Recap of Our Tech Tuesday Event with Trusted Sharing

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We had another fantastic Tech Tuesday event earlier this week with the team from Trusted Sharing. The webinar featured NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, and Ruth Backstrom, Director of Marketing and Outreach who walked participants through an in-depth demonstration of the features and capabilities of their asynchronous conversation platform.

The walk through was hugely informative, and it was clear to all of us how helpful a tool like Trusted Sharing can be to folks working not just on planning, engagement, and decision making processes, but also in classrooms, organizations, and all manner of other collaborative endeavors. We got to ask Duncan and Ruth specific questions about Trusted Sharing’s functionalities and the case studies we explored, and heard a bit more about their next steps in rolling the tool out. It was a wonderful call!

If you missed out on the call and still want to see and hear the presentation, then we encourage you to check out the recording of this Tech Tuesday call by clicking here.

The Trusted Sharing team is still developing and refining the tool, and since NCDD’s member network is such a rich repository of knowledge and expertise, they created a special Trusted Sharing conversation page where NCDDers are invited to offer input and suggestions to the TS team about templates for conversations based on method and process you use. So we encourage NCDDers to visit www.trustedsharing.com/ncdd to continue the conversation from the call, ask more questions, and offer your professional feedback on the Trusted Sharing tool.

Thanks again to Duncan, Ruth, and everyone who participated in the call for an engaging and educational event!

To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/tech-tuesdays.

Don’t Miss the June Tech Tuesday Call with Trusted Sharing!

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We want remind our network that time is running out to register for NCDD’s June Tech Tuesday event this Tuesday, June 28th from 12-1pm Eastern/9-10am Pacific. This time, our webinar will the Trusted Sharing tech tool – a free, asynchronous platform for hosting online conversation using facilitation methods such as World Café, TOP, and Open Space – and you won’t want to miss it!

We will be joined on the call by NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, as well as Ruth Backstrom, the Director of Marketing and Outreach. Duncan and Ruth will give participants an overview of the tool, walk us through how it can be used in a few case studies, and talk about their collaborations with thought leaders, educators, nonprofits, businesses, and more.

We’re confident that our members will find Trusted Sharing’s platform useful because there already are NCDDers using it! Here’s what NCDD member Rosa Zubizarreta of DiaPraxis had to say about her experience with Trusted Sharing:

I’ve been using Trusted Sharing for the last nine months, as part of a mastermind group I initiated to create a stronger community of practice among those drawn to Tom Atlee’s co-intelligence work. Our main intention with Trusted Sharing was to have a place for online conversation before and after each of our video conference sessions. This tool offered a space where we could prepare in advance for each session, as well as continue our conversations afterward. We now have a rich repository we can continue to harvest, as each person moves forward with their individual projects, enriched by the input and perspectives of our learning community.

For more info on this impressive tool, you can peruse this overview – or you can just register today for this Tech Tuesday event! It’s going to be a wonderful opportunity, and we look forward to hearing you all on the call.

5 Chances to Deliberate Online with NCDD Member Orgs

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

Attention civic tech geeks and newbies alike! This month, there will be several opportunities to participate in online deliberative forums about how we can tackle major issues facing our society. If you’ve never had the chance to participate in an online deliberation, we highly recommend you take advantage of the chance to participate in one of these upcoming events!

There are three great NCDD organizational members hosting forums this month. The Kettering Foundation (KF) and National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) are teaming up to host four forums using Common Ground for Action (CGA), the great new civic tech tool that they partnered to create. And Intellitics is hosting a special week-long deliberation using their text-based deliberation platform, Zilino.

All of these forums will be using NIFI’s expertly-made issue guides to help participants walk through deliberation about major decisions related to immigration, economic inequality, and health care. The dates, topics, and registration links to all five online deliberative forums are below. You can learn more about the NIFI/KF forums in the NIFI blog post here and about the Intellitics forum here.

We hope to “see” many of you later this month at one or more of these online events:

Climate Choices with NIFI & KF
Friday, June 17, 12-2 pm EST
Register here

Making Ends Meet with Intellitics
Monday, June 20 at 9am EST – Friday, June 24 at 3pm EST
Register here

Immigration with NIFI & KF
Wednesday, June 22, 12-2 pm EST
Register here

Making Ends Meet with NIFI & KF
Thursday, June 23, 3-5pm EST
Register here

Health Care with NIFI & KF
Thursday, June 30, 3-5pm EST
Register here

D&D CAN Hosts Call on Networks & Climate Change Work

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage our NCDD members to register for the next D&D Climate Action Network (D&D CAN) conference call coming up on Tuesday, June 21st from 5-7pm Eastern / 2-4pm Pacific!

D&D CAN is a network led by NCDD supporting member Linda Ellinor of the Dialogue Group that is working to foster shared learning, networking and collaboration among those seeking to use dialogue, deliberation, and other process skills to address climate change. The monthly D&D CAN conference calls are a great way to connect with the network, and we encourage you to register to save your spot in their next conversation by clicking here.

This month’s call features NCDD sustaining member Beth Tener, who will lead a conversation on the topic of Networks: New Paths for Collaborative Climate Change Work. The call will focus on stories of network models that are springing up among people and organizations to connect and align around larger goals. Here’s how D&D CAN describes the call:

To address most of the challenging complex issues we face, such as climate change, the solutions cannot be achieved by one organization alone or one sector, such as business, advocates, or government. New models are springing up based in the principles of networks, where the work of many people and organizations can connect and align around a larger goal to enable them to have greater impact individually and together. On this webinar, Beth Tener will share stories of network approaches related to climate change, from her work as a facilitator and strategy coach, with an emphasis on how D&D professionals can use their skills in new ways.

The D&D CAN calls are being hosted on the QiqoChat platform, which is run by NCDD member Lucas Cioffi and about which we hosted a recent Tech Tuesday call (you can hear the recording of the call here).

The combination of online D&D technology and powerful ideas makes this call an exciting and dynamic conversation, so be sure to learn more and register today at https://ddcan.qiqochat.com. We hope to hear many of our members on the call!

MetroQuest Hosts Online Engagement Webinar, 6/14

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage NCDDers tpo participate in an educational webinar on a case study of successful online engagement from British Columbia tomorrow, June 14th at 1pm that will be hosted by Metroquest, an NCDD organizational member. We originally heard about the webinar in the post below from the Davenport Institute and their Gov 2.0 Watch blog. You can read the post below, find the original post here, or go ahead and register for the webinar here.

Webinar: Online Engagement

Head’s up for a webinar offered by MetroQuest looking at how the city of Abbotsford, BC has implemented a successful online engagement called Abbotsfwd.

When: Tuesday, June 14, 2016
1:00-1:45 pm ET, 10:00- 10:45 am PT

Registration is required, but free of charge. You can register here.

More from the Metroquest description of the webinar:

This highly visual 45-minute webinar will present research findings and proven best practices, practical tips and award-winning case studies to guide agencies towards the successful application of online community engagement for planning projects. Participants will walk away with an understanding about how to leverage digital engagement to achieve unprecedented results using cost-effective tools. This session will feature our special guests Abbotsforward who will be online to talk about the innovative ways they combined online and targeted face to face community engagement to involve over 8,000 community members in the creation of an official plan for Abbotsford, BC. They will also share advice for agencies seeking to improve the breadth and effectiveness of their community engagement efforts and talk about the positive difference that broad community support is making in their implementation process.

You can find the original version of this Gov 2.0 Watch blog post at http://gov20watch.pepperdine.edu/2016/06/webinar-online-engagement.

Register for June Tech Tuesday featuring Trusted Sharing

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Courtney Breese

Registration is now open for June’s Tech Tuesday event featuring Trusted Sharing. Join us for this FREE event Tuesday, June 28th from 12:00-1:00pm Eastern/9:00-10:00am Pacific.

Trusted Sharing is a free, asynchronous platform that allows people to host deeper, more coherent online conversations using specific facilitation methods such as World Café, TOP and Open Space.

Contemporary research highlights how essential high quality conversations are in our complex Information Age; yet our current online exchanges often fall short of our hopes and expectations. Trusted Sharing is trying to change that. Early adopters of this new platform have been educators, consultants, bloggers, facilitators and small businesses. It is user-friendly and good for informal groups that want to extend their interaction time through online conversations.

Teachers have used Trusted Sharing to launch the learning experience prior to the first in person class. A consultant commented that she could cut the amount of in person time down by 40-50% by using Trusted Sharing to gather online thoughts first. A blogger was able to answer questions that readers had and add depth to his blog. A coaching training academy is using Trusted Sharing as a way to catalogue conversations and make decisions across multiple informal groups they interact with.

Joining us for this call will be NCDD member Duncan Work, founder and CEO of Trusting Sharing, and Ruth Backstrom, Director of Marketing and Outreach. Duncan and Ruth will provide a brief overview of the tool and demonstrate how it can be used with several case studies. They are collaborating with a number of facilitators, thought leaders, educators, and others to bring more coherent, effective conversations into old and new realms like nonprofits, schools, businesses, blogs and public online spaces, and they will talk more about this on the call.

For an overview of the benefits and potential for Trusted Sharing in different contexts, you may peruse this overview and the Trusted Sharing website.

Don’t miss this opportunity – register today!

Tech Tuesdays are a series of learning events from NCDD focused on technology for engagement. These 1-hour events are designed to help dialogue and deliberation practitioners get a better sense of the online engagement landscape and how they can take advantage of the myriad opportunities available to them. You do not have to be a member of NCDD to participate in our Tech Tuesday learning events.

Following Up on Our Tech Tuesday Call with Urban Interactive Studios

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

Earlier this week, NCDD hosted another one of our Tech Tuesday calls with the good folks from Urban Interactive Studios (UIS), and we had a great conversation. The call featured the sophisticated suite of engagement technology that UIS has developed in their EngagingPlans and EngagingApps software, and together with nearly 40 participants on the call, we all learned quite a bit about the cutting edge of civic tech.

Our presenters – NCDD member and UIS Founder & CEO, Chris Haller, and UIS Partnership Manager Emily Crespin – impressed us with a demonstration of the attention to detail and versatility that UIS has built into their civic tech tools while keeping it accessible for everyday people who may only have a limited amount of time to use it. They helped spark a rich and engaging discussion on the call – so engaging, in fact, that there were more questions from participants than we had time to answer!

If you missed out on the live event, don’t worry – we recorded the presentation and discussion and you can watch the recording by clicking here. And as a bonus, Chris and Emily were kind enough to take the time to actually write out answers to the questions that we didn’t get to on the call, which you can find by clicking here.

Many thanks, again, to Chris and Emily for leading us through the demonstration and for following up with even more info!

To learn more about NCDD’s Tech Tuesday series and hear recordings of past calls, please visit www.ncdd.org/events/tech-tuesdays

Join Our Next Tech Tuesday Call with Urban Interactive Studios, May 17

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

As we announced last month, NCDD is hosting another on of our fabulous Tech Tuesday webinars this Tuesday, May 17th from 1-2pm Eastern/10-11am Pacific, and you’re invited! This time, the event will feature Urban Interactive Studio (UIS), an innovative leader in public engagement technology and creator of the popular EngagingPlans and EngagingApps tools. You really don’t want to miss this one, so register today!

Are you looking for digital tools to make engaging a group or constituency you work with more versatile? Need to collect on-going feedback alongside face-to-face meetings? Have other planning and engagement issues that call for tech solutions? Then this is the Tech Tuesday call for you!

We will be joined by two members of the UIS team – NCDD supporting member, as well as Founder & CEO, Chris Haller, and Partnership Manager Emily Crispin. Together, Chris and Emily will give us an in-depth and behind-the-scenes look at both the EngagingPlans and EngagingApps tools that have been used by dozens of cities, companies, non-profits, and universities in multiple countries to help them engage their constituencies. You’ll have a chance to see both tools in action and hear about how the tools can be configured to suit specific project needs

There will be tons to learn from these two civic tech leaders, so we encourage you to join us on May 17th! We can’t wait to talk more with you then.

Learn more about our Tech Tuesday calls by clicking here.

Register for D&D CAN Call on Climate and Elections, 5/17

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

This post is a reminder to our members that the next D&D Climate Action Network (D&D CAN) conference call coming up on Tuesday, May 17th from 5-7pm Eastern / 2-4pm Pacific!

The title of this month’s D&D CAN call is Peril & Promise: Climate Activism, Elections, & Dialogue, and it will center on discussing the nexus of climate dialogue and the election cycle. Some of the questions to be explored on the call will include:

What ways have you seen or been part of bringing climate issues into candidates’ campaigns, platforms, citizen initiatives and propositions?

How are electoral issues and climate concerns converging, or not?

What roles do skilled process work and intentional conversations play?

What’s working and how?

The combination of online D&D technology and powerful ideas makes this call an exciting and dynamic conversation, so be sure to register today at https://ddcan.qiqochat.com. We hope to hear many of our members on the call!

New Civic Tech Developments for Public Engagement

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

If you are interested in civic technology, we highly recommend that you take a good look at the article below from NCDD member Tiago Peixoto‘s blog, DemocracySpot. Tiago lays out some high-tech new engagement and evaluation tools that are in the works or have just recently been release, and it’s exciting to see the progress being made. You can read his piece below or find the original version here.

Catching Up on DemocracySpot

It’s been a while, so here’s a miscellaneous post with things I would normally share on DemocracySpot.

Yesterday the beta version of the Open Government Research Exchange (OGRX) was launched. Intended as a hub for research on innovations in governance, the OGRX is a joint initiative by NYU’s GovLab, MySociety and the World Bank’s Digital Engagement Evaluation Team (DEET) (which, full disclosure, I lead). As the “beta” suggests, this is an evolving project, and we look forward to receiving feedback from those who either work with or benefit from research in open government and related fields. You can read more about it here.

Today we also launched the Open Government Research mapping. Same story, just “alpha” version. There is a report and a mapping tool that situates different types of research across the opengov landscape. Feedback on how we can improve the mapping tool – or tips on research that we should include – is extremely welcome. More background about this effort, which brings together Global Integrity, Results for Development, GovLAB, Results for Development and the World Bank, can be found here.

Also, for those who have not seen it yet, the DEET team also published the Evaluation Guide for Digital Citizen Engagement a couple of months ago. Commissioned and overseen by DEET, the guide was developed and written by CaptureDEETguide Matt Haikin (lead author), Savita Bailur, Evangelia Berdou, Jonathan Dudding, Cláudia Abreu Lopes, and Martin Belcher.

And here is a quick roundup of things I would have liked to have written about since my last post had I been a more disciplined blogger:

A field experiment in Rural Kenya finds that “elite control over planning institutions can adapt to increased mobilization and participation.” I tend to disagree a little with the author’s conclusion that emphasizes the role of “power dynamics that allow elites to capture such institutions” to explain his findings (some of the issues seem to be a matter of institutional design). In any case, it is a great study and I strongly recommend the reading.
A study examining a community-driven development program in Afghanistan finds a positive effect on access to drinking water and electricity, acceptance of democratic processes, perceptions of economic wellbeing, and attitudes toward women. However, effects on perceptions of government performance were limited or short-lived.
A great paper by Paolo de Renzio and Joachim Wehner reviews the literature on “The Impacts of Fiscal Openness”. It is a must-read for transparency researchers, practitioners and advocates. I just wish the authors had included some research on the effects of citizen participation on tax morale.
Also related to tax, “Consumers as Tax Auditors” is a fascinating paper on how citizens can take part in efforts to reduce tax evasion while participating in a lottery.
Here is a great book about e-Voting and other technology developments in Estonia. Everybody working in the field of technology and governance knows Estonia does an amazing job, but information about it is often scattered and, sometimes, of low quality. This book, co-authored by my former colleague Kristjan Vassil, addresses this gap and is a must-read for anybody working with technology in the public sector.
Finally, I got my hands on the pictures of the budget infograffitis (or data murals) in Cameroon, an idea that emerged a few years ago when I was involved in a project supporting participatory budgeting in Yaoundé (which also did the Open Spending Cameroon). I do hope that this idea of bringing data visualizations to the offline world catches up. After all, that is valuable data in a citizen-readable format.

I guess that’s it for now.

You can find the original version of this DemocracySpot blog post at www.democracyspot.net/2016/04/29/catching-up-on-democracyspot.

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