Category Archives: online & hi-tech

Register for the Facilitate ’15 Online Conference, Feb. 20

Posted on by
Reply

We want to encourage NCDD members to attend Facilitate ’15, an online conference being organized by former NCDD Board member Lucas Cioffi of Qiqo Chat where attendees can host their own sessions, in addition to those being offered. Regular registration is $50, but NCDD supporting members are eligible for a 30% registration discount! Today is the last day for the early bird rate of just $30, so make sure to learn more in the announcement below and register today.

The Facilitate ’15 Conference

Facilitate ’15 is an interactive conference is all about the cutting edge of facilitation. Meet innovators working in dozens of fields. Experiment with new technologies, and co-create new solutions to challenges you’re facing.

Active & Experiential Learning

Not only will we talk about the cutting edge, we will actively explore it with all the technologies that you and your fellow participants bring to the table for testing.

You can schedule a session on any topic and use any facilitation technique and any online tool that you have access to! If you do not have a preferred tool, an easy-to-use group video chat tool will be available as the default.

Who Will Attend

This event is for facilitators who want to…

  • share leading practices,
  • run experiments with new techniques and technologies,
  • and participate in others’ experiments.

Agenda

Feb 1: Online Collaboration Begins. We will open an online collaboration space for sharing leading practices, brainstorming, and deeper conversations.

Feb 13: Pre-Conference Networking

  • 12-1pm EST: You can expand your professional network through speed networking using your webcam and/or phone (your choice).

Feb 20: Conference

  • 11am-12pm EST: Opening Plenary Session (phone + website)
  • 12-3pm EST: Participant-Led Discussions & Experiments (webcam)
  • 3-4pm EST: Closing Plenary Session (phone + website)

Participation

Some folks are concerned that they don’t want to pay if there aren’t going to be many people there.  Well, there’s a guaranteed minimum of 35 participants by Feb 1st or the event will be free.

So you’ll either find a fantastic critical mass of peers willing to push the edge of the field and experiment with new facilitation techniques that they’ve brought to the table or everyone gets their money back and the event happens anyway, but just for the people who signed up by Feb. 1st.

You can learn more about Facilitate ’15 and register by visiting www.eventbrite.com/e/facilitate-15-tickets-15007043471.

Public Engagement Training from Annette Strauss Insitute Feb. 25-27

Posted on by
Reply

We hope that NCDD members will take advantage of a great public engagement training being offered this February 25th-27th by the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life – one of the NCDD organizational members who partnered with us to sponsor NCDD 2014. The early bird registration deadline for the trainings is January 30th, so make sure to register ASAP!

NCDD would like to thank the Annette Strauss Institute for their continued support of our work and for their leadership in the field. You can learn more about the training from ASICL’s announcement below or by clicking here.

Facilitating Civic Dialogue and Consensus Seminar

ASI_horiz.spotAre you often in a position where you’re making decisions that affect large populations?  Do you frequently feel political pressure from multiple directions?  Do you feel as if you are often unsure of what the public wants, or perhaps you only hear from the same, small group of citizens?

The Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at The University of Texas at Austin is offering a 3-day seminar that will help you develop the knowledge and skills you need to enrich your engagement with the public. Join us to boost your skills on:

  • Creating customized strategies for engaging the public;
  • Facilitating difficult conversations involving competing viewpoints;
  • Bringing an array of stakeholders to consensus; and,
  • Utilizing innovative technology for public engagement.

This seminar will help you develop the knowledge, tools, and skill sets to enrich your engagement with the public.  You’ll learn how to identify stakeholders and create customized strategies for engaging them; how to facilitate difficult conversations involving competing viewpoints; and how to bring an array of stakeholders to consensus.  You will also examine some of the most cutting-edge technology for public engagement.

Register for the 3-day training or just one module!

Module One – Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Powerful, Productive, and Prudent: A New Paradigm for Public Engagement + Technology and Civic Engagement.

Module Two – Thursday, February 26, 2015
Designing Civic Engagement Processes

Module Three – Friday, February 27, 2015
Dealing with Difficult Civic Topics and Stakeholders

For more information on this the training or to register, please visit http://moody.utexas.edu/strauss/public-engagement-training.

Public Conversations Project Rolls Out New Website

Posted on by
Reply

We are pleased to share that our partners with the Public Conversations Project – one of our great NCDD organizational members that helped sponsor NCDD 2014 – just announced the roll out of their brand new website this week.

PCP’s new website is dynamic, user-friendly, and home to a good deal of content that NCDD members will find useful, including free dialogue resources, stories of dialogue across the world, and information on their approach. They sent out an email announcing the change today, and here’s what PCP had to say:

Public Conversations Project is excited to celebrate the new year with a new website, at www.publicconversations.org. Our 25 years in the field of dialogue have taught us the value of a fresh perspective, and we are proud to share our new look with friends and supporters.

Check out our free dialogue resources, meet our staff, explore stories of dialogue across the world, and get information about our practitioners and upcoming workshops.

We invite you to join the conversation and let us know what you think of our new look. Reach out to us via email at marketing@publicconversations.org or find us on social media.

We encourage you to check out the new and improved PCP website soon and to stay tuned to their social media for continued updates on the new features of their website.  And congratulations to the PCP team on the accomplishment!

Build Peace 2015 Conference: Peace through Technology

Posted on by
Reply

We want to make our network aware of an exciting community and conference that we know will interest many of our NCDDers, especially those of us oriented toward conflict resolution and technology.

Build Peace is a community that brings together practitioners, activists and technologists from around the world to share experience and ideas on using technology for peacebuilding and conflict transformation as well as an annual, international conference. The Build Peace 2015 conference will be taking place April 25th & 26th in Nicosia, Cyprus, and we want to encourage anyone who might be interested to consider attending.

Build Peace 2015 is titled Peace Through Technology: By Whom, For Whom and will be focused on alternative infrastructures for peace. Here is how the conference planners describe the gathering:

Where Build Peace 2014 aimed to demonstrate the potential of using technology for peacebuilding in terms of ‘breadth’ of initiatives and ideas, Build Peace 2015 will begin to examine issues of ‘depth’: How is the use of technology resulting in the creation of alternative infrastructures for peace? To this cross-cutting theme, the program adds three sub-themes:

  1. Empowerment. One key reason to use technologies in peacebuilding is that they can empower a larger number of people to engage and participate. But there are also tensions between state uses of technologies for surveillance and security implications of some grassroots uses. Who is empowered, by whom and how?
  2. Behavior change. And empowered to do what? Technological tools can affect behaviours that pertain to patterns of violence and peace: by shaping the peace and conflict narratives, through training or education, or by helping shape alternative identity formation processes.
  3. Impact. Another assumption underlying the use of technologies is that it can help ‘improve’ peacebuilding, with the caveat that there are associated risks and ethical issues. What are the actual or possible impacts of using technologies for peacebuilding? How can we measure them?

We have designed the program to weave these guiding themes through the different types of content. Because the themes are interrelated, some sessions are guided by more than one theme. Different sessions are designed to offer different modes of interaction. Keynotes aim to be thought provoking and allow for deeper exploration on one aspect of a theme or themes. Panels offer an overview of one theme and permit interaction with the audience on the broader questions raised by that theme. Short Talks provide concrete evidence of practice and/or research in a particular theme. Working sessions are more practitioner-oriented and will produce a concrete output that contributes to practice in one thematic area.

We know that there a plenty of folks in our NCDD network who would gain and contribute a lot by attending this great gathering, and we hope that some of you can make it! You can learn more at www.howtobuildpeace.org/program or get registered for the conference at www.howtobuildpeace.org/tickets.

Want to really contribute to the gathering? It’s not too late to apply to be a short talk speaker, to host a stand at the Technology Fair, or give a presentation during the Peace Lab at Build Peace 2015! But you have to act fast, because the deadline for application for speakers, stands, and presenters is this Monday, January 5th, so visit Build Peace’s call for speakers today!

We hope that some of our NCDDers will be able to take advantage of this great opportunity, and we thank Build Peace for inviting us to be part of it!

Help NCDD Reach 3,000 Twitter Followers!

Posted on by
Reply

Do you follow NCDD on Twitter?

NCDD’s Twitter handle is quite a useful resource where you can keep up to date on headlines from and links to the latest posts on blogs from leading organizations in the dialogue, deliberation, public engagement, and conflict resolution field. We automatically share the news on our feed so that you never miss a beat.

As of this posting, our @NCDD Twitter handle has 2,936 followers, and we are trying to reach the 3,000 followers mark by the end of the year! We know that adding another 64 followers should be a piece of cake with all of the wonderful people in our NCDD network, so please follow us if you’re not already.

And if you are, please consider tweeting to encourage others to follow us! You could say something like:

“I follow  for the latest dialogue, deliberation, & public engagement news, and so should you! Follow NCDD at !”

Or make your own tweet! We know we can do it with you help!

Thanks for all you do and for continuing to support NCDD!

DC City Council Brings Citizens into Bill Amendment Process

Posted on by
Reply

We saw an interesting post recently from our friends at the Davenport Institute – an NCDD organizational member – about a new program for public input on city council bills in DC. We encourage you to read more below or find the original post here on their Gov 2.0 Watch blog.

DavenportInst-logoWashington, DC has launched an online program where citizens of the city can propose amendments and opinions on certain aspects of a bill before the city council. The idea of this program is to allow more transparency and use technology to enhance voter participation. Although this is in its beginning stages, the idea is to bring the workings of the city government to the people directly so they can have a voice in the shaping of bills:

Washington, DC has launched a program where citizens of the city can propose amendments and opinions on certain aspects of a bill before the city council. The idea of this program is to allow more transparency and use technology to enhance voter participation. Although this is in its beginning stages, the idea is to bring the workings of the city government to the people directly so they can have a voice in the shaping of bills.

You can read more here.

Join a Live Video Chat on #TextTalkAct Tomorrow

Posted on by
Reply

Join organizers of the award-winning #TextTalkAct in a live video chat hosted by @DocForeman tomorrow (Tuesday, November 18th) at 6:30 pm Eastern / 3:30 pm Pacific. Hear what happened during our national Text Talk Act contest on October 6. We’ll connect you with:

  • Winning youth organizers;
  • Ideas texted in by participants across the country;
  • Resources for taking action.

To participate, simply click on this link on Tuesday, Nov 18 at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. You’ll be connected to the live streaming video on YouTube that begins at that time, and you’ll be able to comment via Twitter or YouTube using the #TextTalkAct hashtag.

Dr. April Foreman is a Licensed Psychologist and innovator in using social media platforms like Twitter to connect with thought leaders in healthcare across the world. Currently, she works for the Southeast Louisiana Healthcare System, serving Veterans as a Suicide Prevention Coordinator in Baton Rouge.

Text Talk Act is a series of innovative experiments in texting-enabled dialogue. As part of our role in the National Dialogue on Mental Health project Creating Community Solutions, NCDD and our partners have been experimenting with how the fun and convenience of text messaging can be leveraged to scale up face-to-face dialogue — especially among young people.

In April, we featured Matt Leighninger and Michael Smith from the Text Talk Act core team on an NCDD Confab Call.  Audio from the call and an archive of the collaborative doc we created during the call for Q&A and networking can be accessed at www.ncdd.org/14741.

Online Discussion on Recent NCDD Hot Topics, Friday 11/14

Posted on by
Reply

We want to invite NCDD members to join an online & phone conversation event this Friday that former NCDD Board member Lucas Cioffi has set up so we can explore some of the topics that have been making waves on our discussion listserv recently. You can read his invitation below. NCDD is driven by members, and we love to see them taking initiative, so thanks so much to Lucas for leading on this! 

Hello Everyone,

There have been some deep topics discussed on this discussion list over the past few weeks. I’d like to open up some space for people to continue the conversation by phone and/or video chat.

Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/online-conversation-cafe-tickets-14285429103
When: Friday, November 14, 2014 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM (EST)
Cost: Free

For you, this is a networking opportunity, chance to meet with some other NCDD members interested in the same topics. For me, this is a chance to test out a system I’m building for online conferences.

The format is similar to Conversation Cafe where you’ll join several small group discussions (2-4 people per virtual table). Similar to Open Space, participants will choose the topics, ranging from current events to changing the world.

This is an informal and fun event. Expect to join other participants by phone and/or webcam (if you have it). Final details will be emailed to all who register.

Lucas Cioffi
Charlottesville, VA

6 Guiding Questions for Online Engagement from CM

Posted on by
Reply

On one of their recent capacity building calls, our friends at CommunityMatters – a partnership in which NCDD is a member – had a great discussion about online engagement. They distilled a list of key questions to help people think about and plan for online engagement that are incredibly useful. We encourage you to read more about them below or find the original CM blog post by clicking here.

CM_logo-200pxDigital engagement is the latest buzz when it comes to public participation. We hear about the great work of Code for America. We read articles claiming digital engagement is the “new normal.” Our brains spin trying to keep up with new tools and terms—Gov 2.0, civic technology, hackathons, digital citizenship. The list goes on.

Pete Peterson, executive director, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership and Alissa Black, investment partner, Omidyar Network work with local governments to improve public engagement efforts. They know that despite the buzz, many cities and towns are hesitant to try more than a website or social media.

Pete and Alissa joined CommunityMatters to share ideas on getting started and going deeper with online public engagement. If your town is thinking about diving into the digital realm, consider these six questions.

Why engage the public? Nail down your goals for public participation before selecting a tool. Want to inform the public about a recent policy decision? A well-designed website will do the trick. Looking to collect ideas for a community plan? Consider an idea aggregation tool like Mindmixer or Neighborland. Public Pathways: A Guide to Online Engagement Tools for Local Governments presents a framework for categorizing and selecting online tools based on four engagement goals: inform, consult, collaborate and empower.

What kind of traffic visits the government website? Your municipal website is the natural place to host an online conversation. But, how many people regularly visit the site? What audience does it attract? Santa Monica, California (pop. 91,812) wanted input on its budget and general plan and took a hard look at web traffic. But the municipal site wasn’t garnering much visitation. The city partnered to host online engagement platforms on the local newspaper’s website to maximize participation and reach new audiences.

What is the outreach plan? It’s a no-brainer that you need to spread the word about face-to-face meetings. Online public engagement is no different. The latest and greatest technology isn’t enough to attract users—you still need to actively recruit participants. Trying to connect with a particular audience? Reach out to hyperlocal blogs or ethnic newspapers. Looking for intergenerational conversations? Steven Clift of e-Democracy.org recommends a mix of email and web-based technology.

How are we engaging people offline? Online public engagement is about complementing—not replacing—offline engagement. With Engage Oakland in Oakland, California (pop. 400,740), organizers encouraged public meeting attendees to share feedback online. Creating space for parallel online and offline conversations reinforced the whole process—online discussions motivated people to attend face-to-face meetings and kept those already involved at the table. The online space also allowed residents to stay in the loop without attending a meeting.

Are these the conversations we’re looking for? Take a look at examples from other cities and towns (our call notes are a great place to start!). Research the types of questions asked and issues addressed. You’re off to a good start if examples reflect what your town is looking to accomplish.

Y’all ready for this? Dust off that Jock Jams cassette and gather your posse. Online engagement is far from a contact sport, but you still need a strong team. What does readiness look like when it comes to digital public engagement? Here are a few essentials: dedicated staff to ensure government is responsive to online conversations; a marketing and outreach strategy to attract participants;committed resources for the project (and ideally, for sustaining online engagement long-term). Most of all, a willingness to dive in and try something new!

Read through the call notes and listen to the recording for more stories and insight on digital engagement from Pete, Alissa and our call participants.

You can find the original version of this post by Caitlyn Horose on the CommunityMatters blog at www.communitymatters.org/blog/key-questions-ask-successful-online-public-engagement.

Last Day to Add to Our Conversation on D&D Barriers

Posted on by
Reply

As we announced last month, NCDD is looking for input from our community on the important conversation we started during our national conference about overcoming the biggest barriers to and in our work, and today is the last day to add to that conversation via our online engagement space hosted by Codigital.

GroupWithBubbles-600pxThe period for input in the online space will end tonight at midnight, so if you haven’t already, please make sure to visit www.ncdd.codigital.com to help us identify new and existing strategies for overcoming the four barriers for effective dialogue and deliberation work that our NCDD community has said are most pressing:

  1. Lack of trust in our democracy, in our leaders, and in one another
  2. Unequal access to D&D practices and to government
  3. Lack of cohesion as a clearly delineated field of practice with all parts in communication
  4. Structural barriers within our democracy and in our own infrastructure

We want to hear your thoughts and ideas – what do you think we can or should do as a field to overcome these challenges?

At the same time, we also want you to hear each others, and there are a lot. As of last night there were 145 ideas being discussed, and nearly 4,800 votes cast on them! All of us have great ideas, and we want to hear yours, so make sure that you contribute to the conversation today before it’s over! could not be more excited to see such great participation from our members.

NCDD’s hope that the Codigital activity will help us get a sense of what ideas and actions resonate most with the whole community, which can then help us devise clearer paths forward on how to overcome our field’s most biggest challenges.

Thank you so much to all of you who have already made this post-conference engagement project a huge success, and we look forward to sharing the results with you soon.