Check out our awesome Storify page on the 2014 NCDD conference. Lots of great photos, quotes from evaluations, links and other gems in there that will give you a sense of the event, even if you weren’t able to make it.
Not only is this a great glance at the conference, this is a useful demonstration of how to bring content from a variety of different social media (and other) sources into one place to “tell the story” of an engaging event!
In the months leading up to the 2014 NCDD conference, NCDD conducted a unique field mapping project as part of our collaboration with the Kettering Foundation. The project capitalized on the fact that the conference would bring together more than 400 leaders and emerging leaders in the dialogue & deliberation community, many of whom are interested in finding new ways to collaborate across organizations and sectors to have a greater impact.
We had conference planning team member Kathryn Thomson (of LeaderMind Consulting and Ethelo Decisions) conduct interviews of 10 highly collaborative organizations/networks involved in NCDD. Graphic recorders participated in the calls, and then mapped out what they heard on large mural-size paper so conference attendees could learn about each organization’s ecosystem of work and partnerships, and aspirations for the future. (This phase of the project is described here.)
At the conference, our 10-person graphic recording team (led by the amazing Stephanie Brown) created a gorgeous “Field Map” during the conference. The field map was informed by:
Check out the album I’ve added to our Facebook page about the mapping project. It walks you through all the gorgeous artwork, describes each element of the project, and links to the artists and organizations involved. Click on the photos in the album to see the additional info.
We posted some of our favorite photos from the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation on Facebook yesterday. About 415 amazing people came together in Reston, VA for networking, learning and field-building. So much fun! Thank you to John Daly of DalyPhotography for taking almost all of these gorgeous photos.
At the 2014 NCDD conference in the DC area this past weekend, 415 leaders and emerging leaders in our field explored what they’d like dialogue and deliberation work to look like a generation from now. While it’s important to have a clear vision of the future we hope for, it is equally important to be clear about what stands in our way and devise plans for getting around those obstacles.
Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, we invite you to join conference attendees in identifying existing strategies and co-creating new strategies for overcoming persistent barriers to effective dialogue and deliberation work.
What do you think are the best strategies for addressing the following four key barriers?
These barrier categories actually emerged when we themed the results of the popular Cogitial project we ran back in April that asked the NCDD community “What do you want to see happen at NCDD 2014?” So the barriers themselves came from our community, and we are now seeking leading edge solutions and strategies for overcoming those barriers from within our community.
We’re using Codigital once again to help you add new ideas, vote on ideas to prioritize them, suggest edits to the ideas, and vote to resolve edits as a group.
All NCDD members and all NCDD 2014 attendees (except those that registered at the last minute – which we’ll take care of soon) will receive an email today inviting you to a page on Codigital where this will be happening. We hope you will participate, even if you weren’t with us at the conference, as these are important considerations for our whole community!
Please try to visit the site at https://ncdd.codigital.com/project/browse for a few minutes each day during the project, which will run from now through midnight on Halloween (October 31st).
Thank you in advance for providing guidance to NCDD and many others who are interested in helping pave the way for this important work!
As we are watching the attendees gather today for the start of NCDD 2014 in Reston, VA, it is a sight to see. Over 400 dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement professionals are coming together to work and learn together, and we couldn’t be more excited!
In the spirit of honoring all that our wonderful NCDD community represents, we wanted to share a thoughtful piece adapted from a talk NCDD Board member Susan Stuart Clark gave at San Rafael City Hall on September 26, 2014 to a local community group about the movement we are building with NCDD. You can read it below or find the original here.
Map of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation network
Shhh…can you hear that?
It’s the sound of an invisible movement. Over 30,000 people across the U.S. and Canada are engaging thousands – and, at times, millions – in doing something that most people have no idea is happening.
What are they doing? They’re leading conversations – a different kind of conversation that challenges the assumption that our society is getting ever more divided. This is a network of thousands of innovators who bring people together across divides to tackle today’s toughest challenges.
At the center of this growing network is the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation. NCDD is a non-profit organization that provides resources for people who plan and lead meaningful conversations that help find common ground for action on important issues that affect all of us.
1. Who are these people and what are they doing?
The NCDD network is made up of a wide variety of group facilitators, professors, students, government officials, organizational development consultants and committed volunteers. While the range of backgrounds is diverse, NCDDers share a common dedication to creating opportunities for people to talk, listen and act together in new ways – ways that build deeper understanding and create new openings for solving problems.
NCDD is non-profit and non-partisan. We are not advocates for any particular position – instead we are advocates for more constructive and inclusive process.
NCDDers might be leading dialogues about health care, schools, land use decisions or the environment. And these conversations can be taking place in community centers, in churches, county or town council chambers or in classrooms – with community members from all kinds of backgrounds and often with translation. What binds us together is that we believe that inclusive dialogue can generate shared understanding and shared goals – and that shared understanding is the “secret sauce” for new possibilities and new paths forward that can help us make progress as we join forces rather than waste energy on divisive debates.
The “deliberation” part of this work is when we frame up a topic by acknowledging the real choices and trade-offs at hand – whether it’s about the drought, increasing educational opportunities for all kids and the workforce of the future or what should get built where. In deliberation, we make sure that these tough choices are informed by the perspectives of everyone who is impacted and by the values we as a society decide will shape our decisions.
2. Why haven’t you heard of us?
Here are my theories:
A. Dialogue and deliberation are not embedded in the formal structures of our democracy. We vote yes or no on ballot measures. We often choose between two candidates. We are well versed in a thumbs up/thumbs down kind of thinking that leads to winners and losers. In a debate, you listen to hear your opponent’s weakness. But in a dialogue you listen to learn from each other.
At the local level of our democratic systems, we have public hearings. But taking turns for three minutes at the microphone is not the same as a dialogue where community members can set the framework for what’s important and explore and ask for clarifications from each other to see where we agree and don’t agree.
B. If you want the kind of dialogue I’m talking about, someone has to go outside the norm to set it up, find the resources, plan it and convince people something good is going to come out of it. But most people have rarely if ever had this experience of genuine public dialogue, which makes it harder to convince them to participate.
So our invisible movement of NCDDers is finding ways to set up these experiences so people can feel what it’s like to come together and learn from each other and discover that the “other” can be an ally. The problems we face may not be easy – but there are solutions when we can talk about them in constructive ways with a broad range of the affected community.
C. Facilitators don’t draw attention to themselves. When I do my job well as a facilitator, I fade into the background as I let the group do its work. When I first started out, my facilitation was more visible, like the old yellow version of scotch tape. But the better I get, the more invisible I become and the meeting participants remember their experience rather than my expertise.
3. Why do we persist in this work?
Because we know that most people outside of the political system are looking for connection, and practical solutions to the pressing issues of our day. And as the size and complexity of our challenges keeps expanding, we know that more inclusive and collaborative dialogue can generate more effective and longer lasting solutions.
As we go through yet another election season, with divisive campaigns that purposefully use wedge issues to isolate groups from one another, and a news industry perpetuating a tired old strategy of selling conflict and controversy, people are left to wonder if a new politics is possible. NCDD operates on the premise that it IS possible because we are planting and nurturing the seeds that we see growing every day in communities across the country.
4. What can you do?
Visit NCDD.org to see how we work to change how we do democracy. Look at the map and the extensive set of resources to see who in your area and/or on your issue of interest is working hard to make a difference.
Check out the amazing array of presenters and projects featured at our biennial conference this weekend (October 17-19) in the Washington DC area. Over 400 leaders young and old are connecting our work and our passion for the “Democracy for the Next Generation.”
Consider joining NCDD – it’s just $50 between now and Election Day. NCDDers are in the “parallel universe” of what democracy can be like. Your membership is like a vote that makes this alternate reality more visible to all.
And, next time you hear someone say “that’s just politics” and throw up their hands, I ask you to instead engage them in a dialogue about what they think is important. Maybe you’ll find some common ground. And that leads to new possibilities to change the world.
________________
Susan Stuart Clark is founder and director of Common Knowledge. She serves on the board of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. You can find the original version of this piece on her blog at www.ckgroup.org/2014/10/16/the-invisible-movement.
Before our wonderful community starts arriving in droves for NCDD 2014, we wanted to make sure you all see a message from our co-emcee, John Gastil. NCDD has inspired John to complete revisions on his best-selling book on democratic methods, and he’s using it to help NCDD continue our work. Read more about it below, and we’ll see in Reston this week!
Serving as co-emcee of the NCDD conference spurred me to bring to the finish line a project three-years in the making. I’ve brought into the digital world my very first (and best selling) book, Democracy in Small Groups. And in celebration of NCDD’s conference, all royalties from the first week of sales – from Oct 14-21 – go to NCDD.
Yup, all of ‘em.
Then again, it was NCDD attendees who convinced me to make my next book cheap enough for anyone to buy, so the royalties on a $2.99 book won’t go too far. But everyone needs to buy new office supplies, so it’ll pay for somethin’.
The book’s now available in Kindle format (which can be read via a free Kindle app on phones/PCs/Macs) at http://tinyurl.com/DSG2Kindle
The new edition is expanded and revised, with a special feature built just for online reading. As much as the Internet makes possible, the references link to original sources, so you can drill down as deep as you want while you read.
Twenty one years have passed since the first edition (blackjack!), so there are more than two decades worth of new sources filling out the book’s argument. If you want to make your own groups more democratic or better understand how small groups can change our larger world, this book might help you get there.
Versions for iBooks (I hear ya, iTooners), Nook (anyone using that?), and print will be following shortly.
John Gastil
We know that amazing work in our field often begins with the connections made and synergies ignited during NCDD conferences, and we are so pleased to share a great example of how that happens. The piece below from NCDD supporting members Mary Thompson and Martha Cox tells the story of how, from a conversation at NCDD’s 2012 conference, the new San Diego Deliberation Network was born. We can’t wait to see what other great work will begin this week at NCDD 2014!
A new twist on a collaborative model of deliberation and dialogue has emerged in San Diego, based on the old adage: begin with the end in mind. In this hotbed of bio-science, communications technology, security and defense innovations, San Diego has incubated a new development, a network of networks, to benefit the region by helping citizens develop their role as producers in the region’s democracy, building stronger communities.
The seedlings of the San Diego Deliberation Network: A Regional Collaboration for Civic Conversation were planted when Kettering Foundation fellow and NCDD Board member Dr. Martín Carcasson connected with NCDD supporting member Henry Williams at NCDD’s 2012 conference in Seattle. The two soon collaborated to have Martín give a talk on deliberative democracy at a local library in San Diego in the summer of 2013. Among the attendees were a few representatives of local universities as well as the League of Women Voters who, excited by the ideas and potentials discussed during the event, began working together on bringing more deliberative practices to San Diego.
A couple months later, a meeting was convened where Martín, San Diego Mesa College political science professor Dr. Carl Luna, and executive director of the San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement B.H. Kim sketched a vision of a network of academic institutions and good governance groups which would leverage each node’s strengths, factor in each node’s needs for affiliation and publicity, and ensure the robustness of the overall network, including a plan for growth.
The built-in network would encompass the San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement, the League of Women Voters, and representatives from all of the major academic institutions in the San Diego region:
The result was recognition of the San Diego group – the largest cohort ever accepted by the Kettering Foundation – as a learning exchange and member of their 2014-15 New Centers for Public Life.
A team of nine people representing six of the network’s members have traveled to three Kettering workshops, conducted community surveys and conversations, and laid its institutional framework.
Feb. 26, 2014 • The San Diego Deliberation Network at the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, OH. From left: Dr. Leroy Brady, San Diego City College; Dr. Lindsey Lupo, Point Loma Nazarene College; Dr. Karen Shelby, University of San Diego; Mary Thompson, Martha Cox, League of Women Voters; BH Kim, Former Director, San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement; Dr. Nancy Fredericks, San Diego City College; Dr. Kimber Quinney, California State University San Marcos; Tiveeda Stovall, University of California San Diego.
Mindful of another adage, the greatest strength can be the greatest weakness, the Network has worked hard to overcome its biggest challenge: a working organizational structure that would allow accountability of both the representing individual institution and the Network itself. At monthly sessions, the Network has mapped out how decisions will be made in the network’s name.
Committed to the goals of strengthening communities through a partnership with academia and community, the prediction is that the Network will continue to grow. Many of the Network members have joined NCDD as individuals and view NCDD in bio-science terms as an extension of its “genetic make-up!”
Though still in its infancy (neither a website nor a home base exists), given the San Diego Deliberation Network’s origins from NCDD 2012 onward and its growing affiliations, the future is so bright you’re going to need shades!
Mary Thompson & Martha Cox
League of Women Voters North County San Diego
San Diego Deliberation Network
Thanks so much to Martha & Mary for putting together this great piece and to Martín Carcasson for helping with it!
Here’s an incentive for showing up early to get your name tag and tote on Friday morning! Registration opens at 8am.
This weekend’s NCDD conference coincides with the publication of a new book called Read the Room For Real: How a Simple Technology Creates Better Meetings. The book is intended for facilitators, presenters, conference planners, or anyone who is curious about how to use increasingly accessible audience polling technology to improve meetings.
We are happy to provide preview copies of the book – which include a back cover endorsement from Sandy for which we are very grateful – as a gift to the first 60 people who register for the conference.
Our book is one of the first that we know of focused on the use of audience polling technology outside of the classroom environment. We have a deep background in facilitating dialogues about difficult diversity issues and as well as refining dialogic processes on all matter of topics for very small to very large groups of people. In our view, polling technology is severely under-appreciated by not just the dialogue community, but also by city planners, public officials, diversity professionals, and many others. Our goal is to accelerate the time when audience polling technology is as commonplace a meeting tool as Powerpoint.
We are organizing a campaign to make this dialogue book an Amazon bestseller on its launch day, November 28 (Black Friday). All conference attendees will have information in their packet about how to participate in the campaign, how to get a discount on the book, and how to enter a drawing to get a full day of pro-bono in-person consulting on audience polling.
For those not coming to the conference but who are interested in learning more about the book, contact us at david@read-the-room.com.
- David Campt and Matthew Freeman
We want to make sure that all of you who are attending NCDD 2014 this week know that there is going to be a dinner for past or present affiliates of our partners at the National Issues Forums Institute. Learn more in the note below from Nancy Gansender and RSVP to her.
Are you an NIF moderator/facilitator? Are you part of the NIF network, past or present? Do you remember the PPIs or are you part of its successors, Centers for Civic Life?
Can we talk? Let’s do so over dinner this Friday, October 16 at the NCDD 2014 conference.
Let’s share our common past, and build on our rich experience and chart a bright future.
Conveners: Patty Dineen, Craig Paterson and Nancy Gansneder.
Plan to join us? Shoot Nancy an email (nancyg@virginia.edu) so we can make reservations.
We are excited to share an invitation from Abby Pfisterer, a member of our conference planning team, to join her for another great field trip during NCDD 2014 to Morven Park! Find out more below and read more about our field trips by clicking here or sign up here.
Join us during NCDD 2014 for a field trip to Morven Park on Saturday evening and explore a hidden gem in DC’s metro area! Located in Leesburg, Morven Park is a 200 year old historic mansion that has been a home of political leaders from the days of the early republic through the beginning of the 20th century. It’s the perfect setting to relax after a busy (and invigorating!) second day at the conference – plus there will be local wines to try.
I’ve been a part of Morven Park’s educational team for several years, and what I love is that it’s more than just a place for interesting history and wide open spaces. The story and the site are the base for the exciting and forward looking programs we get to create and share with our community.
One of my favorite initiatives here is our Center for Civic Impact, which teaches K-12 youth how to be active and thoughtful citizens. But there is also a small farm (home to the presidentially pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys), equestrian center, athletic complex, and three museums. To me, it is a place to come together to explore spaces and ideas.
We’d love to share this site and story with those of you traveling from outside the DC region and locals too. We have a mansion tour lined up that looks at the civic activism of the last owner – a former governor of Virginia, and then a chance to enjoy the view with wine, food, and good discussion. The topic – from rural to urban, and where dialogue fits in – is based on the history you’ll hear on the tour as well as the fact the Morven Park sits squarely on a dividing line between town and country. I have a feeling many of you will have similar stories to share!
The cost is $25 to cover transportation and food. We’ll head out at 4:30pm and take buses for the 25 minute drive to Morven Park. It will be a lot of fun – so sign up today!
Thanks! – Abby