Category Archives: public participation

Can Gamification Help Fight Civic Apathy?

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We wanted to share this post about a fun project called the CivCity Initiative that we found on the Gov 2.0 Watch blog, which is run by NCDD organizational member,the Davenport Institute. You can read it below or find the original here.

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The Engagement Game

We have written a fair amount about gamifying civic engagement. Mary Morgan and Dave Askins, publishers of the local Ann Arbor Chronicle in Ann Arbor Michigan have partnered with existing programs to gamify local storytelling and are now looking for ways to do more:

CivCity’s website and Twitter feed refer to the mission of “cracking the nut of civic apathy.” CivCity stakeholders say disinterest in governance has intensified in recent years due to increased demands on people’s time, and it’s especially bad at the local level–even in a well-educated town like Ann Arbor.

“I think we take a lot for granted,” says CivCity board member Linh Song. “The lifestyle here can be pretty comfortable… I think a lot of folks just kind of check out and think, ‘Well, you know, Ann Arbor kind of takes care of itself. We don’t have to pay attention.’ But I’m hoping that’s changing.”

Morgan and Askins have ideas for a wide variety of programs to help effect that change, but their fledgling organization is taking it one step at a time. One of CivCity’s first projects is an online game called CivCity Quest, expanding upon the way the Chronicle “gamified” election results last summer. CivCity Quest would use the AADL’s Summer Game template to create a “playful” online competition for players to participate in various civic activities, from doing neighborhood cleanup to attending public meetings.

You can read more here.

You can find the original version of this Gov 2.0 Watch post at http://gov20watch.pepperdine.edu/2015/04/the-engagement-game.

Can Participatory Budgeting Democratize School Budgets?

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We encourage you to check out what promises to be a fascinating webinar that the Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD member organization, is hosting on Thursday, June 4th from 2-3pm EST / 11am-12pm PST. 

The webinar is titled PBP-logo“Democratizing Schools with Participatory Budgeting” and will be an in-depth discussion of the nation’s first school-based participatory budgeting (PB) processes, featuring representatives from PB projects at schools in San Jose, CA and Chicago, IL. The webinar will seek to use insights from these cases studies to explore the impact that democratic processes like PB can have on young people, schools, and neighborhoods.

Here’s how PBP describes the webinar:

Schools and school districts operate large and complex budgets – often with minimal participation from the community members and youth they work to serve. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

Join the Participatory Budgeting Project to learn about how participatory budgeting (PB) can encourage transparency in school budgets, reveal the most pressing needs of students, and promote democratic decisions that result in better schools and neighborhoods…

The webinar will include an in-depth look at the first school-based PB processes in the U.S., highlighting three high schools around the country that are leading the charge to lift up student and parent voice. We’ll be joined by representatives from Californians for Justice to discuss the PB process at Overfelt High School in San Jose – recently profiled in EdSource – and from Mikva Challenge and Embarc Chicago to discuss the PB process at Chicago’s Sullivan High School.

Join us to learn about these case studies and explore how participatory budgeting could work in your school or school district.

This webinar promises to be a great opportunity to hear from people directly involved in some of the most cutting edge work on participatory democracy in schools, so be sure to mark your calendars for June 4th! You can register and receive more information on the event by clicking here.

Not familiar with PB?

Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process in which ordinary community members directly decide how to spend part of the public budget. It has been used around the world for 25 years, in over 1,500 cities, to lift up the needs of communities and make public spending more equitable. You can watch a short video about PB here:

You can find the original Participatory Budgeting Project post about this webinar by visiting www.participatorybudgeting.org/blog/democratizing-schools-with-pb.

Newest Issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation

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We want to encourage our members to take a look at the newest issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation, which is not just a great resource for our field, but also features the work of some of our great NCDD members.

The JPD itself is a joint effort between two NCDD organizations – the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and the International Association of Public Participation. You can find the list of articles in this issue below with links to their abstracts and full PDF downloads. We encourage you to learn more at about the Journal of Public Deliberation at www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd.

DDC logoIAP2 logo

Current Issue: Volume 11, Issue 1 (2015)

Articles

Journal of Public Deliberation is a peer reviewed, open access journal with the principal objective of synthesizing the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the multi-disciplinary field of “deliberative democracy.”

Context and Medium Matter: Expressing Disagreements Online and Face-to-Face in Political Deliberations by Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Lauren Bryant, and Bruce Bimber

Variations of Institutional Design for Empowered Deliberation by Carolina Johnson and John Gastil

Inclusion, Equality, and Discourse Quality in Citizen Deliberations on Broadband by Soo-Hye Han, William Schenck-Hamlin, and Donna Schenck-Hamlin

Understanding Participant Representativeness in Deliberative Events: A Case Study Comparing Probability and Non-Probability Recruitment Strategies by Jamie Griffin, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Alan Tomkins, Amanda Richardson, and Stacia Jorgensen

Diverse Discourse: Analyzing the Potential of Public Affairs Magazine Online Forums to Reflect Qualities of the Public Sphere by David Wolfgang and Joy Jenkins

Deliberating While Voting: The Antecedents, Dynamics, And Consequences Of Talking While Completing Ballots In Two Vote-By-Mail States by Justin Reedy and John Gastil

Democratic Innovations in Deliberative Systems – The Case of the Estonian Citizens’ Assembly Process by Magnus E. Jonsson

Does Culture Matter for Deliberation? Linguistic Speech Cultures and Parliamentary Deliberation in Switzerland by Seraina Pedrini

Deliberation for Reconciliation in Divided Societies by Magdalena Dembinska Dr. and Françoise Montambeault Dr

Kettering Video on “The Creation of Politics”

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We were impressed by the very cool video that the Kettering Foundation – one of NCDD’s key organizational members – recently released. It can be an easy and fun tool for introducing deliberative politics to your audiences, so we encourage you to read more about it below or find KF’s original post about it here.

kfThose of you who have participated in Kettering’s annual summer Deliberative Democracy Exchange have probably heard Kettering Foundation president David Mathews tell a story about a small village that faces a recurring flood. It is a fable of sorts. In spite of the villagers’ many efforts to stop the flood, the waters return again and again.

So the people in the story had to make a decision: should they move across the river, where another band of people already live? Should they stay in their homeland? Or, should they move to higher ground? And in coming together and making a collective decision, the people create politics.

The story is designed to be universal – one that belongs to all times, all people, all cultures. People in communities everywhere face difficult problems and must weigh the costs and benefits of potential actions and then decide how to act together. The story counters the idea that public deliberation is some kind of new technique to be used on communities and encourages a notion of democracy that is citizen-centered.

A team at the Kettering Foundation collaborated with Momentum, Inc., artist and illustrator Danijel Zezelj, and MainSail Productions to produce a new animated video, The Creation of Politics, which brings to life this archetypal flood story that imagines how politics was first created – and why.

You can find the original version of this Kettering Foundation post at http://kettering.org/blogs/new-video-creation-politics

Announcing New Online Courses from Amy Lenzo

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We are happy to share the announcement below from NCDD Supporting Member Amy Lenzo of weDialogue. Amy’s announcement came via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

I’m excited to be offering four online courses over the next three months – each a short series packed with learning and inspiration. Two are official “World Cafe Signature Learning Programs” co-hosted by Amy Lenzo and Samantha Tan, and two are original, long-requested offerings from Amy Lenzo, and co-host FireHawk Hulin:

MAY
1) Introduction to the World Cafe
LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER
May 13/14, 19/20, & 22/23
5:30 – 7:30pm Pacific Time / 8:30 – 10:30am Hong Kong Time
Details & Registration

2) Hosting in the Digital Realm
Wednesdays, May 27, June 3, 10, & 17th
Details & Registration

JULY
3) Introduction to the World Cafe
July 8, 15, & 22 9:00 – 11:00am Pacific Time
Details & Registration

4) Sacred Habits: Reconnecting to Wisdom in the Digital Realm
July 7, 14, 21, & 28
Details & Registration

Each “Introduction to the World Cafe” course includes a full World Cafe designed to be a great introduction to the World Cafe experience, and a first step in understanding how to host them most effectively. The first starts this week and is particularly timed to be convenient for people in Australia and Asia, and for people in the Americas who prefer night courses. The July series is timed for days in the Americas and evenings in Europe.

Each of the two original offerings by Amy and FireHawk are deeply engaging, participatory, informative, and inspiring. They are both visionary and practical; visionary in that they reveal a new way of being online, and practical in terms of providing clear techniques and practices for achieving your goals.

The “Hosting in the Digital Realm” course has proved to be phenomenally successful, and due to the demand from people who couldn’t make the first one we offered in March, we’re very excited to be offering it again so soon. In the follow-up survey, 9 out of 10 graduates surveyed said the course had enhanced their hosting practice, that they now feel more confident hosting in the digital realm and have a deeper understanding of what is possible. This course will build on what we learned the first time around and be even better! Hosting in the Digital Realm is for those who want to bring people together in an online environment to take advantage of the reach and scale that this cutting-edge medium offers. It includes a behind-the-scenes look at the technology of online hosting, and there is an additional “hands-on” optional session for those who are interested in “driving” the technologies we’ll be using or just want to understand the technology in more depth.

“Sacred Habits: Reconnecting to Wisdom in the Digital Realm” is designed to cultivate online habits that create space for a new experience online – in everything from our email correspondence to our participation in social media and webinars. It stands alone and is also a companion course that builds on and feeds into Hosting in the Digital Realm in a beautiful way, deepening and extending learning and awareness about working consciously within the digital realm.

I am deeply honored and delighted to see these courses make their way into the world, and hope you can join me for the journey by registering in one or both of them. If you have any questions, please contact me via email: amy[at]wedialogue[dot]com.

Balancing Act: An Online Deliberative Budgeting Simulator

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We want to encourage our members to check out a neat tool developed by NCDD organizational member Engaged Public. Their Balancing Act tool is an online budget simulator that lets citizens experience the challenges and trade-offs of public budgets, and it can be a useful tool to apply in many D&D settings. We encourage you to learn more from Engaged Public’s description below.

We at Engaged Public have been working on public budget simulation since our 2007 launch of Backseat Budgeter, which originally started as a learning aid at Colorado State University and eventually became the tool of choice for thousands of Coloradans who wanted to engage more deeply in their state’s fiscal decisions by trying their own hand at balancing the budget.

Well, we’re excited to announce that we have recently launched Balancing Act, our new and improved online budget simulator for school districts, special districts, towns, cities, counties, and states. Balancing Act is a web-based public engagement tool focused on the budget process. It not only increases fiscal transparency by publishing an entity’s budget in an easy-to-understand fashion with graphics, intuitive descriptions, and contextual details of revenue and spending items, but it also goes a step further with its interactive, built-in budget simulation, where residents can attempt to balance the budget as they see fit, subject to the same constraints decision makers have. These budget priorities are then sent back to the public body to be incorporated into its budget process.

Our partners include the City of Hartford, Connecticut – which integrated Balancing Act into its series of People’s Budget meetings and later expanded its use to the wider public – and the State of Colorado (via the Office of State Planning and Budgeting), which helped release a simulation of its 2015-16 General Fund budget. In time for Tax Day, we also unveiled a tool where Coloradans can view an estimate of their 2014 state income, sales, and gas tax, as well as see what those tax dollars paid for – the Colorado Taxpayer Receipt.

While Balancing Act is not a magic bullet for budget-related public engagement, it has proved effective at increasing the number and diversity of citizens who take part in the budget process, not to mention their appreciation of the often-difficult tradeoffs required in balancing public budgets, particularly in these difficult fiscal times. It has also given public officials valuable qualitative and quantitative data on residents’ own budget priorities in an easy-to-use, downloadable format.

We encourage you to learn more about Engaged Public’s Balancing Act tool by visiting http://abalancingact.com.

Up to 65% Off on EvDem Resources til May 15!

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We encourage NCDD members to take advantage of a great sale on discussion resources that Everyday Democracy – an NCDD organizational member – is having before they move to a new office space. Check out the announcement of the sale and the move below, or find the original here.

EvDem LogoWe’re downsizing our office space, and we can’t take everything with us! Now through May 15, some of our most popular discussion guides are up to 65% off:

Don’t delay! Supplies are limited, and orders will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Order now.

Why the move?

Our lease is up at our current location so we’re moving to a new location with a smaller office footprint than we have now.  Decreasing our office footprint allows us to stretch our resources to serve communities across the country.

Where to?

We’re moving to the CT Nonprofit Center in Hartford, Conn., which is a collaborative of non-profit organizations.  The anchor non-profit is the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits. Our new address will be:

75 Hartford Square West
Hartford, CT 06106

“We are delighted to move to a nonprofit collaborative space in downtown Hartford, where we will be even closer to many of our local and state partners.” –Martha McCoy, Executive Director

When?

May 29, 2015 is our official move date. Until then, we’re very busy packing!

A brief history of Everyday Democracy’s office moves

The original home of Everyday Democracy, then the Study Circles Resource Center, was in Pomfret, Conn., – a small rural town in the northeastern part of the state. Our founder, Paul Aicher, lived there and owned the property where he located our offices.

Seven years ago, we moved from Pomfret to East Hartford, Conn. This move allowed us to focus on our goal of more intentionally incorporating racial equity into our work, to increase the diversity of our staff, and to work closer to an urban area where many of the issues we work with manifest most intensely. Since the move, we have brought eight new staff members on board who are still with us today, and have worked on several initiatives with the local community on issues such as racial equity, food security, immigration, education, community police relations, and others.

Carolyne Abdullah, Director of Community Assistance, said that the move was a big change in office environment: “I experienced a sense of ‘hey, there are other people in the world’ when I first came to work in a 19-story building occupied by many businesses and all kinds of people as opposed to working on one floor with six people in Pomfret.”

Over these past seven years much as affected how we work: Cloud computing allows us to have more robust online filing systems, technology has allowed us to incorporate telecommuting for staff to do their work from home, and the use of digital materials has allowed us to minimize what we keep as inventory on our shelves. All of the above offers us the opportunity to downsize our footprint by using less office space. This means we’ll be able to put more resources into community programs and building partnerships.

You can find the original version of this Everyday Democracy post at http://everyday-democracy.org/news/moving-sale#.VUbQtSFVikq.

Don’t Miss Our Tech Tuesday Call with Consider.it on 5/5

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As we recently announced, NCDD is hosting another one of our Tech Tuesday events next Tuesday, May 5th from 2-3pm EST. We have had many folks already register to join us, but there is still room, so make sure to sign up today!

Tech_Tuesday_BadgeDuring the call, we will hear from Kevin Miniter, the co-founder of Consider.it – an innovative dialogue software that helps regular people participate in a facilitated conversation where they identify their common ground, sticking points, and misconceptions as they build toward consensus on a topic. Consider.it also powers the Living Voter’s Guide that informs tens of thousands of Washington voters every year.

This talk with Kevin promises to be a very informative, especially for those of us who have been looking for or are interested in ways to integrate more technology our dialogue work.

Don’t miss this great opportunity! Register today by clicking here!

Recap of the NCDD Confab Call with Pete Peterson

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We had another great Confab Call event last week with NCDD member Pete Peterson of the Davenport Institute. Pete shared some very interesting insights and lessons that he learned from his recent run for Confab bubble imageCalifornia Secretary of State last year in a bid to become, as he calls it, the state’s “Chief Engagement Officer.”

It was an inspiring conversation in many ways, and after listening to Pete, there very well may be a few more NCDD members thinking about using their public engagement backgrounds to run for office!

In case you missed it, you can watch the recording of the call by clicking here (we used join.me, so there is screensharing plus audio). We also encourage you to check out some of our past Confab Calls for more great conversations and ideas.

All-Expenses Trip to Train on NIFI’s Online Deliberation Tool

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We want our members to know that the Kettering Foundation and National Issues Forums Institute are offering an amazing opportunity for NIF moderators to attend an in-person training on their new online deliberation tool, Common Ground for Action, this May 18-19 in Ohio. Kettering is generously offering to foot the while bill, but you must register by April 29! Read more below or find the original announcement here.

NIF logo“We need some way to be able to take National Issues Forums online.”

NIF moderators and conveners have been telling us this for years.

Well, we heard you.

NIFI and Kettering Foundation have been collaborating with a working group of NIF members for over two years on an online version of the NIF forums we all know and love. It’s called Common Ground for Action, and it’s now available to all NIF moderators to use anytime.

Best of all, there’s no technical mumbo jumbo – CGA runs in any web browser, and has a simple, intuitive design. If you’re an experienced in-person moderator, all you’ll need is a little practice with the platform.

And to do that practice, we’re offering a special in-person moderator prep workshop at Kettering Foundation May 18-19. We have 15 spots available for the workshop, and Kettering takes care of all travel and lodging expenses as well as meals. These 15 spots are available on a first-come, first-serve basis, so register right away if you’d like to attend. REGISTER NOW!

Once you register, we’ll be in touch shortly with instructions on how to make travel arrangements through the foundation, as well as an agenda and prep materials. All travel arrangements must be made by Apr. 30, so registration will close Apr. 29!

This workshop will run from noon, Monday May 18 – noon, Tuesday May 19. We’ll be splitting into small groups to give everyone the maximum opportunity to practice moderating, and we’ll have time for lots of feedback and questions. In addition to ensuring you master the technology, we’ll also be focusing on how moderators can make these forums as deliberative as possible.

If you have any questions, email Amy Lee at alee[at]kettering[dot]org, the Kettering Foundation program officer who developed the platform with NIFI.

You can find the original version of this NIFI blog post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/attend-person-workshop-about-using-new-online-deliberation-tool-common-ground-action.