

Few recall that Ashante’s fervor was sparked by her NCDD’s regional conference in Austin, in 2010. There, she first learned of the ways Manor, Texas used the web to harvest ideas from all residents. She realized that if a town of just 5000 residents could do this, her opportunities were far larger than she had thought. And Manor’s emphasis on low-cost technologies gave her hope that she could begin her efforts years sooner than she had planned.

That same year, at the regional conference in Boston, Kira encountered the University of New Hampshire’s efforts to facilitate discussions of state-sanctioned gambling in eleven communities. UNH had used an online forum to broaden the reach of the discussion, and she saw the potential for this approach to bring rural communities into a process she was managing in the Northwest.

LocalistoShowcase Andrés has been energized by the more informal sessions. Face to face discussions during the technology showcase in Seattle gave him a real understanding of Mindmixer and how it compared to other web-based idea generation tools. And he dates his decision to start a blog on deliberation and outreach to old friends and new colleagues who walked him through their experiences with WordPress, Twitter, and Flickr at NCDD’s 2008 conference in Austin (and the pizza that night was delicious, too).

Of course, Andrés, Bob, Kira, and Ashante have helped one another and other attendees as well. Kira’s practical tricks for integrating technology into process work thawed Bob’s icy skepticism, and her results made him a bit envious. Bob paid that favor forward by participating vigorously in Ashante’s visioning workshop: his thoughtful cautions made Ashante set the bar for the quality of online interaction even higher. At that same workshop, Ashante’s enthusiasm fired Andrés up to explore how new social media tools could address the challenges he was facing. In turn, Andrés’ gentle but persistent questions made Kira realize that she’d have to spend more time to verify that the privacy of her participants was protected.

This interactive, top down, bottoms-up, and inside out enthusiasm is a hallmark of NCDD conferences.

So, whether you have an interest in technology for dialogue and deliberation or still need to be convinced, extensive experience or very little, you’ll find lots of opportunities to broaden your perspectives and lots of practitioners and technologists eager to learn from your experience, your insights, and your questions.

So please check out the conference schedule (Oct 17-19, 2014 in Reston, VA) for sessions suited to your own inner Kira, Andrés, Bob, and Ashante (sessions will be added within the next week!), register, and plan to share your wisdom and experience with 400 old and new friends and colleagues this October.

- Written by NCDD 2014 planning team member Chris Berendes of Netalyst, Inc.

*We confess that these four characters are fictional, but, as demonstrated by the links, the conference sessions that informed and inspired them are entirely real.

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