Joan Blades Interview from NCDD Seattle

At the 2012 NCDD national conference in Seattle, NCDD member and filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson sat down with over a dozen leaders in our community to ask them about their work and their hopes and concerns for our field and for democratic governance in our country.

Today we’re featuring the interview with Joan Blades, who is well-known for her roles as co-founder of MoveOn.org and MomsRising.org. Joan is also the co-creator of Living Room Conversations.

Watch the blog over the next couple of months for more videos from NCDD Seattle, which brought together 400 leaders and innovators in our field.  You can also check out Jeffrey Abelson’s Song of a Citizen YouTube channel and in our NCDD 2012 Seattle playlist on YouTube.

Best Audio Clips from NCDD 2012 Seattle

looking back badgeDuring the 2012 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in Seattle, longtime NCDD member and supporter, John Spady (currently heading up the National Dialogue Network), spent a considerable amount of time capturing audio (and some video, as well). I reached out to him recently asking, of all the audio he captured at the event, what would he like to share with the community as we look back at the conference.

His first response was to insist that we share the short, personal audio from NCDD’s Director, Sandy Heierbacher, focusing on “Why We Do These Conferences”…

Along with this, his favorites include the audio of the plenary talks given by Carolyn Lukensmeyer and Eric Liu…

But he also wanted to make sure our community hadn’t missed the “bonus” audio (recorded the day before the NCDD conference and at the University of Washington) from Stuart Elway, regional public pollster in the Cascadia region…

…or the audio and video snippet (you can view the video here) from (then) King County Sheriff Steve Strachan who talks about the intersection of “Mental Health and Gun Control”. It’s a really a great piece, though if you watch the video you’ll need to be a little patient with the audio as it is a bit out of sync with the video.

All of this audio (and much more) is available on Soundcloud at www.soundcloud.com/natdialogue or from this blog post here on the NCDD website.

Will Friedman Interview from NCDD Seattle

At the 2012 NCDD national conference in Seattle, NCDD member and filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson sat down with over a dozen leaders in our community to ask them about their work and their hopes and concerns for our field and for democratic governance in our country.

Today we’re featuring the interview with Will Friedman, president of Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate complex, divisive issues and work together to find solutions. A leading organization in our field, Public Agenda is a long-time organizational member and friend of NCDD. Public Agenda sponsored NCDD Seattle at the partner level last year.

Keep an eye on the blog over the next couple of months for more videos from NCDD Seattle, which brought together 400 leaders and innovators in our field.  You can also check out Jeffrey Abelson’s Song of a Citizen YouTube channel and in our NCDD 2012 Seattle playlist on YouTube.

Will Friedman Interview from NCDD Seattle

At the 2012 NCDD national conference in Seattle, NCDD member and filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson sat down with over a dozen leaders in our community to ask them about their work and their hopes and concerns for our field and for democratic governance in our country.

Today we’re featuring the interview with Will Friedman, president of Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate complex, divisive issues and work together to find solutions. A leading organization in our field, Public Agenda is a long-time organizational member and friend of NCDD. Public Agenda sponsored NCDD Seattle at the partner level last year.

Keep an eye on the blog over the next couple of months for more videos from NCDD Seattle, which brought together 400 leaders and innovators in our field.  You can also check out Jeffrey Abelson’s Song of a Citizen YouTube channel and in our NCDD 2012 Seattle playlist on YouTube.

John Gastil Interview from NCDD Seattle

At the 2012 NCDD national conference in Seattle, NCDD member and filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson sat down with over a dozen leaders in our community to ask them about their work and their hopes and concerns for our field and for democratic governance in our country.

Today we’re featuring the interview with John Gastil, Head of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University.  A long time member, friend and supporter of NCDD, John is one of our field’s most respected researchers. Many of you will remember John as our co-emcee at NCDD Seattle (with Susanna Haas Lyons). He has authored many books on deliberation, including Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement (with NCDD members Tina Nabatchi and Matt Leighninger), The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (with NCDD member Peter Levine), and Democracy in Small Groups — to name just a few!

Watch the blog over the next month or so for more videos from NCDD Seattle, which brought together 400 leaders and innovators in our field.  You can also check out Jeffrey Abelson’s Song of a Citizen YouTube channel and in our NCDD 2012 Seattle playlist on YouTube.

Awesome Interviews from NCDD’s 2012 Conference

looking_back_badgeDuring the 2012 NCDD national conference in Seattle, NCDD member and filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson sat down with over a dozen leaders in our community to ask them about their work, their hopes and concerns for our field and for democratic governance in our country, and their ideas about how we might effectively combine forces to make a greater impact — questions that were very much aligned with our conference themes.

The result was a series of wonderfully rich videos focusing on the current state of public engagement in the U.S., all currently available here on Jeffrey’s Song of a Citizen YouTube channel and in our NCDD 2012 Seattle playlist on YouTube.

Over the next month or so we’ll be looking back at our fantastic event in Seattle, which brought together 400 leaders and innovators in our field. In a series of blog posts, we’ll be featuring Jeffrey’s videos along with other items from the conference. We’ll also be looking ahead to the 2014 conference, and asking you to engage with us about our next event!

This compilation video will give you a taste of the interviews and presentations that we’ll be featuring in the coming weeks…