NCDD organizational member Tim Bonnemann, founder of Intellitics, shared his thoughts via our great Submit-to-Blog Form on our recent effort to get your input on this year’s NCDD conference, and we are happy to share them.
Well, that was fun. Last month, NCDD asked their community and the world to share ideas for this year’s conference. Using an online ideation tool called Codigital, more than one hundred contributors suggested, refined and ranked nearly as many ideas over the course of ten days (see full results here).
Reading through the list of ideas, I couldn’t help but notice that almost half of them deal with what I like to refer to as the business side of D&D. Taken together, they all appear to address the fundamental question of how to make a living doing this work, whether as individual practitioners or the field as a whole.
Here are the five business-related themes that caught my eye:
1. Understanding the client
About ten or so ideas expressed the need to connect in person with city managers, elected officials, policy makers, public agency representatives, etc. to learn about the obstacles and barriers they face and the shortcomings of public engagement processes they have experienced.
2. Proving what works
Another ten or so ideas focused on the need to share, document and celebrate examples where good work is already happening and creating positive impact: success stories, best practices, role models etc. One of the top 25 most popular ideas in particular suggested to “mov[e] the needle on assessment and evaluation, so we can demonstrate D&D’s power and effectiveness.”
3. Marketing and selling D&D
A couple of ideas dealt with the challenges of communicating this work and the value it provides. How do we “write, talk about, and present D&D” in ways that are more accessible and compelling? What’s our elevator pitch?
4. Funding
Another couple or so ideas suggested to connect directly with funders to better understand their interests and needs, particularly in the context of “Collective Impact” initiatives, and to make it easier (and more likely) for practitioners to successfully access these potential resources.
5. Scaling and going mainstream
And finally, a whole host of ideas showed a strong interest in taking this work to scale and better yet, making it part of the common fabric of society. How can we engage at regional, state, national or even global levels, and what role does the use of technology and mass media play? How can this work become a part of our civic infrastructure?
So there you have it. A motto, a theme? Or at least a potential focus area for this year’s conference.
Tim Bonnemann is the founder and CEO of Intellitics, a digital engagement startup based in San José, CA. Intellitics helps organizations and communities make use of technology in meaningful ways to support dialogue, deliberation and other types of participatory processes. Follow him on Twitter at @planspark.
Session proposals are now due by the end of the day next Monday, June 23rd.
NCDD conferences bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada. 400 people attended our last national conference (Seattle in 2012), and we hope to beat that number this year!
What do we want the next generation of our work to look like, and how can we work together to get there? We’ll address these questions through the 2014 NCDD conference goals:
Not quite ready to draw up a proposal yet?
