NCDD’s Long-Term Mapping Efforts

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Last week, I announced the visual mapping process NCDD is conducting that leads into our national conference in October. I’m excited to say that about 30 graphic recorders have expressed interest in being involved, and that the interviews are going very well so far thanks to our interviewer, Kathryn Thomson!

At and after the conference, we plan to expand the project to more fully map our field in a way that creates a valuable product for all of us.

We are interested in creating several maps, or a single map with multiple layers, that can show things like:

The geographic reach of people working in dialogue and deliberation, and of their projects and programs
The capacities and assets represented in the field–especially in terms of capacity to convene dialogues, capacity to mobilize others to convene dialogues, and assets that could be considered tangible aspects of civic infrastructure (like facilitator training programs, physical and online spaces for convening, etc.)
Consultants and facilitators who are available for hire, including information about the topics they have experience with, the methods they have expertise in, and the training programs they’ve participated in. (Note: NCDD has a member map and directory, but we’d like to find a comprehensive tool that combines map and searchable directory features, and collaborate with other networks expand it well beyond NCDD’s membership.)

We are currently looking for help from those who’ve had direct experience with mapping or data visualization tools to share their experience so we can make a well informed decision about which tool or tools to use. Ideally we would like a tool that is easy to use both to create and to understand the output. The tool also has to handle a very large dataset.

Please contact me at sandy@ncdd.org if you’d like to help advise NCDD on this larger mapping project — or add a comment if you have specific ideas or recommendations. Questions that may help guide your response are…

What tool have you used to create network maps?
What do you think it did exceptionally well?
What do you wish it did better?
What tools would you avoid?

And for those of you with mapping experience, please add your name and email to the comments and plan to join me on Friday at 11am on a group brainstorming call to dig further into these questions and mapping technologies!

Visual Mapping Process Leading into NCDD 2014

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

NCDD is in the midst of an exciting mapping process leading up to our national conference in the DC area this October. We’re conducting this initial mapping project–and a more in depth mapping process we hope to launch at the conference–in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation.

Cool mapping image from www.mindmapart.com.

There is a vast field of organizations, communities and networks whose work centers around collaborative group practices. This work goes by many different names (dialogue and deliberation, deliberative democracy, whole systems change, collective intelligence, collaborative problem solving, etc.), and NCDD was formed to bridge these and other streams of practice to help us learn from, be inspired by, and work with each other.

People use collaborative group practices to reach numerous ends: planning stronger communities, influencing policy, addressing long-standing conflict, inspiring people to work together to solve collective problems, increasing awareness of the nuances of public issues, and helping people connect with each other across political and social divides.

The purpose of this initial mapping project is to help people working in this broad field of practice – especially those who attend the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation – get a better picture of the points of connection, the overlaps, and the possibilities for collaboration between the myriad networks and organizations that are innovating in this field.

The first stage of this mapping project is a very visual one, and was born out of a brainstorming conversation I had with Rosa Zubizarreta. We will begin by interviewing ten highly collaborative organizations that work in different spheres of this work. Kathryn Thomson of LeadershipMind Consulting will conduct the interviews, which will be recorded.

Graphic recorders will use the content generated from interviews with these key organizations and networks to create visually compelling maps of their respective “ecosystems” so that NCDD conference participants may see both the larger, interconnected system and their own points of intersection within that system. (We’re still looking for graphic recorders to partner with, so let us know if you’re interested! We’d love to work with 10 graphic recorders, so we can display a wide range of styles at the conference.)

Graphic mural created by Avril Orloff at the 2008 NCDD conference.

These maps will be on display during the opening plenary of our 2014 national conference, which will bring together about 400 of the most active and influential people in our field.

In the interviews, Kathryn and our graphic recorders will dig into the networks of connections, partnerships, overlaps, and points of possible collaboration among some of the key organizations and communities of practice whose work centers around collaborative group practices.

Kathryn is conducting interviews this month with the following organizations:

Animating Democracy
Art of Hosting
CommunityMatters Partnership
Deliberative Democracy Consortium
Everyday Democracy
Institute for Sustained Dialogue
National Issues Forums Institute
The World Café community
The emerging transpartisan group led by Mark Gerzon
And several other membership organizations NCDD works with, like ICA, IAF and IAP2

We chose to interview these particular organizations and networks not only because we consider them to be highly collaborative, but because they represent a variety of sectors within our broad community. Obviously, there are many other highly collaborative groups in our field that we could have selected.

It is our hope that by seeing some of these ecosystems mapped out and reflected back to the NCDD community, and subsequently creating new maps at the conference, attendees will consider how they might make further, deeper connections that will result in increased capacity for all of us in this field. My recent article in the Journal for Public Deliberation points to a growing desire among many organizations to combine forces, resources and expertise to make a greater impact, and mapping the field will help enable this.

Creating these visual maps is the first step of a larger process. At the October conference, we will announce a more inclusive effort to map the NCDD network using online mapping tools.

Mapping the network is one step toward inviting more people into the kind of leadership that will enable us collectively to grow a more robust, resilient and sustainable network – and recognizing some of the organizations in our field that already embody that kind of leadership.

Let us know your thoughts on this project. And if you are interested in helping advise NCDD on the second phase of our mapping process and have some knowledge about different approaches to digital mapping, please email me at sandy@ncdd.org to let me know!

Mapping Our Social Networks

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

LinkedIn has a neat tool called InMaps that I just learned is being retired soon. With click of a button, it creates an interactive visual map of all your LinkedIn connections. It assigns them colors based on their similarities to each other, and you can to label those colored clusters based on the similarities you see.

Back when I first started using LinkedIn, I was pretty gung-ho about making connections. I currently have 2,147 LinkedIn connections, so my LinkedIn map is a little dense with people and the connections between them. Interestingly, my current InMap is more densely concentrated than it was a couple of years ago when I first generated my InMap. There are fewer individuals and nodes that seem distanced from the others.

LinkedInMap-Key It’s a little hard to see who some of the other nodes are that seem to connect multiple sectors, but I could get a sense of who the most connected people are by the size of their dot. Diana Whitney, Matt Leighninger, Thomas Valenti, Larry Schooler, Beth Offenbacker, Jon Ramer, Nancy White, Margaret Herrmann, and Libby and Len Traubman stand out to me as highly connected in LinkedIn.

One of the nice features InMaps offers is that it allows you to label your own clusters. If you click around all of the orange or blue dots on your map, it becomes clear that the people assigned to that color have something in common. The image to the right shows how I chose to label my colored clusters.

My connections on LinkedIn, in large part, are NCDD’s connections. Reflecting on Albert-László Barabási’s Linked (a book on the power of networks), I feel pretty encouraged by the denseness and variety of my network map. In Barabási’s chapter “Hubs and Connectors,” he writes:

“Indeed, with links to an unusually large number of nodes, hubs create short paths between any two nodes in the system. Consequently, while the average separation between two randomly selected people on Earth is six, the distance between anybody and a connector is often only one or two.”

I’m curious about what other NCDDers’ InMaps look like, and how you would label your own clusters. To create your own InMap (before it’s too late!), go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/ (you’ll have to enter your LinkedIn password). Once it has generated your map and you’ve added your labels, click Share and then add the web address of your map in the comments below so others can take a look. The link to your shareable map will look something like mine:

http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/share/Sandy_Heierbacher/575702...

Also – I’m very curious about what network mapping tools have worked best for NCDDers? Mapping my own LinkedIn contacts or Facebook contacts is interesting, but NCDD is starting to map the organizations, collaboration, and capacity in our field. What tools would you suggest we learn more about as we embark on this important task? Are there any tools you’ve found particularly useful? What tools have disappointed you?

Let us know if you work with legislators — or would like to!

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Later this week, Hawaii State Senator Les Ihara and I are both involved in an exciting workshop at the Kettering Foundation that will bring together 26 state legislators from 20 states to talk about effective public engagement.

Les asked me recently to gather information about NCDD members who had worked with legislators (or are currently working with them), and with all the conference goings-on, I haven’t been able to squeeze it in. But I think we can still help Les, and create a list of NCDDers who either (1) have experience working with legislators, (2) are interested in working with legislators, or (3) both! I know Les’ impression is that there are not many NCDDers working with legislators, and I don’t believe that is the case at all.

Will you help me change Les’ mind and help me better represent you at this meeting by filling out the super-simple survey I’ve created.

Over the last few years, I’ve networked with about 50 legislators who operate with a collaborative leadership model, rather than power-based model; and I plan to form a Collaborative Legislators Network when the time is right (we’re getting close).

We’re designing our meeting agenda to support legislators who want to conduct new citizen engagement type activities over the next year, and I’m looking for people who may have relationships with legislators in these states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

If you haven’t yet worked with a legislator, I’d also like to know who might be interested in providing assistance to and collaborating with a legislator in your state. Thank you.

Aloha,
LES IHARA, JR.
Hawaii State Senator, 10th District

If you have worked with local, state or national policymakers, or would like to, please let us know by answering a few simple questions TODAY or TOMORROW. Again, here is the survey link:

Short Survey about Working with Legislators

Engaging Students & Youth in the NCDD 2014 Conference

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

As you may have read by now, the theme for the NCDD 2014 Conference is Democracy for the Next Generation. We chose this theme for many reasons. We wanted to bring more attention to the exciting and innovative ways that next generation technology is changing our field, to think about new ways to embed our work into old processes of governance, and to invite people to join us in envisioning what it would look like for dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement to take an evolutionary leap forward as a field of practice.

But another important reason that we chose Democracy for the Next Generation as the conference theme was because it invites us to think literally about the “next” generation(s) of people who we want not only to be effective participants in democracy, but who we also want to see join our field as practitioners. We wanted the theme to encourage us to think about how we can involve more young people in the future of our work and the future of democracy – both 10 years from now and 100 years into the future. That is why we are making a special effort to invite students and young people from our communities of practice to attend NCDD 2014.

The “Why”

Involving young people in bigger ways addresses a number of the goals for our conference: expanding the scope of our work, connecting newer practitioners with seasoned veterans, and creating new partnerships, just to name a few. We think that having this kind of focus is particularly important for our field because in many ways, the current cohort of young adults – the Millennial generation – embodies the next generation of democracy as well as the challenges and opportunities for our field’s evolution.

AustinPic2-350 Millennials are the most diverse generation of Americans ever as well as the most tech savvy, so thinking about their inclusion means opening up discussion both around technology’s role in our work as well as the challenge of making sure we are ready to engage with diversity and go beyond “the usual suspects” in terms of participants in our work. And since most Millennials are currently in or just a few years past being in college, engaging them in our work also means engaging institutions of higher education in promoting democratic practices and processes, as well as doing more of our own teaching – and learning – about our work with a new wave of potential recruits and participants.

Additionally, let’s face it – the leaders in our field are not getting any younger. As we see some of the pillars and pioneers of our work getting closer to retirement age, it is vital to have an eye on the development and inclusion of the younger folks in our network who will be the ones to pick up the slack when our contemporary leaders leave the work. If we are thinking about our work on a generational scale, we want to be making conscious decisions around mentoring tomorrow’s leading engagement practitioners and scholars today.

The benefits for youth & students

With all of that said, we at NCDD are putting our money where our mouth is with incentives for students and young people to attend NCDD 2014. We are offering a reduced student registration rate for the conference of just $250 (early bird registration is $375), and we are offering even lower group rates for teachers and other practitioners who are bringing groups of students from their youth-oriented programs. The group rate will be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but one group that came with 8 students to NCDD 2012 worked with us to receive two free student spots in addition to the already-discounted rate. The more students you bring, the bigger the discount!

Student attendee at NCDD Austin workshop in 2010 Plus, we are excited to announce that we are looking to identify a cadre of mentors that will support and guide the students and youth who attend this year’s NCDD conference in how to best make use of the conference and get involved in the field. The mentors who are selected will be seasoned D&D/engagement practitioners who are willing to spend some time with the students and youth who attend to mentor them during the conference. We hope that some of the mentors will continue in that role after the conference, to help pave the way for the next generation of practitioners and leaders in our field. It’s a very exciting opportunity for anyone looking for a way into the field!

Testimonials

We know that attending NCDD conferences is a great opportunity for students and young people. But you don’t have to take our word for it – you can hear about it yourself from student attendees and their teachers who have shared their feedback about the NCDD 2012 conference with us.

Kacey Bull, a Colorado State University undergraduate, had this to say about her experience in Seattle:

Attending NCDD was an incredible opportunity for me. It opened my eyes to a world that I didn’t know existed. I had been involved in the Center for Public Deliberation for about a year before I attended the conference and I had no idea how vast the world of Dialogue and Deliberation was.

I learned so many different models and activities, I was encouraged by all the people doing great work, and ultimately it led me one step closer to dedicating my academic efforts and career pursuits to the world of Deliberation. I wish every college student could be inspired by such an event.

And Dr. Martín Carcasson, who helped 8 of his students attend NCDD Seattle in 2012, shared with us his reflections on why bringing students to NCDD 2014 is a great opportunity:

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. Over a few short days, they will get exposure to multiple methods and strategies for supporting dialogue and deliberation back on their campuses and community. NCDD’s lively, interactive sessions will put the students in the middle of the work, working side by side with academics and practitioners.

Those experiences will not only be valuable to the students, but the students also provide a great service to the deliberation community by providing new voices and fresh perspectives to the conference events. I had several students attend the conference in Seattle, and those students came back incredibly invigorated, passionate about deliberation, and newly equipped with great ideas and fresh skills.

Several of those students have decided to stay at CSU for grad school, mostly in order to continue their journey with deliberation. Their wonderful NCDD experience certainly played an important role in their growing interest and commitment to the field. As the D&D movement continues to expand, attracting bright new voices will be critical, and bringing your best and brightest students to the NCDD conference is a great step in that direction.

Martín and his students also helped us make a great video, produced by our friends at Song of A Citizen, about their experience at NCDD 2012.

How you can get support this effort

Bring a group of young people or students to the conference this October (connect with NCDD’s director, Sandy Heierbacher, at sandy@ncdd.org or our conference manager, Courtney Breese, at courtney@ncdd.org for info about discounts and more)
Serve as a mentor at the conference or suggest people who work with students/youth we should reach out to (contact student/youth outreach coordinator Roshan at roshan@ncdd.org or Sandy)
Make a donation to NCDD at www.ncdd.org/donate earmarked for sponsorships for students and youth
Encourage ALL the students you know to take advantage of NCDD’s Student Membership rate, which is only $25/year for full access to all membership benefits
At the conference, do all you can to help the young people who attend NCDD 2014 to feel welcomed and valued
Help us spread the word to students at your schools, youth who are part of your work, and other young people who might be interested in attending — we’d love to have them! Direct people HERE to this post for details.

Table-group-600px-outlined

National Dialogue on Mental Health Turns 1!

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

A little over one year ago, on June 3rd, President Obama called for a national dialogue on mental health. Since then, the alliance of organizations running Creating Community Solutions (including NCDD) have been finding creative ways to get Americans talking about mental health in their communities.

It has been quite the year, with highs and lows and plenty of pleasant surprises along the way. Check out our Creating Community Solutions tag for all the NCDD posts on the project, and definitely explore the CCS website if you haven’t already.

As part of the project’s effort to link hundreds of community dialogues to action, CCS has been offering educational webinars. Visit www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/resources and scroll down the page to “Training Opportunities,” where you’ll find the following webinars archived and ready for you to view on demand:

Local Education Agency Grant Opportunities in Mental Health
State Education Agency Grant opportunities in Mental Health
Preventing mental health problems and identifying issues early by connecting child serving systems
Text, Talk, Act & Connect!
“Now is the Time” Project AWARE State Educational Agency Grants

See many more resources for holding dialogues on mental health at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/resources, and check out all the write-ups from the dialogues that have taken place at www.creatingcommunitysolutions.org/outcomes.

Register for Frontiers of Democracy Conference July 16-18

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

In case you hadn’t heard already, we wanted to make sure to tell encourage our NCDD members to consider attending the “Frontiers of Democracy” conference this July 16-18 in Boston, MA. Hosted annually at Tufts University, the conference has become an important venue for leaders in democratic thought and practice to gather to share ideas and network.

This year’s conference will feature talks from, among others, Ambassador Alan Solomont, the dean of Tisch College; Gloria Rubio-Cortes, president, National Civic League; Josh Lerner, Participatory Budgeting Project; John Gastil, Penn State (communication); Tina Nabatchi, Syracuse University (public administration); Shelby Brown, Executive Administrator, State of Connecticut’s Office of Governmental Accountability; Tim Eatman, Research Director, Imagining America; Sabeel Rahman, Harvard (government and law).

And to top it all off, the NCDD board and our director, Sandy Heierbacher, are hosting a workshop on engaging engagement practitioners. That workshop and others can be found in the detailed agenda, which features talks, discussions, and workshops on some of the most exciting and innovative work being done in our field, and you won’t want to miss it, so make sure to register here today!

You can get a taste of what the conference will focus on by reading the conference framing statement:

Who’s on the bus, and where is it going? The state of the civic field

Civic work is proliferating: many different kinds of people, working in different contexts and issue areas, are expanding the ways in which citizens engage with government, community, and each other. It is increasingly clear that growing inequality, social and political fragmentation, and lack of democratic opportunities are undermining our efforts to address public priorities such as health, education, poverty, the environment, and government reform.

But attempts to label the responses – as “civic engagement,” “collaborative governance,” “deliberative democracy,” or “public work” – or to articulate them as one movement or policy agenda under a heading like “civic renewal” or “stronger democracy” – immediately spark debates about substance, strategy, and language.

Though it is clear we have many principles and practices in common, we differ on what we should call this work and where it is headed. In order for “overlapping civic coalitions”* to form, the potential partners would have to work through goals, assumptions, and differences. Join us on July 16-18 at the 2014 “Frontiers of Democracy” conference, in downtown Boston, for an invigorating, argumentative, civil discussion on the state and future of the civic field.

Frontiers of Democracy is sponsored by Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, the Democracy Imperative, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, all of which have NCDD members in their leadership.

We know this conference will be a great space for NCDD members to gather, and we hope to see you then!

More information about the Frontiers of Democracy conference is available at http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/civic-studies/frontiers.

June’s Tech Tuesday to feature MaestroConference!

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

For our June 24th Tech Tuesday, we’re pleased to have Brian Burt, CEO and founder of MaestroConference, host a session that lets us experience major new changes in their platform and talk together about how it could support upcoming projects we each may have. Registration is open now, so reserve your spot today!

Many of you are familiar with MaestroConference, as we’ve used it numerous times for our online activities (our last two Tech Tuesdays, a couple confab calls, and a few special calls), thanks in large part to NCDD member Ben Roberts, who has served as our host for the calls. MaestroConference is also well-known in our field because of its alignment with group process techniques — including its unique ability to enable break-out groups to form on conference calls.

MaestroConference is the leader in “Social Conferencing” technology serving more than 5 million participants, and is launching a new “Visual Interface” which allows people to see the faces of the people they’re talking to, edit documents together, leverage crowdsourcing applications, exercise the “law of two feet” and more.

For our June Tech Tuesday (on the 24th from 1-2pm Eastern / 10-11am Pacific), Brian will host a discussion leveraging the new Social Webinar platform for conveners and facilitators about enhancing interactivity and engagement with virtual conversations. Participants will experience break out groups with peer advice to examine how conversations with scalable breakouts can include the voices you want at the table, and address any challenges you have found in the past with technology-supported engagement.

This FREE event will take place on Tuesday, June 24 from 1-2pm ET / 10-11am PT. You do not have to be a member of NCDD to participate in our Tech Tuesday learning events.

Open Government Needs Public Trust

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

The piece below comes from the Gov. 2.0 Watch blog, a project of our organizational partners at the Davenport Institute. The reflections shared on building trust in government as a critical component of public engagement and open government initiatives are good food for thought, and we encourage you to read more below or find the original post here.

In the wake of recent scandals involving California lawmakers, this CA Fwd interview with Leon Panetta is a needed reminder of the importance of integrity in public service. Ed Coghlan comments:

Three months into 2014 and three California State Senators have had brushes with the law. Needless to say, public confidence in elected officials is shaken.

It’s understandable, but like any setback in life, it’s also an opportunity to reflect and change for the better.

Now is the time for our elected officials to enact immediate and meaningful reform in response to alleged state-level corruption that has gotten national media attention. Only then will public trust in government be on the road to recovery.

CA Fwd is attempting to “catalyze a conversation on rebuilding public confidence in government,” and released a roadmap called The Path Toward Trust in April. More information is available here.

The Huffington Post published a related article last month by Gavin Newsom and Zachary Bookman, highlighting successes in the “Open Government movement” in Palo Alto, Bell, San Francisco, and the California State Lands Commission, that they argue have helped to increase public trust and civic engagement:

As a sector, government typically embraces technology well-behind the consumer curve. This leads to disheartening stories, like veterans waiting months or years for disability claims due to outdated technology or the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website. This is changing.

Cities and states are now the driving force in a national movement to harness technology to share a wealth of government information and data. Many forward thinking local governments now provide effective tools to the public to make sense of all this data.

New platforms can transform data from legacy systems into meaningful visualizations. Instant, web-based access to this information not only saves time and money, but also helps government make faster and better decisions. This allows them to serve their communities and builds trust with citizens.

You can find the original version of this post at http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/gov20watch/index.php/2014/04/public-trust-open-government.

More on our next Tech Tuesday event on Ethelo

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Our upcoming Tech Tuesday, on May 27th from 1:00 to 2:30 pm EST, introduces Ethelo—a new tool committed to pioneering progress on how collaborative thinking and decision making can occur online.

Ethelo founder John Richardson and his team (which includes NCDD member Kathryn Thomson) will demonstrate how the Ethelo algorithm works and how it can enhance the work of D&D practitioners. Currently at Beta stage, Ethelo is offering NCDD members free access to the platform and asking for our input to help them refine its development as a powerful tool for dialogue and decision making.

Here is how they describe their work:

Ethelo (a Greek word which signifies deep intention) is designed to complement and support the power of deliberative dialogue. Traditional methods of getting to whole group support, such as consensus, are often exhaustive, time consuming, labor intensive processes. Other methods of gaining group support include some form of compromise–which leave many if not all members vaguely unsatisfied, or a majority vote rule which can leave nearly half of the members unhappy.

Ethelo’s online platform deepens and extends in-person public processes; it enables groups to think differently about the issue or decision at hand, and leads to a more thoughtful, more well supported outcome.

To preview how Ethelo works to identify the collective will of a group (whether that group is a family, an organization, or a whole community) here are some links to different examples:

The Condo Dispute—condo disputes can take up so much time and energy, even on minor issues. Click here to see how one contentious issue was resolved using Ethelo. This example will take about 5 minutes for you to work through.
Group Holiday Decision—this one is also fairly quick to work through.
Comfort Cove Community Center—this is a more complex decision, so you’ll want to set aside about 15 minutes to work through this one.

This webinar will be interactive, thanks to Ben Roberts and the Maestroconference platform, and you’ll have lots of opportunities to provide input and ask questions in large and small group settings. We hope you’ll join your Tech Tuesday hosts and the Ethelo team for this opportunity to learn about more about the potential of this innovative new tool for collaboration and decision making.

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Category Archives: NCDD projects