Celebrating What We Accomplished at NCDD 2016

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We with the NCDD team want to say one more giant THANK YOU to all of those involved in making the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation an enormous success last weekend! It was without a doubt one of our best conferences yet, but it couldn’t have been as incredible as it was without you!

NCDD 2016 featured 5 pre-conference events, 54 workshops, 3 engaging plenaries, 3 mentoring sessions, over a dozen breakout discussions during our Networking & Collaboration space, a great field trip, and countless connections made. We also recorded several in-person interviews with NCDD members about the projects their working on which we’ll be turning into videos and podcasts soon. It felt like a whirlwind of wonderful people, good conversation, deep learning, and unlocked potential – you really missed out if you weren’t there!

NCDD is so grateful to the over 350 diverse innovators, practitioners, scholars, elected officials, and young leaders who attended this year’s conference, our tireless volunteers, our generous conference sponsors, our featured speakers, the mentors and mentees, and everyone else who worked to make NCDD 2016 so very special! panorama-smaller

Following up, Moving forward

While we certainly didn’t figure out how to bridge all of the divides that need healing over the weekend, we did share stories of how our field has already started that work, we gained insights on how we can grow and strengthen that work, and many collaborations, partnerships, and new projects were sparked during the gathering. We encourage all of our attendees to do the follow up and deeper connecting needed to make those collaborations and projects materialize.

To support our members in following up and to help those who couldn’t be there to stay connected, we created a conference Google drive folder, which we highly recommend that everyone check out – 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!

We also encourage you to keep the conversation going on social media with the hashtags #NCDD2016, #NCDD, #BridgingOurDivides, and #NCDDEmergingLeaders or by participating in our NCDD Facebook Discussion Group. Don’t forget to follow NCDD on Facebook and Twitter!

group-talking NCDD conferences are always an in-person reminder of just how broad and powerful this field is. 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 in 2018!

Join EvDem’s Monthly Twitter Chat for Young Leaders

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage our younger members to join the Twitter chat that our NCDD member organization Everyday Democracy hosts every 2nd Tuesday. It’s a great way to connect and get new ideas out there, so we encourage you to learn more in EvDem’s post below and join them today using the hashtag #EvDemChat! Save the date for next month’s chat on October 11th!

Twitter Chat for Young Leaders

Everyday Democracy hosts a Twitter chat the second Tuesday of every month at 2pm ET.

September’s Twitter chat will highlight the work of young leaders organizing and creating change in their communities. Join us this month for a great discussion!

We’ll talk about:

What inspires you to do community change work
Strategies you use to engage people
How you’ve overcome barriers you’ve faced as a young leader
How you talk about racism and racial equity in your work
How do you make sure young people’s voices are heard

Details:

Date: Tuesday, September 13
Time: 2-3pm ET
Hashtag: #EvDemChat
Host: Everyday Democracy (@EvDem)

Learning from Feedback Frames: An Innovative Decision Making Tool

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Andy Fluke

Long time NCDD member Jason Diceman is introducing an accessible new tool for public engagement this summer called Feedback Frames. His project is a great example of the innovation and creativity inherent in our network, and we thought the strategies he’s using to leverage social media, crowdfunding, and crowdspeaking platforms would be useful one for other NCDDers to learn from.

The love child of a polling station and a game of Connect Four, Feedback Frames offers a fun and flexible way to gather input from participants at large or small group events. Featuring private voting, built-in validation, flexible data-gathering, and quick visual results, this highly adaptable tool offers an elegant solution to group think and the bandwagon effect that can adversely affect any deliberation program.

Creator of Idea Rating Sheets, originally called Dotmocracy (featured at NCDD2006), Jason serves as Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the City of Toronto. He has led public consultations for some of the City’s most controversial and high profile infrastructure studies, including downtown separated bike lane installations, the redesign of Front Street at Union Station, new roads and bridges in Liberty Village, contentious multi-use trails, and the Gardiner Expressway financing.

Jason is about to launch an Indiegogo campaign to support the manufacture of Feedback Frames, and he’s tapping into every modern tool and technique he can find to get the word out. Having started with more traditional media (check out his humorous Prototype Video below), Jason has now turned to Thunderclap to make sure he can get his crowdfunding endeavor off on the right foot.

Thunderclap is especially useful for smaller programs which can’t effectively encourage the critical mass needed to benefit from the power of Twitter, or Facebook, or even the likes of Tumblr. Thunderclap is very much the “Kickstarter” of social media, but instead of pledging money a supporter pledges their social connections. When a project successfully hits its goal, Thunderclap will “blast out a timed Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr post from all your supporters, creating a wave of attention.” Referred to as “Crowdspeaking” platforms, Thunderclap and its competitor, the more economical Headtalker, have been around a while and provide interesting companion services to crowdfunding projects. Both are interesting strategies that may be useful for helping NCDDers launch or promote their projects.

And Jason is facing the same problem all limited-budget social entrepreneurs face: how do you get the word out and make your great idea a reality without a second mortgage and an exclusive diet of ramen noodles? Of course, Jason could use all the “likes” and “upvotes” NCDDers can give him, so visit his project on Thunderclap at www.thunderclap.it/projects/39641-feedback-frames-are-coming if you’re interested in showing your support.

But even if you don’t support it, we encourage our members to take note of Jason’s strategy for getting this D&D project out there into the public eye. We think there are some good lessons from this kind of effort that can apply to all of our members.

Learn much more about Feedback Frames at www.feedbackframes.com.

Missed Our “Democracy Machine” Confab Call? Hear it Now!

Posted on August 30, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

NCDD hosted another one of our Confab Calls last week, and it was one of our most engaging calls yet! We hosted a conversation with the dynamic duo behind the concept of the “Democracy Machine” and had a very lively discussion with nearly 40 participants about the possibilities and practicalities of building a massive, integrated, deliberative online commons. You really missed out if you weren’t there!

Our presenters were John Gastil and Luke Hohmann, who have been working together to outline the technical, organizational, and collaborative process that would be needed to begin to link and integrate the many existing online D&D tools and platforms to create a functioning digital public commons that could facilitate sustained deliberative engagement and send ongoing feedback to both government and citizens to improve how the public interfaces with the public sector. It’s hard to understate the enormity of this undertaking, but the Confab Call presentation and discussion with John and Luke was a great opportunity to wrap our heads around the idea and discuss its pros, cons, and potentials.

If you missed out on the call but still want to see and hear the presentation and conversation, then we encourage you to watch the recording of this Confab Call by clicking here. This Confab Call also had one of the most active discussions we’ve had in the accompanying chat box, and the great back and forth is also worth reading along with the presentation, so you can find discussion from the Confab Call’s chat by clicking here.

NCDD is proud to have supported John and Luke in taking another step in making the Democracy Machine a reality by hosting this first broader conversation on our Confab Call. As you can hear in the call recording, there is still a lot more work to do to make the idea feasible. But the next step that John and Luke have planned is to use their interactive session on building the democracy machine during our NCDD 2016 conference in Boston this October 14th-16th. They’ll be using the session to collect more feedback and ideas from leaders in the field and also to enlist collaborators for the future, so if you’re interested in being involved in their project, be sure to register for the conference today so that you can continue the conversation in person!

Source: Challenges to Democracy blog

If you are looking for a bit more background on the idea of a “democracy machine,” we encourage you to read about the basic concept in John’s recent post on the Challenges to Democracy blog or read his full essay, “Building a Democracy Machine: Toward an Integrated and Empowered Form of Democracy,” by clicking here.

Thanks again to John and Luke for relying on NCDD to help advance their ideas and for collaborating on this Confab Call! To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/confabs.

Join NCDD’s “Democracy Machine” Confab Call on Thurs.

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We wanted to share a friendly reminder that time is running out to register for our next NCDD Confab Call, which takes place this Thursday, August 25th from 1-2 PM Eastern (10am-11am Pacific)! We are excited to be hosting a call with NCDD members John Gastil and Luke Hohmann about their expansive vision of creating a “Democracy Machine” – an integrated online commons comprised of today’s best civic technology and digital deliberation platforms. Be sure to register today to join the conversation!

On the call, John and Luke will introduce the NCDD network to their project of making this vision a reality. They are gathering together software designers, civic reformers, academics, and public officials to envision and build the “democracy machine” as a digital public square that would draw new people into the civic sphere, encourage more sustained and deliberative engagement, and send ongoing feedback to both government and citizens to improve how the public interfaces with the public sector. NCDD members will have an important role to play, so make sure to register for the call to find out how you can be involved!

Participants in the call are invited to bring ideas and questions about the design and development of the “democracy machine” to share with John and Luke. We also encourage participants to read about the basic concept in John’s recent post on the Challenges to Democracy blog or read his full essay, “Building a Democracy Machine: Toward an Integrated and Empowered Form of Democracy,” by clicking here.

Don’t forget! John will also be hosting an interactive session on building the “democracy machine” during the NCDD 2016 conference, so be sure to register for the conference today so that you can continue the conversation in person!

Don’t Forget to Contribute to Our Survey of the D&D Field!

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

Small green NCDD logo As we recently announced, NCDD is teaming up with the Kettering Foundation to conduct an Inventory Survey of the D&D and public engagement field, and you’re all encouraged to participate! In addition to just getting a better sense of the state of our field, our hope is to use the results to create a map of facilitators and organizations that can be searched by location, the approaches you use, and the issues you specialize in. The map would be designed to help folks outside of the field connect with your consultancy or organization.

But we can’t build this amazing resource for the field without practitioners taking this easy 15-minute survey, so please fill it out today!

Click here to complete the Inventory for Individuals

Click here to complete the Inventory for Organizations

If you or your organization does any kind of dialogue or deliberation work, we ask that you take the time to complete this survey as soon as possible. Remember, you do NOT have to be a member of NCDD to participate – we want perspectives from as many practitioners as possible.

We look forward to hearing all of your insights in the survey!

Join Our Aug. Confab Call on Building an Online Commons!

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Courtney Breese

You’re invited to join us for our next NCDD Confab Call on Thursday, August 25th from 1-2 PM Eastern (10am-12pm Pacific)! This interactive conference call will feature John Gastil, a democracy scholar and long-time NCDD member, and Luke Hohmann, CEO of Conteneo, Inc., who will share about a ground-breaking civic tech idea that they are working together to make into a reality. Register today to save your spot!

John and Luke are gathering together software designers, civic reformers, academics, and public officials to envision and build an integrated online commons – a commons that would link together the best existing civic tech and other online deliberation and engagement tools by making them components in a larger “Democracy Machine.”

The purpose of the call is to discuss ideas about the design and development of the machine in advance of a session on the same topic during NCDD 2016 this October. The aim is to draw new people into the civic sphere, encourage more sustained and deliberative engagement, and send ongoing feedback to both government and citizens to improve how the public interfaces with the public sector. In advance of the call, we encourage participants to read about the basic concept in John’s recent post on the Challenges to Democracy blog or read his full essay, “Building a Democracy Machine: Toward an Integrated and Empowered Form of Democracy,” by clicking here

John Gastil is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, particularly as it relates to how people make decisions in small groups on matters of public concern. His recent books include The Jury and Democracy, The Group in Society, and Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making, and Communication (2nd ed.).

Luke Hohmann is CEO of Conteneo, Inc. Conteneo is the leading provider of collaboration – not communication – solutions for the public and private sector. Through their cutting-edge technology and customized services, Conteneo enables employees, customers, and partners to work better together – no matter where they are in the world. Thousands of business leaders are using the Conteneo Collaboration Cloud and our Collaboration Consulting services to be more productive, innovative and competitive.

NCDD’s interactive Confab Calls are free and open to all members and potential members. Register today if you’d like to join us!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls…

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

Take the Survey on the State of Public Participation Practice

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

Recently, NCDD member supporting member John Godec shared on the NCDD Discussion Listserv that he is conducting a survey of public participation practitioners on the state of the profession. The survey is a valuable way to gain some insight into the current state of public engagement, and John is willing to share the final results, so we encourage you to complete the survey before the Aug. 31 deadline! You can read more in John’s announcement below or find the original version here.

Public Participation in the Age of Smartphones & Brexit: Dead or Alive? – A Survey of the State of the Practice‏

We need your help. When everyone is connected to everyone else and opinions can be posted to the world from your phone, does anyone really care about public participation anymore? Do those in power really have any interest in sharing their power? Does the public truly think that they have any real voice in governance?

We want to understand the state of the practice from your expert view. Tell us how healthy – or not – the profession is from your perspective. Has the craft changed, and how, and what do you think the future holds?

This survey is easy and brief. We’ll present and discuss the results at the IAP2 North American Conference in Montreal in late September and send you a report copy if you’re interested.

So please take a couple of minutes, click on and complete the survey now while you’re thinking about it and also please forward this or send the link to anyone else that you know that has a role in this profession.

Our deadline is August 31. And thanks very much.

Start the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PublicParticipation2016

You can find the original version of this announcement from Godec Randall & Associates at www.godecrandall.com/2016/07/19/public-participation-in-the-age-of-smartphones-brexit-dead-or-alive-a-survey-of-the-state-of-the-practice.

Join NIFI & Kettering for Online Forums on Energy & Climate

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

NCDD members are invited to participate in two online forums hosted on the Common Ground for Action platform that was created by NCDD member organizations the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums Institute. These deliberative forums, hosted on July 22 and Aug. 3, will help KF and NIFI hone their issue guide materials on the decisions we face around energy and the environment – we encourage you to join! You can read more in the NIFI announcement below, or find the original post here.

Two Opportunities – You’re Invited to Join an Online Forum about Energy Choices

You are invited to join one of two upcoming online forums to deliberate about Energy Choices as part of a new Environment and Society series of forum materials that will be available for people to use in their communities. The online forums will use the Common Ground for Action platform.

National Issues Forums (NIF) is working with the North American Association for Environmental Education on the second framing in our new “Environment and Society” series, “Energy Choices.” We now have a draft framing ready to test out in forums, and we’d like you to help!

Please check your calendars and register for either of the two upcoming online test forums. These forums will be run just like regular Common Ground for Action (CGA) forums, to see if they produce real deliberative conversation and choice making.

Energy CGA Forum 1: Fri. July 22, 1:30 pm ET
REGISTER

Energy CGA Forum 2: Wed. Aug. 3, 1 pm ET
REGISTER

Can’t make it? Share this invitation with a friend or share on your social media – for these test forums particularly, we want a diverse range of voices!

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at www.nifi.org/en/two-opportunities-youre-invited-join-online-forum-about-energy-choices

Two Opportunities to Learn about Civic Health in July

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

As we get back into the swing after a weekend about expressing civic pride, we want to share an invitation to talk about strengthening national civic health efforts that comes from the Davenport Institute – an NCDD member organization. Check out their announcement below on two upcoming webinars on civic health and civic renewal that will feature NCDD supporting member Peter Levine, or read the original Davenport blog post by clicking here.

NCoC: Civic Health Webinar

Join the discussion! For the better part of a decade the Davenport Institute has been a proud partner of the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) as a California Civic Health partner. We worked with them to publish the California Civic Health Index (2010), Golden Governance (2012), and several infographic pieces on the state of engagement in California.

NCoC is hosting an open webinar conversation to individuals and organizations interested in learning more about and getting more involved in Civic Health in their home state or community. Next month NCoC will be hosting two webinar conversations: one on July 11 and one on July 14.

You can find out more and register online at the NCoC website here.

You can find the original version of this post from the Davenport Institute’s inCommon blog at http://incommon.pepperdine.edu/2016/07/ncoc-civic-health-webinar.

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