A Public Voice 2014

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

The Kettering Foundation’s annual DC event, “A Public Voice,” took place yesterday at the Newseum in Washington DC. The content of the event is off the record, so those from government can feel comfortable engaging in a deeper conversation in front of the audience that attends.

This year’s topic was Health Care: What Do We Want and How Can We Pay For It?, and the proceedings will inform the development of a National Issues Forums Institute discussion guide on this very timely and contentious issue. This roundtable panel bought together leaders with a deep understanding of healthcare policy, along with others who have similarly deep experience in engaging citizens on contentious public issues.

I was honored to have been asked to invite a dozen NCDD members to attend — members representing prominent organizations in our field and large networks of facilitators:

Kyle Bozentko, Director of Policy and Research, Jefferson Center
Courtney Breese, Board Member, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD)
Steve Brigham, Former Executive Director, AmericaSpeaks
Steve Clift, Executive Director, e-democracy.org
David Isaacs, Co-Founder, The World Cafe
Steven Kull, Founder and President, Voice of the People
Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Executive Director, University of Arizona National Institute for Civil Discourse
Martha McCoy, Executive Director, Everyday Democracy
Bill Potapchuk, President, Community Building Institute
Sarah Rubin, Program Manager, Institute for Local Government
Steve Waddell, Executive Director, Networking Action
Wendy Willis, Executive Director, Policy Consensus Initiative

I serve on the planning committee for A Public Voice, and also helped select the four panelists who represented the deliberative democracy community: Jean Johnson of Public Agenda and NIF, Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Val Ramos of Everyday Democracy, and Gloria Rubio-Cortes of the National Civic League. In addition, I facilitated and helped organize a planning meeting at Kettering in February with about 8 of the NCDD representatives, to talk about their role in Public Voice and glean their valuable input for Kettering.

Here is a snapshot of most of the NCDD members who were present yesterday, including my invitees, the panelists, and some Kettering guests who are members of NCDD.

NCDD Group Attending Public Voice 2014

I also helped with the content of the event brochure and some great postcards that were distributed yesterday. The event brochure included descriptions of the deliberative democracy organizations represented by my invitees. It was designed to give policymakers who were present a sense of the breadth and expertise available to them if they are interested in engaging citizens more deeply.

The postcard (which I’m really excited about) features a map of the United States that highlights the areas where you will find members of the NCDD community, the National Issues Forums network, and Everyday Democracy community leaders. Look at all of the blue circles that represent NCDDers! The larger circles indicate a larger cluster of contacts.

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I really enjoyed yesterday’s event, and loved having the chance to introduce some new NCDD members to the Kettering crowd. NCDD is proud to be developing such a strong partnership with the Kettering Foundation, and we look forward to engaging more and more of you in our work with Kettering.

Community Branding Call with CM this Thursday

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We are pleased to announce the next capacity-building conference call from our organizational partners at CommunityMatters, which is coming up this Thursday, May 8th from 4-5pm EST.

CM is working with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design to host the call, entitled What’s in a Name? The Power of Community Branding. The call is described like this:

Your community isn’t Anywhere, USA. It has stories to tell – tales of historic moments, epic failures, innovative products, resilient businesses and colorful people. How can your community take its most distinct stories and turn them into a compelling and unified message?

Community branding brings local stories and sentiments to the surface, highlighting unique assets that make a place great.

On May 8, Ben Muldrow of Arnett Muldrow & Associates… will share his experience in working with small towns and rural places to create a strong brand that supports community and economic development outcomes.

Before the call, we encourage you to check out the accompanying piece on the CM blog by Caitlyn Horose, which is cross posted below. You can find the original piece here.

What’s in a Name? The Power of Community Branding

The most compelling reminder that community branding matters is a simple question: Would you rather have a bachelor party in Las Vegas or Des Moines? No offense to Des Moines, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most people will pick Las Vegas. Des Moines just isn’t famous for its late night party scene – and it probably doesn’t want to be!

The strongest community brands create associations that seem painfully obvious. You say “Kentucky.” I say “Derby.” You say “Maine.” I say “lobster.” And, even if we’ve never been to Austin, it’s likely we both know that Austin is “weird.”

Place branding isn’t just about associations. The benefits of a positive and unified image impact many aspects of community. Here are a few examples of what branding can do:

Attract and retain strong talent. Glasgow, Scotland’s new brand - People Make Glasgow - acknowledges the skills and talent in the city, highlighting Glasgow as a place that’s great for business and tourists alike.

Shift negative perceptions. Newark, New Jersey was named the unfriendliest city by Conde Nast Traveler in 2013. Branding is aiding efforts to erase the negative and emphasize the positive, starting with the downtown Newark neighborhood of Washington Park. Strategies go beyond graphics and logos to include beautification of public spaces, cultural events in local parks, and food truck rallies.

Support economic recovery. When Oakridge, Oregon’s population dropped to 3,200 people, the community banded together for a branding project. Focusing on Oakridge’s natural resources and recreational opportunities, the town self-identified as “The Center of Oregon Recreation.” The brand promotes existing recreational offerings while providing focus to economic development tactics. Targeted support for outdoor-related businesses is now a top priority.

Stimulate demand. A small town in England is branding its local products and services. Shrewsbury’s “One-Off” campaign showcases the local handmade and artisanal culture. The campaign logo is intentionally flexible so that any business can adopt it.

Strengthen civic pride and a shared identity. Kentucky’s new brand – Kentucky Kicks Ass – was created with input from local residents. It seems the slogan is something every Kentuckian can get behind:

But what about those places where community identity hasn’t been crafted? How can small towns stop feeling invisible or change negative perceptions? What works in creating a well-loved community brand?

On May 8, Ben Muldrow, Partner with Arnett Muldrow & Associates will join CommunityMatters® and the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design™ for an hour-long webinar on community branding. Ben will share his experience in working with small towns and rural places to create a strong brand that builds civic identity and supports community and economic development goals.

The original version of this blog post is available at www.communitymatters.org/blog/what%E2%80%99s-name-power-community-branding.

Recognizing NCDD’s fabulous Office Manager, Joy Garman

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Today is “Administrative Professionals Day,” and I wanted to take a moment to thank our amazing office manager, Joy Garman.

JoyWithCake-border Many of you hear from Joy when you first join the Coalition, when it’s time to renew, when you have a question about sending dues or conference registration fees, and when we need a new bio from you. Joy started working with NCDD in 2006 soon after Andy and I moved from Vermont to Pennsylvania, and we’re now completely dependent on her! :)

Joy manages our Quickbooks, she manages the database, and keeps the membership rolls in good standing. She helps our Board with our financial statements, gets them metrics on membership, and does tons of other things that keep NCDD functioning.

She is a godsend, truly, and she is one of the sweetest and most positive people I’ve ever met.

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Joy actually lives right down the street from us, and does most of her work from home like Andy and I do. She comes to our place and does her “office hours” once a week for a couple of hours, when she processes checks and receipts, checks in with me about various tasks, and perhaps most importantly, brings her amazing energy to our workspace. (I love my husband, but working together all the time can be, let’s say, challenging sometimes — and Joy helps more than she knows!)

Joy manages her family of six (she has four adorable kids, all of whom are extraordinary and super-sweet like their mom) and her NCDD work beautifully, and finds time to be active in the community as well. We feel so lucky to have found Joy, and wanted to recognize her today. Thank you, Joy!!!

CommunityMatters & CIRD Conference Call this Thursday

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Roshan Bliss

We wanted to make sure NCDD members know that our organizational partners with CommunityMatters are working with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design to host an application assistance call this Thursday, April 24th from 3-4pm. The call is a follow up to their April 2nd Program Information Webinar on a Request for Proposals from the National Endowment for the Arts and Project for Public Spaces that is still open.

This week’s call will feature thoughts from Cynthia Nikitin of the Project for Public Spaces, and CIRD staff will be available to answer questions about the Request for Proposals and application process. We encourage you all to take advantage of this great opportunity and register now.

You can find more information on the call and the RFP by visiting the CM website. We hope to hear you on the call!

Important 10-question survey for NCDD volunteers and contractors

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

To all members of the NCDD community:

With our small staff and modest budget over the years, we’ve always relied on NCDD members to step forward as volunteers to plan the national and regional conferences, organize our online events, host our book clubs, contribute content to the website, create videos, provide each other with advice, and so much more. We are a Coalition after all, and that’s part of our culture.

I hope you’ve noticed that NCDD has a lot going on these days — now more than ever before, from my vantage point. We have our new member map and directory, regular confab calls and tech tuesdays, lots of rich collaborative projects like Creating Community Solutions (the national dialogue on mental health project) and the CommunityMatters partnership, a news blog that keeps getting better and better. And we want to keep up this momentum as well as the high quality of our activities and products.

We’re looking to create a go-to list of NCDD members we can tap into when we need volunteers — and when we have opportunities to contract with NCDD members.

There are many opportunities on the horizon for you to participate more deeply in NCDD. We’ll need researchers and report writers, people who can theme and summarize the best listserv conversations and blog threads, people who can help us do systems mapping and geo-mapping, people who can interview leaders in the field for the blog, collect mini case stories for the Dialogue Storytelling Tool, share their own stories and cases, do graphic recording, help manage our social media accounts, and so much more.

Some tasks will be volunteer tasks, of course, but some that require a greater time commitment or a specialized skill set will be compensated.

If you’re interested in volunteering or contracting with NCDD in the coming months and years, please take a few minutes and fill out the 10-question survey that’s up at:

www.surveymonkey.com/s/ncdd-rolodex

This survey will help us develop a rolodex of great members who are willing to be contacted about volunteer and paid opportunities that arise, based on your skills, experience and interests.

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation a key player in Thursday’s Text Talk Act

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

We’re excited to announce that Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation is partnering with Creating Community Solutions to promote youth participation in Thursday’s Text Talk Act event! How cool is that?

We hope many of you are planning on participating on Thursday. For those of you still on the fence, please join in and hold at least one TTA conversation. All you need is 3 people, a smartphone, and about an hour, anytime on the 24th. Anyone can participate, though involving young people is especially encouraged.

If you are planning on hosting a Text Talk Act conversation on Thursday, do us a favor and add yourself to the Creating Community Solutions map! After logging in/creating an account on the Creating Community Solutions site, click on the “Add your dialogue to the map” button under the “Dialogues” tab — or just click here).

Learn more about Text Talk Act here, and sign up today.

NCDD is part of the collaboration running the Creating Community Solutions national dialogue effort aimed at tackling mental health issues in our communities, along with these other NCDDers: National Institute for Civil Discourse, Everyday Democracy, National Issues Forums Institute, AmericaSpeaks and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. Check out all of our previous posts on Creating Community Solutions here.

Free online events coming up from the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

We’ve got some great activities coming up in the next few months, and I wanted to extend a warm welcome to everybody who works in dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement to participate. Our events are not exclusive to NCDD members (though we hope they’d make you want to join!).

This Tuesday at 2pm EST (11 PST), we have a 1-hour “Tech Tuesday” event with Colleen Hardwick, who will walk us through a cool engagement technology called PlaceSpeak (learn more and register at www.ncdd.org/14552).

This Thursday you don’t want to miss the opportunity to participate in Text Talk Act — a project of Creating Community Solutions, a partnership we’ve involved in that’s part of Obama’s national dialogue on mental health. This innovative project uses the fun and convenience of text messaging to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people. Learn more here about our strategy this round for working with youth organizers.

Next month on May 27th at 1pm EST (10am PST), our Tech Tuesday focuses on Ethelo Decisions, an exciting new tool that helps people weigh options and make decisions about public problems (www.ncdd.org/14562).

And we’re excited that for our June “confab call” (on the 12th at 2pm EST), our special guest is leading scholar Peter Levine, who will be talking with us about his new book on the democracy movement, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America. (Registration will be up soon for this special confab.)

You can see a list of all NCDD’s upcoming events at www.ncdd.org/events (including our national conference in the fall!), and you can always go to www.ncdd.org/tag/confab-archives to check out recordings of past confabs and tech tuesdays.

ThankYouImage Also, I want to give a special shout-out to NCDD Board member Susan Stuart Clark, who is helping to manage the Tech Tuesday events, and to supporting member Ben Roberts, who is working with us to use Maestroconference with Tech Tuesday presenters who don’t have their own webinar protocol. Thank you, Susan and Ben!!!

April 2014 Confab Call on “Text, Talk, Act”

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Andy Fluke

Last Wednesday, NCDD hosted its April 2014 Confab Call with featured guests Matt Leighninger and Mike Smith talking about the innovative project known as Text Talk Act. If you missed the confab and are interested in learning more, you can now listen to the entire conversation — or look over the collaborative document participants created during the Confab Call — at the links below.

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As part of our role in the National Dialogue on Mental Health project Creating Community Solutions, NCDD and our partners have been experimenting with how the fun and convenience of text messaging can be leveraged to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people.

The first round of Text Talk Act took place on December 5, and round two is coming up on April 24 (and we hope you’re planning to participate!). Here’s what you can do to learn more…

Listen to the audio from the April 9, 2014 Confab Call.
Read over the archive of collaborative doc on Hackpad.com)
Participate in the April 24th “Text Talk Act” event!

You can also learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and other events (including our upcoming National Conference in Reston, VA) in our Event Section.

Introducing our fabulous youth organizers for Text Talk Act

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Sandy Heierbacher

Creating Community Solutions is pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with Active Minds, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, and our other partners (NCDD is one of them) to identify some fantastic young people across the U.S. who will be helping organize Text Talk Act events in their communities.

We asked them to send us selfies, and you can check out their brief bios here.

Hopefully you already know all about Text Talk Act from our previous postings and recent confab call on the project, but in case you don’t, Text Talk Act is an innovative event taking place on April 24th (next Thursday). Thousands of people across the country will participate by (1) getting together in small groups of 4 or 5 people and (2) texting into 89800 to get polling questions and discussion questions sent to them by text.

In other words, this is texting-enabled face-to-face dialogue. We’re experimenting with how the fun and convenience of text messaging can be leveraged to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people. And we hope all of you are planning to take part!

Learn more about Text Talk Act here, and sign up today.

Archive of March’s Confab on Everyday Democracy

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Andy Fluke

Last month, as part of NCDD’s Confab Call series, we spent time with the staff of one of NCDD’s founding members, Everyday Democracy, exploring what Everyday Democracy has learned over the years, through their close work with community partners, about how to create dialogue and change.

We’re happy to share a recording of the the webinar, now available on the Everyday Democracy website, presented by Malik Russell, Everyday Democracy’s Communications Director, Carolyne Abdullah, their Director of Community Assistance, and Rebecca Reyes, Communications Manager.

More about Everyday Democracy…

Everyday Democracy helps communities build their own capacity for inclusive dialogue and positive change. Everyday Democracy’s ultimate aim is to create a national civic infrastructure that supports and values everyone’s voice and participation.

Because structural racism and other structural inequities affect communities everywhere, Everyday Democracy helps community groups use an “equity lens” in every phase of dialogue and change – coalition building, messaging, recruitment, issue framing, facilitation, and linking the results of their dialogues to action and change. They provide advice, training and flexible how-to resources on a wide range of issues – including poverty, racial equity, education, building strong neighborhoods, community-police relations, violence, early childhood, and community planning.

Look over the resources in the EvDem/Study Circles tag in the NCDD Resource Center to get a sense of the breadth and depth of work these folks do!

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