NCDD’s 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is coming up this October 14-16 in the Boston area.

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. Our last national conference (DC in 2014) had 415 attendees, and we hope to beat that number this year!

If your work involves dialogue and deliberation, or you want to get involved with this work, you’ll love this conference. Imagine spending three days with some of the most amazing leaders in this field, forming new relationships and reconnecting with old colleagues and friends, hearing about innovative new approaches to the challenges you’re facing, and exploring together how we can shape the future of this important movement, all while using innovative group techniques… there’s really nothing like it. (See our 2014 Conference Storify page for quotes and pictures.)

Today we’re announcing our call for proposals for our concurrent sessions for NCDD 2016. We’re interested in finding creative ways to highlight the best of what’s happening in public engagement, group process, community problem-solving, and arts-based dialogue — and we know you have lots of ideas!

Check out the Application for Session Leaders now to see what we ask for, and start cooking up those great proposals we’ve come to expect from our network! If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration, look over the comments on this blog post, where we asked the NCDD community to share what they’d like to see happen at NCDD 2016, and peruse the fabulous sessions offered at the 2014 and 2012 NCDD conferences.

Please note that the deadline for proposals is Friday, July 8th. We look forward to seeing what you’d like to offer!

Here is some guidance for those thinking about presenting sessions at NCDD 2016…

Our theme for the 2016 conference is Bridging Our Divides, and we invite workshop proposals that in some way build upon or engage the ideas around this theme. NCDD 2016 is taking place a month before the 2016 Presidential election, and in light of the extreme rhetoric and partisan rancor in this election cycle, we want to share stories about healing the partisan divide and about creating and implementing strategies that will help us move forward together in addressing our shared problems.

But the divide between left and right politics is not the only divide that we as a field need to help our country address – the Bridging Our Divides theme is an invitation for us to address the most persistent of our gaps in our society. We want this conference to lift up stories and strategies about people working together across our race divides, our religious divides, our economic divides, our divisions around gender, orientation, and expression, our generational divides, our divides between government officials and everyday citizens, and others.

We invite session proposals that will highlight work being done to bridge divides on all levels – from organizations, to neighborhoods, to cities, to the whole country. We also invite sessions that have a special focus on the role of media and the press in bridging our societal divisions, especially through partnership with the dialogue & deliberation field. Your proposal will be evaluated, in part, by its relevance to our theme and goals.

Some advice for potential session leaders:

1. Identify great co-presenters.  Most workshops at NCDD conferences are collaborative efforts involving multiple presenters from different organizations and universities. Have you thought about who you can co-present with? Now’s the time to contact them to see if they’d like to offer a session with you! (Use the NCDD Discussion list and the comments below to put out feelers for potential co-presenters if you’d like.)
2. Look over past workshop descriptions. Peruse the list of workshops from NCDD DC to get a sense of the kinds of sessions the planning team selects. Sessions focused on innovative solutions to common challenges, ways to take this work to scale or to new audiences, and deep dives into great projects (and thoughtful explorations of failed projects!) are especially welcome.
3. Be innovative with your session.  NCDD attendees are usually not too impressed with traditional panels or long speeches. Get them engaging with you and each other! Think about how you can get them out of their seats and moving around the room. And think about what you’d like to learn from them (not just what they can learn from you). Challenge yourself to run a session without relying on PowerPoint.
4. Share your stories.  NCDDers prefer hearing your stories to getting a run-down of your organization or methodology.  People are interested in learning about what you did, what you learned, and how they may be able to learn from your experience. Stories about bridging divides are a key part of this year’s conference as well!
5. Share the latest.  What’s the latest research? What are the latest innovations in the field? What new challenges are you facing? What are your latest accomplishments?

Not quite ready to draw up a proposal yet? Use the comment field (and/or the NCDD listserv) to float your ideas by other NCDDers and members of the planning team. We may be able to match you up with potential co-presenters who can address the same challenge or issue you’re interested in focusing on.

Look over the comments on our engagement of members around what they would like to see at the conference, on the blog and the listserv. There is a wealth of ideas and insight in those results!

Deadline for submissions
To be have your session proposal considered, we need you to submit the session application by the end of the day on Friday, July 8th. Members of the conference planning team will review the proposals and respond by email to the first contact listed in your proposal by the end of the day on July 22nd.

Hi, everyone! Registration is live for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and now is the best possible time to register. For a limited time (through June 15th only), our special “SUPER Early Bird” rate of $350 is active.

We’re so excited about NCDD 2016!  We’re coming together October 14-16 (Friday through Sunday) in the Boston Metro Area at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel & Conference Center in Framingham, MA.

This year’s conference is “Bridging Our Divides,” and our intention is to capture and draw attention to attendees’ stories. The conference is taking place one month before the presidential election, and we suspect many Americans will be hungry for a different narrative: true stories about how Americans across the political spectrum CAN and ARE working together to make progress on difficult issues.

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. Over 2,800 people, from dozens of countries, have attended our biennial national and regional events, and we’re expecting at least 400 again this year! Hopefully you’re one of them!!

I’m also happy to announce that NCDD co-founder and longtime creative force Andy Fluke is returning to help design and develop material for this year’s conference.  Since stepping down as creative director late last year, Andy has been working as a consultant to several NCDD members on a wide variety of projects including several new publications & ebooks, the launch of a new initiative (CCTN), and the relaunch of one of our favorite programs (Orangeband).  You can learn more about his new venture at www.andyfluke.com or contact him directly at afluke@gmail.com.

Learn much more about the conference at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016, and register today at www.ncdd2016.eventbrite.com to take advantage of the Super Early Bird rate.

NCDD conferences are important networking and learning events for our field. Watch this highlight video by Keith Harrington of Shoestring Videos to get a sense of the energy and content of our last conference…

NCDD’s staff is in the beginning stages of conference planning, and as we do each conference year, we’d like to hear from the D&D community about what you’d like to see, do and experience at this year’s National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation. Over the next ten days, we’ll be seeking ideas from the NCDD community via email, social media, the blog and a special conference call on April 28th at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific.

NCDD conferences look and feel a bit different each year because our events are experiments in collaborative planning, and our planning team is highly responsive to our community’s needs and energy.

• Remember the graphic recordings and maps of numerous networks within the field at the 2014 conference?
• Remember the “conservatives panel” at our 2008 national conference in Austin (with Grover Norquist!), where we dug into when, why, and under what conditions conservatives support dialogue and deliberation work?
• Remember Playback Theatre in 2004, the Catalyst Awards process at our 2012 conference, the showcases and networking sessions, and the great speakers and participatory processes we’ve featured at all of our conferences?

NCDD’s national conferences bring together 400+ of our community’s most exciting leaders, innovators, learners, and doers, for an event that enables us not only to network and learn from each other, but to tackle our greatest collective challenges head-on, and to set the direction for our field.

What we cover at our conferences, and how we cover it, is important for this ever-growing, ever-changing field — and we want your input!  Everyone in the NCDD community (members, past conference attendees, subscribers, social media friends) is welcome to participate.

To help you get started, NCDD’s staff and board would like to share an idea with you and get some feedback. For the 2016 conference, we can’t help but take notice of the extreme partisan rancor of this year’s Presidential election. We think making space at this year’s conference to discuss bridging divides across political lines, race, religion, and other tough policy issues is important. Sharing our stories of how we’re building these bridges is an essential part of this, to share with one another and to amplify our work. We’d like to hear from you whether this resonates, and what ideas you might have for how we should do this. (Plus the Board will send out more info about this idea soon!)

We’re also seeking more ideas. As you consider our intentionally broad framing question, “What would you like to see happen at NCDD 2016?”, think about…

• What do you think about the idea above?
• What topics would you like to see covered?
• What ideas do you have for awesome activities?
• What would you like to contribute to this year’s event?
• What could we do this year that might improve your work?
• What could we do that would help us move the field forward?
• What can we do while we’re together that we can’t easily do virtually?
• Dream big, or be specific… it’s all good!

Please share your responses to these questions in the comments below, via our discussion listserv, on social media, and via a special call we are holding on April 28th at 3pm Eastern/12pm Pacific. Sign up for the call to receive the call-in details.

We’re excited to hear your ideas and to get working on putting together another great conference!