Category Archives: NCDD2014

Not too late to sponsor the 2014 NCDD conference!

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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.

SponsorLogosAsOf9-7-14

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

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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.

NCDD 2014 Workshop Descriptions Available!

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Have you checked out the workshops that will be offered at NCDD 2014 yet? In case you missed it, we wanted to make sure to let you know that we have posted the most up to date list of workshops sessions that will be offered at this year’s National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation. And they are stellar!  The session offerings, as at all NCDD conferences, represent the vast diversity of our work. From boot camp trainings on facilitating deliberation, to panels on the most innovative public engagement case studies, to fun and thoughtful explorations of the most pressing challenges and opportunities in our field, there is something for everyone!

Be sure to check out the full list of workshops at www.ncdd.org/events/ncdd2014/workshops.

You can also find links to the overview of the full NCDD 2014 schedule and all the other info you might need at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2014. If you have friends and colleagues who are still on the fence about attending, make sure to share this post with them to let them know about the all of the great things they could be missing, and encourage them to register today! We look forward to seeing you all in October!

Student & Youth Scholarships Available for NCDD 2014!

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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!

YoungLadiesWithMug-NCDDSeattle

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!

Looking for a roommate for NCDD 2014?

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For those of you coming to the 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation who want to cut down on your lodging costs, we encourage you to use the comments field on this blog post to find people interested in sharing a room at the conference hotel.

HyattRegencyRestonShotThe conference is taking place in Reston, VA (in the DC metro area) at the Hyatt Regency Reston. It’s a a cozy 4-Diamond hotel in the heart of Reston Town Center, and we encourage everyone coming in from out of town to stay at the Hyatt for your own comfort and convenience! We’ve negotiated a fantastic rate of $124/night (plus tax) for our conference attendees.

If you need to cut lodging costs while still staying at the hotel, use the comment field to post that you’re interested in finding a roommate.  I think you’ll be very glad you’re staying at the conference hotel. Staying at the Hyatt means you can take a break or nap whenever you need one, spend more time downstairs networking, and even room with someone who may become a lifelong colleague and friend. Plus you can partake in all the other hotel amenities like free wireless for guests, the huge fitness center, the pool, and the shops and restaurants right outside the hotel.

We recommend people arrive on Thursday, October 16th, since we start Friday morning and you’ll want to take advantage of some of the cool pre-conference activities your colleagues will be organizing! You should plan to depart on Monday, October 20th (or later in the day on Sunday, October 19th, since we end at 3:30pm. (See the conference schedule here.)

To get the NCDD room rate, make sure you use this link when you reserve your room:

https://aws.passkey.com/event/10874814/owner/19717/home

Our cut-off date for the reduced room rate is September 30th, so be sure to reserve your room before then!  I recommend not waiting until then, though, because our room block is filling up very quickly this year.

Here are some things you may want to include in your comment:

  1. Your name, gender, and any special requirements or considerations your potential roommate should know about you (i.e. you’re a smoker or night owl).
  2. When you’re arriving and departing (in other words, which nights you want to share a room).
  3. Email or phone (in case people would like to connect with you directly).

If you have any questions that are not addressed here, check out our logistics/travel page here, and feel free to send me an email at sandy@ncdd.org if you still have questions.

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

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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.

Grande-LumThe 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.

trayvonprotestTriplett, 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-officesCRS 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

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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.

NIF-logoThis 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.

NCDD’s Long-Term Mapping Efforts

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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.

US-GoogleMap-outlinedWe 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…

  1. What tool have you used to create network maps?
  2. What do you think it did exceptionally well?
  3. What do you wish it did better?
  4. 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!

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

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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.

LaptopsAnd 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.

LocalistoShowcaseAndrés 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.

Visual Mapping Process Leading into NCDD 2014

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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 f

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:

  1. Animating Democracy
  2. Art of Hosting
  3. CommunityMatters Partnership
  4. Deliberative Democracy Consortium
  5. Everyday Democracy
  6. Institute for Sustained Dialogue
  7. National Issues Forums Institute
  8. The World Café community
  9. The emerging transpartisan group led by Mark Gerzon
  10. 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.

NCDD2014_blog_post_badgeCreating 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!