Category Archives: NCDD2018

Who Will You Invite? An Exploration of Stakeholder Selection in Dialogue and Deliberation

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A NCDD Listserv synopsis of the conversation entitled: How to pick stakeholders for a stakeholder dialogue

Listserv Contributors: Tom Altee, Adrian Segar, Peter Jones, Marjo Curgus, Peggy Holmes, Chris Santos-Lang, Betsy Morris, Eric Simley, and Sally Theilacker

Synopsis by: Annie Rappeport, NCDD Intern

“The approach to stakeholder selection is the most critical step in the design of fair and inclusive dialogues that reflect a community’s contributions and perspectives” ~ Peter Jones, NCDD Member

In your dialogue and deliberation work do you find yourself struggling as much about who to invite to a dialogue as how to set the agenda? Are you wanting to include many but worried about sacrificing the needed intimacy of the conversation?  If so, you are not alone.

In September 2018, NCDD member Tom Altee began a conversation with an inquiry to the greater NCDD community about the different considerations for and ways to select community stakeholders gathering because they all care about a particular issue.  Although Tom Altee’s questions were for a specific project related to community transit and the varying interests of bicyclists, walkers, and drivers, the responses quickly broadened this important conversation about dialogue. Tackling who will be included in a dialogue has valuable impacts on what will be discussed as will the overall size of the group and any present uneven power dynamics.

Our NCDD community responded with resources and ideas aplenty. Here are some contributions we believe may serve others well as they craft an approach for their specific local needs and contexts.

  1. Peter Jones has dedicated much of his work and scholarship to the importance of stakeholder selection. He recommends a technique entitled “evolutionary stakeholder discovery” whereby there are multiple waves of invitation and a creation of optimal criteria that the participating stakeholders may represent. This is a time-consuming and worthwhile approach. Marjo Curgus also uses a specific technique that combines network analysis and stakeholder analysis to craft a preferred list of included stakeholders. Marjo notes the importance of conducting this process with a committee and to prioritize levels of influence.
  2. Peggy Holmes mentions different models including the diversity promoting “faultlines” conceptual framework from The Maynard Institute. A handy guide to the faultlines approach is provided on the Society for Professional Journalists website (2019). She also mentions the work of Sandra Janoff and Marv Weisbord as providing useful criteria considerations.
  3. Chris Santos-Lang illustrates impossibility of creating the perfect gathering of stakeholders and the significant issue in dialogue and deliberation work to include stakeholder representation when the needed stakeholder may be physically, mentally or technically (i.e. language barriers) unable to participate at the needed level themselves.
  4. Adrian Segar recommends the 2013 John Forester book Planning in the Face of Conflict. This book features a dozen profiles of planning practitioners that serve as exemplary cases of stakeholder selection for practical problem solving in communities.

What we can continue to take from this discussion overall is the importance of questioning how we invite and who we invite in community discussions. The tools and approaches vary, but many times our goals remain constant–to have high quality and effective dialogues that are so because they are diverse, inclusive, and a size that enables everyone to contribute.

We hope this discussion may continue! Please post your thoughts and ideas for stakeholder selection in your work.

Creating Visuals that Inspire Real-Time Conversation

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We are thrilled to share the following piece written by Lydia Hooper on the powerful way that graphic recordings can both capture a conversation in real time, and as folks saw first hand at NCDD2018, can be a motivator of conversation as well. We were fortunate to work with Lydia during the 8th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in Downtown Denver this last November (view her work here!) and she helped create and facilitate an interactive graphic recording project over the course of the three days. She describes it more in the post below…

By Lydia Hooper

How many conversations have you had this week about something you saw, on TV or happening in front if you? Vision is the primary way we sense and experience our world, and we are social beings who process information with others. We can easily leverage these tendencies if we want to inspire specific conversations in specific moments.

The conventional way of doing so is using presentation slides or videos to introduce or explain important topics. These visual forms, however, emphasize what is important from the perspective of the presenter. They do not necessarily offer opportunities to capture what a larger group of people thinks or feels.

Visuals that can break this norm are known as graphic recordings. Graphic recordings are visuals that capture conversation as it is happening in real time. By doing so they are able to help us literally see what is being said and thereby process this information in different ways.

There is a third way that can ensure both that many people are able to collectively create a meaningful visual and that the meaning is specifically tied to a clear objective. These visuals, which do not yet have a single term associated with them, are typically templates that evolve as the result of participation. Creating them requires little technology nor aesthetic skills, but it does require use of a thoughtful design process.

I recently had the pleasure of creating a visual of this type for the 2018 National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation conference. Here are the basic stages of design, their main elements, and how I experienced them for this project in particular.

  1. Empathize. There are two sides of this coin, both of which are important for planning appropriately. First, think about the audience or group the visual will engage: What kind of support do they need to think, feel, and/or act in ways that help them reach their individual goals? Now, consider the conveners’ or facilitators’ needs: What would help them reach collective goals, whether those be to build relations or to accomplish tasks? For this example, conference organizers were quickly able to articulate their desire to deepen conversation related to their partnership with the White Privilege Symposium. After some discussion they also identified that attendees may have a need to extend dialogue about related topics beyond individual sessions and contribute ideas perhaps anonymously.
  2. Create. A clear understanding of goals and needs is what informs what the visual will look like and how participants will engage with it. At this stage, collaborators work to develop main themes or questions as well as what specific words would be best to use. The purpose of this stage is to design a template that is incredibly clear and that invites active engagement. Conference organizers used a basic sketch of this template to solicit feedback from key stakeholders, in which is crucial for ensuring these purposes are fulfilled. Then I created the visual on a very large (four by eight foot) piece of paper that we planned to place in a highly visible location.
  3. Engage. During the previous stage decisions were made about how exactly ideas will be shared. These decisions will determine to what extent the visual will or will not require any degree of facilitation. In this case, we’d decided on a mix of both: attendees would be able to mark different options with stickers on their own and I would engage those who visited me during the showcase and capture those conversations on the template as well. I appreciated this approach because it allowed attendees to get a quick “big picture” idea of their fellow attendees perspectives and it also allowed them to learn from the individual insights that were captured. In my experience, this stage, like the previous one, is somewhat experimental, especially since some people will test the limits of any creative license you give them while others will be confused or even paralyzed by such an interruption in group norms.

The key thing to keep in mind for these visuals is that, unlike other visuals perhaps, the product or outcome matters less than the fact that group members are being offered an opportunity to participate in a shared experience and to collectively make meaning. Because they are nontraditional, these visuals also provide space for intentional conversations to occur in unexpected ways.

In the co-creation of this example visual, NCDD conference attendees made it abundantly clear how they feel power and privilege impacts them, their work, and the field. They reflected on familiar ideas, posed new questions, and, if nothing else, were heard.

Lydia Hooper is a creative who collaborates to communicate about complexity and create culture change. She is the creator of the 40 day listening challenge. To learn more and download her free ebook Using Visuals to Support Collaborative Work, please visit www.lydiahooper.com.

Weekly Online Roundup Feat Bridge Alliance and More!

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January is finishing strong with this fantastic line-up of D&D online events! NCDDer Chris Santos-Lang let us know about his upcoming webinar on making research transparent that we encourage you to check out. There is a Common Ground for Action deliberation series running for three consecutive Saturdays from NCDD member National Issues Forums Institute, and more exciting webinars from NCDD member orgs, MetroQuest, Bridge Alliance, and Living Room Conversations!

Do you have a webinar or other event coming up that you’d like to share with the NCDD network? Please let us know in the comments section below or by emailing me at keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org, because we’d love to add it to the list!

Online Roundup: NIFI, CSA’s Ethics Working Group, Living Room Conversations, MetroQuest, Bridge Alliance

National Issues Forums Institute – January & February CGA Forum Series Deep Deliberation: Coming to America: Who Should We Welcome? What Should We Do?

Three consecutive Saturdays in Jan & Feb
Saturday, Jan 26th, Feb 2nd, Feb 9th
2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern

Please join us for a deep dive into immigration reform using Common Ground for Action (CGA) online deliberation platform.

This will be one online forum set across three consecutive Saturdays in January and February in order have a deeper deliberative experience. Starting at 5pm ET on Saturday January 26th, February 2nd and February 9th, we will take an in-depth look at Coming to America: Who Should We Welcome? What Should We Do? On Jan 26th, we’ll discuss our personal stake and Option 1: Welcome Immigrants, Be a Beacon of Freedom. On February 2nd, we’ll deliberate Option 2: Enforce the Law, Be Fair to Those Who Follow the Rules and Option 3: Slow Down and Rebuild Our Common Bonds. On February 9th, we’ll begin making sense of our common ground, talk next steps, and the value of deliberation in these types of conversations. Plan to participate in all three forums for a highly deliberative and deep look at this wicked issue.

If you’ve never participated in a CGA forum, please watch the “How To Participate” video before joining. You can find the video link here: https://vimeo.com/99290801

If you haven’t had a chance to review the issue guide, you can find a downloadable PDF copy at the NIF website.: https://www.nifi.org/es/issue-guide/coming-america

If you’d like to watch the starter video before registering, you can view it here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/comingtoamerica/256884446

REGISTER: www.nifi.org/en/events/jan-feb-cga-forum-series-deep-deliberation-coming-america-who-should-we-welcome-what-should

Ethics Working Group of the Citizen Science Association webinar – How to Make Your Research Transparent
* shared via NCDD member Chris Santos-Lang

Thursday, January 31st
9-10 am Pacific, 12-1 pm Eastern

A Webinar from CSA’s Ethics Working Group, presented by Chris Santos-Lang (Ethics Working Group Co-Chair)

This webinar is a practical how-to demonstrating some of the latest technologies developed to satisfy the transparency principles in the European Citizen Science Association’s Ten Principles of Citizen Science and the DIYbio Codes of Ethics. It will demonstrate two free solutions as examples: One is the Open Science Framework and the other is a homespun mixture of Google Drive, Google Docs, and FigShare. Both solutions leverage PubPeer, Creative Commons licenses, and research standards. This webinar also introduces the “APRICOT” mnemonic to map the range of transparency failures, and discusses the concerns that drive current negotiations between transparency and privacy.

About Chris: Chris Santos-Lang co-chairs the Ethics Working Group of the Citizen Science Association. He applies citizen science to ethics (e.g. studying moral psychology, machine ethics, and the sociology and political science of ethics).

If you experience any issues in registration, please email: info@citizenscience.org

REGISTER: https://citizenscience.member365.com/public/event/details/78a40bcdbcf4cbe1486b57996f0434fc336d9953/1

Living Room Conversations webinar – Guns & Responsibility

Tuesday, January 29th
12-1:30 pm Pacific, 3-4:30pm Eastern

Join us for a free online (using Zoom) Living Room Conversation on the topic of Guns & Responsibility Please see the conversation guide for this topic. Some of the questions explored include:

  • What role have guns played in your life?
  • Where did you learn about guns? And what did you learn?
  • Are gun/second amendment issues very important to you?

Is there anything you would change about current gun laws or regulation in your state or at the federal level?

You will need a device with a webcam to participate (preferably a computer or tablet rather than a cell phone).

Please only sign up for a place in this conversation if you are 100% certain that you can join – and thank you – we have many folks waiting to have Living Room Conversations and hope to have 100% attendance. If you need to cancel please return to Eventbrite to cancel your ticket so someone on the waitlist may attend.

A link to join the conversation and additional details will be sent to you by no later than the day before the conversation. The conversation host is Harold R.

REGISTER: www.livingroomconversations.org/event/online-living-room-conversation-guns-responsibility/

MetroQuest webinar – “Public Engagement at All Scales | CMAP’s Winning Recipe”

Wednesday, January 30th
11 am Pacific | 12 pm Mountain | 1 pm Central | 2 pm Eastern (1 hour)
Educational Credit Available (APA AICP CM)
Complimentary (FREE)

For the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, award-winning comprehensive plans involve public engagement at all scales, collaboration with 284 communities, and a Local Technical Assistance program that’s admired nationally. Join us January 30th to get inspired!

CMAP Deputy Executive Director of Planning Stephane Phifer, Associate Outreach Planner Katanya Raby, and Senior Planner Lindsay Bayley will take you inside their local approach to online engagement for OnTo2050 – their comprehensive regional plan to improve quality of life and economic prosperity for 8.5 million people.

Public feedback was essential to exploring alternative futures for innovative transportation, climate change, walkable communities, a transformed economy, and constrained resources. You’ll learn how CMAP used a multi-phased approach to online engagement for a variety of local plans, including the downtown Aurora Master Plan.

Attend this complimentary 1-hour webinar to explore effective ways to:

  • Engage inclusively to build inclusive plans
  • Uncover the ideas, hopes, and concerns of residents
  • Take a multi-phase approach to online engagement
  • Think both locally and regionally for collaborative planning

This webinar will include a live Q&A session to help you prepare for 2019. Bring your public engagement questions for Stephane, Katanya, Lindsay, and Dave Biggs, Chief Engagement Officer at MetroQuest.

REGISTER: http://go.metroquest.com/Public-Engagement-at-All-Scales-CMAPs-Winning-Recipe.html

Bridge Alliance webinar – BridgeUSA Peer Learning Session – Achieving Diversity: An Example *this webinar is for Bridge Alliance members only – learn more here

Wednesday, January 30th
12 pm Pacific, 3 pm Eastern

Manu Meel will discuss how the Bridge Alliance and its members can achieve greater diversity in the revitalization movement. Specifically, he will present on:

  1. BridgeUSA’s lack of diverse leadership.
  2. The importance of diversity.
  3. How BridgeUSA is prioritizing diversity within its organization.
  4. What lessons other Bridge Alliance organizations can draw from its example.

We are very excited to host this event for Bridge Alliance member organizations through Zoom Video Conference, and we hope you will be able to join us.

If you wish to attend this event, please RSVP by January 24th.

RSVP: www.bridgealliancefund.us/bridgeusa_peer_learning_session

Living Room Conversations webinar – Mental Health

Thursday, January 31st
1:30-3 pm Pacific, 4:30-6 pm Eastern

Join us for a free online (using Zoom) Living Room Conversation on the topic of Mental Health. Please see the conversation guide for this topic. Some of the questions explored include:

  • What experiences in your life, your work or your family inform your thinking about mental health?
  • Is mental health an important issue in your community, and if so, why?
  • In your experience, how are mental health issues affecting young people? (If you are a young person, how do mental health issues affect you and your peers?)

You will need a device with a webcam to participate (preferably a computer or tablet rather than a cell phone).

Please only sign up for a place in this conversation if you are 100% certain that you can join – and thank you – we have many folks waiting to have Living Room Conversations and hope to have 100% attendance. If you need to cancel please return to Eventbrite to cancel your ticket so someone on the waitlist may attend.

A link to join the conversation and additional details will be sent to you by no later than the day before the conversation. The conversation host is Lewis G.

REGISTER: www.livingroomconversations.org/event/online-living-room-conversation-mental-health-2/

Living Room Conversations webinar – Status & Privilege

Friday, February 1st
2-3:30 pm Pacific, 5-6:30 pm Eastern

Join us for a free online (using Zoom) Living Room Conversation on the topic of Status & Privilege. Please see the conversation guide for this topic. Some of the questions explored include:

  • What status do you enjoy? Education, wealth, gender, race, etc?
  • What are the privileges of your status?
  • What do you value and how is that connected to your status or privilege?

You will need a device with a webcam to participate (preferably a computer or tablet rather than a cell phone).

Please only sign up for a place in this conversation if you are 100% certain that you can join – and thank you – we have many folks waiting to have Living Room Conversations and hope to have 100% attendance. If you need to cancel please return to Eventbrite to cancel your ticket so someone on the waitlist may attend.

A link to join the conversation and additional details will be sent to you by no later than the day before the conversation. The conversation host is Shay M.

REGISTER: www.livingroomconversations.org/event/online-living-room-conversation-status-privilege-3/

We Are All Catalysts: Part Two – How We Can Amplify and Broaden Dialogue and Deliberation Work

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In part one of We Are All Catalysts, the focus was on examples of groups in dialogue in deliberation who showcase how our powerful inner sparks can be used to transform conversations and communities. In part two, we want to follow up and have all of you help guide our continued conversations!

“It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.” ~ Yogi Berra

We live in a world of noise. Many of us lament at the current environment of ideological polarization that hinders respectful and productive conversation. We have the power to break through this noise and create spaces for listening and thoughtful dialogue. It can seem daunting in the current ways of the world, but the tools are accessible and the need critical.

The space for listening and dialogue was successfully achieved at the biennial NCDD conference in November. Wonderful themes emerged that are well worth continued attention. We must work in the spirit of this year’s conference theme and gain momentum by connecting while home in our respective areas. One way we at NCDD hope to support is through helping to launch monthly phone conversations among a small group of committed members, to continue some of these discussions into the spring. If you would like to lead a group on a particular topic of interest to you, please let us know via the comment tool below or by emailing us!

Some themes to consider from the conference sessions that may inspire ideas for the forthcoming conversation topics include:

  • How can we design our D&D work to be more proactive and recurring? Too often, our programs are reactive and follow a “one and done” model.  The conference session led by Todd Davies and Michael Freedman in November asked us to consider improving our efforts through intentional design in D&D work focusing on long-term community relationships across many constituencies. Through building trust and transparency, the ongoing meetings could take the form of citizen juries, participatory budgeting, town halls among other formats.
  • How might the Bohm Dialogue technique be utilized in different settings? The Bohm technique removes cross talk while adding reflective pauses after each speaker contributes. The approach is meant to encourage collective community processing of local and global crisis that impact many, if not all, humans and the planet. This comes through suspension of judgement, listening at three levels, assumption identification, inquiry and reflection.
  • In what ways may arts (visual, musical, movement) enhance D&D work? Expression can take many forms and can be a great way to make D&D both more inclusive and more engaging. From visual arts to music and movement, varying the tools for expression can help the dialogue branch out into more creative and freeing spaces and spaces that can transcend barriers created by language.
  • What are successful ways to have more ideologically inclusive based participation in dialogues? Continued exploration on how to engage across the entire spectrum of ideological beliefs and political affinities. What forms this takes will vary depending upon local contexts.

The above are just a few suggestions to get everyone thinking. Please feel free to take a look at the Open Space session notes from the conference at this link for further inspiration, and/or comment below with your own ideas for which topics you would like to see a committed group dive into this spring!

Sharing Best Practices of D&D – Inspiration for 2019

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Great way to start off the new year reading this excellent write-up by NCDDer, Kevin Amirehsani, on the recent 8th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation. He shares some of the best practices in our field and highlights several gems from the conference. We are proud to work amongst such talented, dedicated, and inspirational individuals, and can’t wait to see the new heights this field will go! We encourage you to read Kevin’s piece below and find the original version on the UNC School of Government Blog here.

Sharing Dialogue and Deliberation Best Practices: NCDD 2018

Within the community engagement community, best practices are sometimes hard to identify.

The context of, say, a small-scale event dealing with restorative justice differs greatly from a packed city council meeting covering zoning permits. The message, audience, program design, and feedback mechanisms can be completely different, which makes standardizing a set of guidelines an oft-impossible task.

Still, there are a few gatherings that bring together enough diverse, experienced, and motivated engagement practitioners that something approaching best practices can be found across many of community engagements’ subfields, from productively navigating race relations to developing responsive digital platforms.

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) is probably the best example. Lucky for me, Denver (my home), hosted their most recent annual conference in November of last year.

With more than 70 workshops and sessions available to choose from across four days, the hardest part was figuring out where to spend my conference time.

Here are some highlights from three sessions I attended.

Day 1 – D&D for Everyone: How do we get everyone to participate?

I decided to dive right into one of community engagement’s most difficult questions – how on earth do we maximize participation?

This session was relatively unstructured, which allowed small groups to come up with numerous ideas that were then shared with the room. One key takeaway many of us arrived at was on an issue that is often glossed over: language.

Language and Ideology – Who “Welcomes Dialogue”?

Let’s face it: community engagement and D&D initiatives are usually carried out by progressive/liberal practitioners. While this may have something to do with the innate differences between many conservatives and progressives, what it means is that much of the language we use to publicize our events, conduct them, and gather feedback from them may be imbued with a liberal bias.

Terms like “diversity”, “safe space”, or even “dialogue” itself are often viewed in a partisan light, which may skew the demographics of who shows up and who participates more frequently.

Luckily, there are some resources that can help us be more aware of our language, like the online Red Blue Dictionary or a growing number of political dialogue courses offered at universities.

Can we Dialogue with our Passion and Frustrations?

Another issue I found useful to discuss was the degree to which participants are encouraged or expected to check their frustrations and convictions at the door.

On paper, engagement projects often encourage a diversity of viewpoints, but some may be implicitly accepted more than others through, say, the responses that the facilitators choose to emphasize, or even the way a participant who expresses an unpopular opinion is glared at by others.

Many of us have probably witnessed well-intentioned D&D practitioners define numerous topics as “problems,” which implies that somebody’s at fault. This can be at odds with encouraging feedback from participants who may be afraid of being blamed if they speak up.

Day 2 – Don’t Avoid, Don’t Confront: Dialogue Skills for Anti-Racism Allies

I have never been to an anti-racism workshop, so I thought a workshop led by David Campt, the founder of the White Ally Toolkit, would be a great place to start.

As a veteran of the Clinton White House’s Initiative on Race and America Speaks, David knows how to distill a lot of information on how to have effective conversations on race into a short time period while keeping everybody in the room entertained. And he certainly did not disappoint.

While his anti-racism trainings are typically given to white participants, this was a mixed-race crowd that engaged him as he spoke on concepts ranging from the empirical – e.g. racial anxiety – to more practical tools, like the types of icebreakers that can be useful in reducing some of the tension that envelopes meetings on difficult topics (such as race).

One key takeaway that I walked away with was David’s quippy but powerful advice to find the “chocolate in the trail mix” of what a person is saying.

When we’re dealing with community members who have views that may be antithetical to ours, there are almost always remarks they make that we can relate to. For those of us who keep abreast of the literature, the power of small talk should not be a surprise. But David went a step further and emphasized the importance that positive acknowledgement has in ultimately changing people’s views.

Simply pointing out things you agree with by others who share an individual’s race, ethnicity, or politics, for example, markedly increases that person’s willingness to continue talking to you and, ultimately, their openness to gradually changing their views on thorny subjects.

Day 3 – Elevating Voices and Building Bridges: Community Trust and Police Relations

Finally, I capped off an inspiring time at NCDD 2018 with a discussion on police-community relations, in part since I sit on Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen’s Community Advisory Board.

The session saw a pair of practitioners – one from the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the other from Illinois’ Attorney General’s Office – speak in depth about 14 “community roundtables” they organized across Chicago as part of the city police department’s ongoing federal consent decree. They were followed by Chief Pazen and Denver Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) Community Relations Ombudsman Gianina Irlando, who described a novel program breaking down some of the barriers between police officers and youth.

Design – Sharing Ground, Empathy and Feedback Mechanisms

My impression after hearing these success stories was that both sides in some of the most intractable disputes can substantively cede some ground and gain some empathy for the other side if community meetings and the feedback mechanisms which follow them are effectively designed.

In the Chicago example, the meeting organizers spent a considerable amount of time recruiting participants from affected communities, hiring translators for each table, training facilitators, and designing the layout of their World Café-type engagement model so that everybody knew what ideas each table was bringing up, without fears of “problematic” points of view being forgotten.

Closer to home, the Denver collaborative model between law enforcement and their civilian oversight body emphasized how empathy-building can be quantitatively shown to increase if officers are given enough classroom training, local community leaders (and, in this case, a hip hop artist) help conduct the sessions, and youth are encouraged to participate through strategically placing them with officers in a safe environment whom they have had no personal contact with.

You can find the original version of this article on the UNC School of Government Blog at https://cele.sog.unc.edu/sharing-dialogue-and-deliberation-best-practices-ncdd-2018/.

Huge Thank You to Our Giving Tuesday Champions!

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Please join us in a HUGE round of applause for the individuals who donated to NCDD last week as part of Giving Tuesday! It is thanks to these incredible champions of dialogue and deliberation that we were able to raise almost $3,300! We recognize you have a lot of great organizations to support on Giving Tuesday and so we are even more humbled and grateful for the support. NCDD is a small operation and we truly mean it when we say, that the Coalition thrives because of support like this! Thank you so much to the following folks for their generous contributions…

Paula Atkinson
Lisa Beutler
Ulf Bley
Barbara Brown
Martin Carcasson
Susan Stuart Clark
Lark Corbeil
Cobie DeLespinasse
Linda Denton
Julie Marett Forbush
Michael Freedman
Cheryl Graeve
Ellen Griffin
Sandy Heierbacher
Jacob Hess
Peggy Holman
Betty Knighton
Mette Kreutzmann
Jen Lade
Steve Lee
Diane Miller
Avril Orloff
Bill Potapchuk
Jeff Prudhomme
Bettye Pruitt
Christine Plourde Reed
Christine Whitney Sanchez
Carol Scott
Landon Shultz
Bruce Schuman
Stephen Silha
Lisa Singh
Jim Snow
Helen Spector
Allan Steiner
Gail Stone
Mary Thompson
Vicki Totten
Linda Urban
Jay Vincent
Wendy Willis

Thank you all so much! We love you!!

In addition to how phenomenal the D&D field is in general, #NCDD2018 was an incredible opportunity to convene hundreds of amazing people dedicated to furthering dialogue and deliberation, which left us absolutely inspired and positively fired up for the new year! We here at NCDD have some really exciting goals in store for 2019 and we can’t wait to share them with you – so stay tuned to the NCDD blog!

NCDD issues statement in response to Election Day

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NCDD is issuing a press release in light of our recent national conference being followed quickly by our country’s divisive election. We are sharing this press release with our media contacts, and we ask NCDD members and NCDD 2018 attendees to share this with your networks.

It’s a brief statement about the conference, its 450+ attendees, and the fact that there are thousands of people and groups across the country who are bringing people together across divides, even during this volatile election period.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nov. 13, 2018

CONTACT: Courtney Breese, 707-241-7640, courtney@ncdd.org

Re: National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation issues statement in response to Election Day

Hope for our Democracy

With so many Americans worried about the state of our democracy and with hate crimes on the rise, we want to convey the hope that over 450 dialogue and deliberation practitioners just experienced coming together in Denver for their biennial conference.

Dialogue and deliberation are powerful communication tools that help people who disagree on political and social issues to build understanding of each other’s perspectives, discover shared values, and move forward on issues like immigration, violence in our communities, and education reform.

With dialogue and deliberation happening across every political and religious sector throughout our 50 states, and with 35,000+ practitioners and supporters across the country, we have the tools to enhance our democracy, to deepen conversations, to include voices often not heard, and to connect across differences often leading to new solutions to intractable problems. We work in government, higher education, the private and non-profit sectors, faith communities, public schools and more. We have the tools to come together as a country.

Members of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation who met in Denver just before our divisive election are doing amazing work across the country…

  • The Village Square has brought thousands of people together every year – in the hometowns where we live and across the deepest divisions in our society – for more than a dozen years.
  • Over 1,000 Civic Dinners have happened across the world, bringing diverse voices together for conversations that matter and influencing policy change in cities from Atlanta to Auckland.
  • The Interactivity Foundation is convening hundreds of Chicago residents to discuss voter concerns and contribute to a voters’ guide to candidates in partnership with Ballotpedia in advance of the February 2019 Chicago municipal elections.
  • Through Libraries Transforming Communities, the American Library Association has trained over 1,000 library workers on how to lead dialogues in the diverse communities they serve, strengthening their role as core community leaders and change-agents.
  • Make America Dinner Again brings together people of contrasting political perspectives to build understanding. Through guided activities and respectful conversation, citizens with differing viewpoints aim not to change one another, but to grow by sharing their stories and learning from one another.

Many more stories and examples of our work can be found at www.ncdd.org/news. If you wish to learn more about doing this type of work in your community or spreading stories about this work, contact us at www.ncdd.org/contact.  And for more details about the conference, check out our conference overview post at www.ncdd.org/28442.

About the National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) is a network of innovators who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues. NCDD serves as a gathering place, a resource center, a news source, and a facilitative leader for this vital community of practice. NCDD.org is a clearinghouse for thousands of resources and best practices, and our highly participatory national and regional conferences have brought together more than 3,000 practitioners, community leaders, public administrators, researchers, activists, teachers and students since 2002.

Celebrating Our Time Together at #NCDD2018!

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Wow! We can barely believe it’s been a week since we all parted ways at #NCDD2018! The 8th National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation convened hundreds of innovators and practitioners in dialogue, deliberation, civic engagement, and more. It was an incredible time to come together, see old friends and make new ones, learn from each other, and find ways in which we can conspire moving forward.

Lots of gratitude is in store for those who helped make #NCDD2018 the dynamic event that it was! An immense THANK YOU to our conference sponsors (and D&D champions) for your generous support – you truly help drive this work and this field forward, and we couldn’t do this without you!

Huge THANK YOU to our indispensable conference planning team who worked hard to make NCDD2018 such a great success! NCDD conferences are collaborative from the beginning, which is why it was vital to have such a creative and supportive planning team. These phenomenal individuals offered their precious hours and valuable skills to make this conference a sensational reality – helping design the event, getting the word out, and volunteering on the ground to make sure things went smoothly. Putting on an event like #NCDD2018 is no easy lift, but because of the incredible team we worked with, they made it both possible and a joy!

While the conference planning team worked hard to design a great event… it’s thanks to our fantastic attendees who really brought #NCDD2018 to life! It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces and also meet lots of new folks who have been doing this work (many of whom were first-timers to NCDD conferences!). It’s exciting to say that with over 450 attendees – #NCDD2018 was our largest event yet!

Our theme for this conference was, Connecting and Strengthening Civic Innovators, and so we made sure to provide ample space for people to connect with each other, build relationships, and explore how to broaden the capacity for this work.

#NCDD2018 featured 6 pre-conference sessions and several other events on Thursday, and over the following three days we had: 60+ workshops, 3 engaging plenaries, 40+ presenters during the D&D Showcase, 3 mentoring sessions, dozens of posts on the Networking Board, and countless connections made throughout. This conference held space for fellow attendees to connect with each other by using the plentiful breakout rooms or getting out in the city for a Civic Dinner. If there was a session you didn’t see and/or wanted to explore a particular subject more, you could offer your own session during the plenaries for Open Space and ProAction Cafe. This conference had a unique opportunity for NCDDers to attend the kick-off community event for the White Privilege Symposium which was held in the main ballroom on Friday night and offered an evening of powerful performances on addressing inequality.

Not to rub it in too much, but if you weren’t able to join us, you really missed out!

Moving Forward to Connect and Strengthen Civic Innovators

NCDD conferences are always in-person reminders of just how powerful this work is and how truly catalytic we can be when we come together. We want the conferences to be incubators for motivation to do this work and connections to make it happen, both at the conference and beyond!

There are a few ways to enrich your experience at #NCDD2018 and/or tap into the knowledge of the conference (even if you weren’t able to join us in person). We encourage you to check out:

  • The conference Google drive folder – which can be found at: bit.ly/ncdd2018. We highly recommend that everyone please add your notes, slides from your presentations, and other info to the folder for everyone to share. We also hope you’ll upload the best pictures you took to this folder so we can see all of the smiling faces of NCDD!
  • Our interactive guidebook (hosted by Konveio) – view graphic recordings, post comments, connect with other attendees, and more at www.kauses.org/ncdd2018

Keep the conversation going on social media with the hashtags #NCDD2018, #NCDD, and #NCDDEmergingLeaders or by participating in our NCDD Facebook Discussion Group. Don’t forget to follow NCDD on Facebook and Twitter!

Friendly reminder! At the conference, we shared a special offer for attendees to join NCDD as a member at a discounted rate and you got to experience first-hand the exciting potential of NCDD and being part of the Coalition. We want to remind folks who attended #NCDD2018 to take advantage of this limited time offer to join NCDD as a member ASAP while it still lasts! An email with the link on how to join at this special rate was sent out last week, so email me at keiva[at]ncdd[dot]org if you missed it.

We want to hear from you! The conference evaluation is up at www.surveymonkey.com/r/NCDD2018Eval. Please be sure to let us know what you loved, what could have been better, and any advice you have for the next planning team. We appreciate any feedback you can offer and will take it into consideration as we plan #NCDD2020. Thank you so much!

We are truly honored to be working to support our network and the important work you do. We will continue to share more in-depth updates on specific outcomes and next steps that emerged from the conference over the next weeks, so continue to check back here on the news blog for more.

For now, let’s bask in the great memories we made during this incredible gathering of our field while we make plans for advancing our work until the next time we all meet together for #NCDD2020!

#NCDD2018 is Here!

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Today is the day! #NCDD2018 is finally here and we couldn’t be more excited!! As our fantastic D&D community convenes, we look forward to a jam-packed weekend filled with inspiring speakers, an exciting variety of great workshops, the hottest efforts in civic engagement, and so much more!

This weekend will be a great opportunity to connect with hundreds of folks passionate about dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement work! Connect with movers and shakers in the field as we explore how to further strengthen our capacity for this work and amplify D&D across the nation and world.

You can still join us if you’re in the Denver/Colorado area -check out the registration page here and consider registering for even just one day at the $175 one-day registration rate!

The NCDD 2018 Guidebook: A Comprehensive Guide

We have several exciting options of our #NCDD2018 guidebook for conference attendees to check out. Our beautiful guidebooks were created by our co-founder, Andy Fluke; so make sure you pick up your hard copy at the NCDD registration office! In addition to our classic offering, we teamed up with Konveio who is hosting a digital, interactive version – which you can find here. The Konveio digital version allows NCDDers to makes comments on sessions, engage with other attendees, tweet directly from the guidebook, and more. It’s great addition to our usual conference experience, so check it out!

Follow along on social media

NCDD will be keeping you up to date on about what’s happening during the conference via our social media outlets, so make sure to be part of the conversation! Our conference team and attendees will be live tweeting the whole conference on Twitter, so follow us @NCDD and using the hashtags #NCDD2018, #NCDD, and #NCDDEmergingLeaders.

You can also follow along on NCDD’s Facebook page or on Instagram via ncdd_network. These will all be great ways to be part of the conversation even if you’re not here with us in Denver.

Discover All the Great Offerings at #NCDD2018!

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#NCDD2018 is almost here! Just another day until our pre-conference sessions kick off on Thursday and we couldn’t be more excited to start seeing folks again! In order to really get the most out of #NCDD2018 we encourage you to check out the extra offerings at the conference, in addition to our inspiring speakers, over 60 workshops, and 30+ presenters at the D&D Showcase.

The full conference schedule is on the NCDD blog and make sure you check out the interactive, digital version hosted by Konveio! Share your thoughts here on the blog about the conference theme and how to amplify the work of D&D. Get started on the conference networking early by connecting with other attendees here. If you are looking for a room share at the Sheraton, folks are posting here. Finally, if you haven’t gotten your tickets and you’d like to join us, we have 3-day and single-day tickets still available here. That’s all, folks!

Can’t wait to see everyone at the conference!

Thursday, November 1st

Pre-conference sessions!
We are thrilled to offer five exciting day long and one half-day pre-conference sessions on Thursday, November 1, 2018, prior to the start of NCDD 2018! These sessions are great for people of various levels of experience, and offer a variety of topics. Read through these descriptions and go to ncdd2018-precon.eventbrite.com to register!

  • Standing Up for Social Justice in Times of Fear & Hatred
  • Tackling Wicked Problems in Local Communities: A Workshop for Local Governments, School Districts, and Community Leaders
  • What is Participatory Budgeting and how can it work for me?
  • A Taste of the Theory and Practice of Bohm Dialogue
  • Transforming Community Spaces: A Workshop for Community Facilitators
  • We the People Are More Powerful Than We Dare to Believe: First Steps in Dismantling Corporate Rule

5 – 7pm – Informal Meet & Greet
We welcome all folks participating in pre-conference activities and conference attendees who have arrived early to join NCDD’s Staff at Mix16 Lounge in the hotel lobby for an informal meet & greet!

6 – 7pm – Deliberation Bootcamp
This session, specifically designed for newcomers to the conference, will provide an overall introduction to NCDD and to many of the key concepts, organizations, and challenges related to the field. The session will be led by Martin Carcasson, NCDD Board member and Director of Colorado State University’s Center for Public Deliberation. Email Martín at mcarcas@colostate.edu to let him know you’ll be attending the Bootcamp.  (Governor’s Square 14)

6:30 – 8:30pm – Breaking the Partisan Trance: A dialogue think tank about this American moment
Similar to a couple in the middle of deep-set resentments, growing numbers of Americans today have become so enraged that they can hardly see or hear each other honestly anymore.  The kind of collective distortions that anger generates can be reminiscent at times of a “trance-like” state.  If that’s true, we’re curious about the ways in which dialogue practices can effectively break the almost hypnotic, reflexive reactions that currently paralyze politics. This evening will be dedicated to exploring these possibilities together, and trying them out for ourselves, utilizing various approaches we’ve been exploring, including a Living Room Conversation format and the Transpartisan Matrix to assist in the collective inquiry. Come join the brainstorm.. The fate of the republic depends on it! (Governor’s Square 15)

8 – 9:15pm – Emerging Leaders Mentoring Session
NCDD is hosting a pre-conference event for young people and students. This will be a time for attendees 35 and under to connect with the other younger conference attendees. We will also be kicking off our NCDD 2018 Mentoring Program, which will intentionally connect a cadre of experienced D&D leaders with students and youth attendees during the conference. (Governor’s Square 12)

Friday, November 2nd

 6pm – 8:30pm – White Privilege Symposium Community Event
We are sharing the Ballroom with the White Privilege Symposium for their community event, featuring performances and speakers. Event is open to NCDD attendees and the public.  (Plaza Ballroom)

7:30pm – 9:30pm – National Issues Forum: The Opiod Epidemic
What Should We Do About The Opioid Epidemic?  –  Virgina York will lead attendees in a National Issues Forum on the opioid epidemic. Join fellow attendees to experience the National Issues Forums model and deliberate on possible approaches to this complex national issue. (Governor’s Square 15)

8:30pm and on  – Building Bridges Salon
Join a late night discussion about dialogue and racial privilege after the WPS community kick-off event. Come upstairs around 8:30pm to the 15FIFTY Restaurant & Lounge for a loosely facilitated conversation to explore how WPS attendees & NCDDers can do better together.

Saturday, November 3rd

12:30 – 1:30 pm – Ben Franklin Circles Lunch

Ben Franklin Circles (BFC) use Franklin’s classic 13 virtues to spark discussion about how participants can improve themselves and their communities. Join BFC hosts from around the country for a relaxed lunch and Ben Franklin Circle in action. Get a feel for the BFC approach as we discuss Franklin’s virtue of “Resolution” in relation to our conference theme: connecting and strengthening civic innovators. The combination of Franklin’s original prompts and modern day topics generates a unique lens for civic dialogue and community building. Come eat, explore, and innovate with us. (Plaza Court 2)

For planning purposes it would assist the presenters to know if you will plan to attend this discussion circle.  Please fill out the brief form here.

This lunchtime breakout session is a circle in action. For general information about BFC please see our workshop on Friday Nov. 2nd , Session A.

Hosted by: Tracy Rogers-Tryba, Ben Franklin Circle Host, IL and Danyel Addes -Network and Program Manager, Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact, 92nd Street Y

5pm – on – Free Time & Civic Dinner Opportunity

Explore downtown Denver and go out to dinner with new or old friends… We’ll provide you with all you need to organize your evening out!

Conference sponsor Civic Dinners is offering to help people run their own Civic Dinners Saturday night. Civic Dinners helps people transform dinner tables into forums for positive social change. Our friends at Civic Dinners are happy to help anyone who wants to host on any of their three national topics: Bridging the Racial Divide, The Voice of Women, or Common Ground (just launched!).

Civic Dinners will be getting people to sign up during the Showcase/Reception on Friday afternoon. Those of you who’d like to host something at a restaurant or, even better, local folks who’d like to host a Civic Dinner in your home, can plan to do so! If this is of interest to you, email Jenn Graham at jenn@civicdinners.com so you two can connect on the details.

Make sure you check out the full conference schedule for the line-up of workshops, plenaries, and more!

On Monday, NCDD member David Campt will be holding one of his workshops, Dismantling Racism: One Conversation at a Time, on November 5th in Denver. Learn more and register here!