Announcing NCDD’s April Tech Tuesday with EnCiv!

NCDD is thrilled to announce our next Tech Tuesday event featuring EnCiv and their new tool, the “Undebate.” This free event will take place Tuesday, April 28 from 2-3 PM Eastern/11-12 PM Pacific. Don’t miss this opportunity – register today to secure your spot!

EnCiv is a tech start-up led by NCDD Members Will Ferguson, David Fridley, and Adolf Gundersen. EnCiv automates proven human-interaction methods to scale productive democratic discourse.

In this Tech Tuesday event, these three principals from EnCiv will share with us an exciting new tool for online discourse, the “Undebate,” and the expansive vision that spawned it. The Undebate is being made available to voters across the country this election season by EnCiv partner Ballotpedia under the label “Candidate Conversations.” EnCiv will share with us more about this tool, and also ask for your input on other ways to use Undebate! We’ll also have an opportunity to hear about what else they are working on.

About our presenters

Will Ferguson is co-founder and CEO of Enciv, Inc. and a technology leader involved in numerous successful startups. He is also a co-inventor on eight patents in machine learning solutions.

Adolf Gundersen is co-founder and COO of EnCiv, as well as VP & Research Director at Interactivity Foundation. Adolf has thirty years experience as theorist and practitioner of democratic discussion.

David Fridley is CTO of EnCiv and Founder of Synaccord, LLC. David is a social entrepreneur, product manager, full stack developer, and has 30+ years experience in voice and video over the internet.

This event will be a great opportunity to see a new tool in action and connect with the presenters! Don’t miss it – 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.

Common Ground for Action (CGA) available for online forums

NCDD partner National Issues Forums Institute sent out a message to contacts yesterday regarding the availability of their platform, Common Ground for Action, for online forums. This platform can be used to support your community or classroom work during the COVID-19 crisis. Read more below or at www.nifi.org/cga.


National Issues Forums’ (NIF) Common Ground for Action (CGA) online deliberative forums can be convened specifically for your campus or classroom, neighborhood or town, or community group. Participating in online forums is easy-many of you are already familiar with the Common Ground for Action platform.

Here is how a locally-organized online forum might work:

  • You set the date and time in coordination with our CGA coordinator, Kara Dillard, and invite your participants.
  • Participants will register online for your specific forum at a link available only to those in your community, campus/classroom, or organization.
  • Online forums deliberate in groups of 10-12, but we can organize multiple simultaneous “breakout” sessions to accommodate your forum plans. Online forums last about two hours but can be easily modified to fit a shorter or longer time window.
  • You and your team of moderators can moderate as usual. If you like, we’ll provide a co-moderator who’s very familiar with the CGA platform and can handle any technological tasks or issues (They’re actually very rare).
  • All of the NIF issue guides are available for you to use in CGA, including those recently updated for the Hidden Common Ground initiative. These include:
    • Health Care
    • Mass Shootings
    • Immigration
    • A House Divided
    • The Economy (starting in September)
    • National Security / Foreign Policy
    • Safety and Justice
    • Opioids

There is no software to download; Common Ground for Action runs in any browser. CGA forums are user-friendly, so participants of all ages and levels of tech-savviness can participate with ease. We have a lot of resources available for CGA moderators, including a tips sheet from CGA moderators, a basic moderator script, issue-guide specific moderator scripts that include sample deliberative questions, and moderator scripts specific for a classroom-length forum.  For more details about CGA go to: nifi.org/cga.

Contact Darla Minnich or Kara Dillard if you’d like to explore this online option. We’d be pleased to work with you on it.

New Report on Transforming Relationships Between Community and Local Elected Officials

NCDD member org The Harwood Institute, in collaboration with fellow NCDD member The Kettering Foundation, recently announced the release of their new report, Seeking a New Relationship with Communities: How Local Elected Officials Want to Bridge Divides, Distrust, and Doubts. In this report, The Harwood Institute interviewed 36 elected officials from cities across the US about their perceptions, experiences, and aspirations when engaging with their communities. You can read the article below, as well as find the original version of this piece and the actual report on Harwood’s site here.


Seeking a New Relationship with Communities: How Local Elected Officials Want to Bridge Divides, Distrust, and Doubts

In 2019, The Harwood Institute interviewed 36 leaders to learn how local elected officials view and feel about their interactions with community members. We heard about the tenuous rapport between local officials and the people they serve and, more specifically, the state of outreach and engagement between them.

Our interviews revealed a dynamic between officials and the public that is uncomfortably strained by distrust in government. According to the leaders we interviewed, people harbor deep doubts about their leaders, and those leaders are seeking a new footing to help them reach past those doubts and past the fatigue and limitations that surround traditional outreach and engagement methods.

The resulting report details the hopes, challenges, and perspectives of local elected officials as they engage with communities. The report was released in partnership with The Kettering Foundation.

You can find the original version of this Harwood Institute article at www.theharwoodinstitute.org/news/2020/2/3/seeking-a-new-relationship-with-communities-how-local-elected-officials-want-to-bridge-divides-distrust-and-doubts.

Exciting Updates from the Interactivity Foundation!

We wanted to share a couple of updates from NCDD member org The Interactivity Foundation, including some resources that may be helpful for those working on dialogue and deliberation efforts on campuses. First off, IF recently gave their website a fresh look and if you haven’t seen it yet, we encourage you to head on over there to check it out! Secondly, they posted about a day-long workshop organized by The Deliberative Pedagogy Institute last Fall, which featured several heavy hitters from the NCDD Coalition. In the post, IF kindly shared their Student Facilitation Workbook for free and a reminder about a new D&D text called, Creating Space for Democracy: A Primer on Dialogue and Deliberation in Higher Education, that has an incredible line-up of contributors.

You can read the article below and find the original version on IF’s site here.


Why do we need deliberative pedagogy?

Why do we need deliberative pedagogy? The short answer is that we can’t solve complex social problems if we can’t get together and talk about them. It seems simple, right? But in our current era of political polarization and retreat into comfortable, familiar social bubbles—where do we get together to have genuine interactions with people who have different opinions, views, and values? And have we lost (if ever collectively had) the skills to productively talk with one another once we are at the table together?

The Deliberative Pedagogy Institute:  Creating Space for Democracy, hosted by Providence College and co-sponsored by Campus Compact for Southern New England, offered a full-day workshop on November 15th for faculty, staff, students, and administrators designed to deepen their understanding of current campus-based democratic practices that foster dialogueinclusion, and civic action at colleges and universities.

Through plenary sessions, workshops, and networking, participants were able to:

  • Learn about various approaches to dialogue and deliberation;
  • Develop an understanding of “what works” to empower students to talk across differences, build leadership, and practice civic agency; and
  • Build a network and relationships with practitioners.

Presenters at the Deliberative Pedagogy Institute represented some of the leading voices of the deliberative democracy movement, including representatives from Everyday DemocracyEssential Partners, the National Coalition for Dialogue and DeliberationNew Hampshire Listensthe National Issues Forums Institute, the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, and the Interactivity Foundation.

IF fellow, Shannon Wheatley Hartman, facilitated a workshop on “How to Design a Course That Empower Students to Be Facilitators of Exploratory Discussion.” Using IF pedagogy, modules, and a Facilitation Workbook, participants explored how best to incorporate student facilitation into the classroom and “level up” skills and capacity to then organize campus-wide and community-based exploratory discussions. To learn more about IF educational approaches and materials, please contact Shannon Wheatley Hartman at esw@interactivityfoundation.org

Also available for purchase on Amazon is the Creating Space for Democracy: A Primer on Dialogue and Deliberation in Higher Education.

You can read this article on IF’s site at www.interactivityfoundation.org/why-do-we-need-deliberative-pedagogy/.

December Confab on Guns & Violence Now Available!

We hosted our December Confab last week with presenters from National Issues Forums, Living Room Conversations, and Essential Partners. Each shared their resources for talking about one of the toughest topics in our communities today: guns and violence. This post contains links to the resources as well as a link to the recording of this event.

Betty Knighton and Darla Minnich from the National Issues Forums Institute shared their Issue Advisory, How Should We Prevent Mass Shootings in Our Communities?   The issue advisory outlines three potential options for addressing this issue and encourages the public to deliberate on these and potentially other options.

Joan Blades of Living Room Conversations shared the Conversation Guide on Guns and Responsibility which seeks to help people come together across political or ideological differences to discuss this challenging topic. The guide offers a format for talking about guns in a way that helps community members hear one another’s experiences and how those impact their views about guns.

Katie Hyten from Essential Partners, the global leader in building trust and understanding across divisive differences, shared the story of how the organization convened participants in 2018 from across the United States for a two-day training in dialogue design and community building, followed by an experiment in digital peer dialogue facilitation. Watch the TIME Magazine video, read the media coverage, ​view resources, ​and find out more about Essential Partners’ approach to this issue on their website.

The Confab was a informative and full of resources and tips. It can be found at this link.

Our sincere thanks to Betty, Darla, Joan and Katie for sharing their resources with us and inspiring us to get our communities talking about this important topic.

Confab bubble imageTo learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and hear recordings of others, visit www.ncdd.org/events/confabs. We love holding these events and we want to continue to elevate the work of our field with Confab Calls and Tech Tuesdays. It is through your generous contributions to NCDD that we can keep doing this work! That’s why we want to encourage you to support NCDD by making a donation or becoming an NCDD member today (you can also renew your membership by clicking here). Thank you!

Join us! Giving Tuesday Donations Matched Today and December Confab This Thursday

Friendly reminder about our December Confab Call this coming Thursday, December 5th from noon-1:30 pm Eastern/9 am-10:30 am Pacific. The call will be an opportunity for participants to learn about several resources for talking about guns and violence. We encourage you to join this free call and register today to secure your spot.

Before we go further and in case you missed our post yesterday, today is Giving Tuesday! If you appreciate our Confabs and Tech Tuesdays, conferences and the work we do to build up this vibrant network and the field of dialogue and deliberation – then we would love your support. Today there is a special offer, for folks who donate via our Facebook page, your donations will be matched! If you would prefer to not use social media, you are welcome to donate directly to NCDD right here. We know there are a lot of incredible organizations out there to support today and whether it is $5 or $50; we appreciate any contributions you can provide! Finally, on this note, we encourage folks who are not already NCDD members to check out the member benefits and join the Coalition!

So back to this Confab coming up… it has become an increasing norm in our society to experience mass shootings and this last summer our communities and nations grappled with another wave of violence. As often happens in these moments, people want a space to process what’s happened, and/or talk about what to do to prevent future tragedy. On Thursday, we’ll be featuring three organizations in the NCDD network and the resources they have developed for talking about this topic, learn more below.

National Issues Forums has developed materials several times on the topic. The most recent is their Issue Advisory, How Should We Prevent Mass Shootings in Our Communities?  From the advisory: “Overall, the United States has become safer in recent years. Yet mass shooters target innocent people indiscriminately, often in places where people should feel safe—movie theaters, shopping centers, schools. Many believe these attacks are nothing short of terrorism. How can we stop mass shootings and ensure that people feel safe in their homes and communities?” The issue advisory outlines three potential options for addressing this issue and encourages the public to deliberate on these and potentially other options.

Living Room Conversations‘ Conversation Guide on Guns and Responsibility seeks to help people come together across political or ideological differences to discuss this challenging topic. From the guide: “This conversation focuses on our own personal experience with guns and how these experiences have shaped our opinions. This conversation seeks to help us develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges surrounding gun ownership.” The guide offers a format for talking about guns in a way that helps community members hear one another’s experiences and how those impact their views about guns.

Essential Partners, the global leader in building trust and understanding across divisive differences, has led both regional and national projects around the role of guns in American life​ for over five years​. In 2018, EP convened participants from across the United States for a two-day training in dialogue design and community building, followed by an experiment in digital peer dialogue facilitation. A partnership with TIME Magazine, Spaceship Media, and Advance Local, the in-person event took place in Washington, DC, during the March for Our Lives. Watch the TIME Magazine video, read the media coverage, ​view resources, ​and find out more about Essential Partners’ approach to this issue on their website.

On this call, we’ll be joined by presenters from each of these three organizations, who will share with us the resources and how they can be used to discuss the challenging topic of guns. Join us to hear more and have your questions answered about how to convene a conversation in your community.

This free call will take place on Thursday, December 5th from noon-1:30 pm Eastern, 9 am-10:30 am PacificRegister today so you don’t miss out on this event!

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About NCDD’s Confab Calls

Confab bubble imageNCDD’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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Announcing NCDD’s December Confab: Resources for Talking about Guns & Violence

We are excited announce the December Confab Call, which offers participants the chance to learn about several resources for talking about guns and violence. This free call takes place Thursday, December 5th from noon-1:30 pm Eastern/9 am-10:30 am Pacific. Register today to secure your spot.

This summer had our communities and nation again on edge after multiple mass shootings. As often happens in these moments, people want a space to process what’s happened, and/or talk about what to do to prevent future tragedy. We’ll be featuring three organizations in the NCDD network and the resources they have developed for talking about this topic:

National Issues Forums has developed materials several times on the topic. The most recent is their Issue Advisory, How Should We Prevent Mass Shootings in Our Communities?  From the advisory: “Overall, the United States has become safer in recent years. Yet mass shooters target innocent people indiscriminately, often in places where people should feel safe—movie theaters, shopping centers, schools. Many believe these attacks are nothing short of terrorism. How can we stop mass shootings and ensure that people feel safe in their homes and communities?” The issue advisory outlines three potential options for addressing this issue and encourages the public to deliberate on these and potentially other options.

Living Room Conversations‘ Conversation Guide on Guns and Responsibility seeks to help people come together across political or ideological differences to discuss this challenging topic. From the guide: “This conversation focuses on our own personal experience with guns and how these experiences have shaped our opinions. This conversation seeks to help us develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges surrounding gun ownership.” The guide offers a format for talking about guns in a way that helps community members hear one another’s experiences and how those impact their views about guns.

Essential Partners, the global leader in building trust and understanding across divisive differences, has led both regional and national projects around the role of guns in American life​ for over five years​. In 2018, EP convened participants from across the United States for a two-day training in dialogue design and community building, followed by an experiment in digital peer dialogue facilitation. A partnership with TIME Magazine, Spaceship Media, and Advance Local, the in-person event took place in Washington, DC, during the March for Our Lives. Watch the TIME Magazine video, read the media coverage, ​view resources, ​and find out more about Essential Partners’ approach to this issue on their website.

On this call, we’ll be joined by presenters from each of these three organizations, who will share with us the resources and how they can be used to discuss the challenging topic of guns. Join us to hear more and have your questions answered about how to convene a conversation in your community.

This free call will take place on Thursday, December 5th from noon-1:30 pm Eastern, 9 am-10:30 am PacificRegister today so you don’t miss out on this event!

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About NCDD’s Confab Calls

Confab bubble imageNCDD’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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Check out the November Confab Recording with EvDem!

NCDD was so thrilled to host our November Confab Call with Everyday Democracy, talking about Ripple Effects Mapping! If you missed it, or want to revisit it, this post has all the important information from the event.

Dialogue can lead to many positive changes in communities, but direct impacts can be tough to track over time. Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) allows you and those you work with to capture longer-term impacts your work has had on individuals, institutions, and systems. On this Confab, Everyday Democracy staff Deloris Vaughn and Brendan Lounsbury shared with us the REM process and how it can be used to involve the community in identifying the direct impacts of our work.

The Ripple Effects Mapping Tip Sheet outlines the process of creating the ripple effects map through a community engagement event. It’s a two-page document which gives you all the key information on how to use this tool to assess the impacts of your work in a collaborative way. If you want to dig a little deeper into ripple effects mapping, you can also read the report Communities Creating Racial Equity – Ripple Effects of Dialogue to Change, which includes five case studies from Everyday Democracy’s work, and includes the Ripple Effects Mapping for each. Everyday Democracy has also developed a practical guide to Evaluating Community Engagement as well as an accompanying Toolkit.

The Confab was a wonderful walk through resources, and it can be found at this link. Our participants asked a whole lot of great questions – if you are curious to see those, you can check them out here.

Our sincere thanks to Deloris and Brendan for sharing their knowledge with us. And a special thank you to Sandy Heierbacher for making this Confab happen! It was a real great event, and we all hope to hear about how you are using Ripple Effects Mapping in the future!

Confab bubble imageTo learn more about NCDD’s Confab Calls and hear recordings of others, visit www.ncdd.org/events/confabs. We love holding these events and we want to continue to elevate the work of our field with Confab Calls and Tech Tuesdays. It is through your generous contributions to NCDD that we can keep doing this work! That’s why we want to encourage you to support NCDD by making a donation or becoming an NCDD member today (you can also renew your membership by clicking here). Thank you!

Reminder to Register for Thursday’s Confab Feat EvDem!

Remember to join us this Thursday for our exciting (and free) November Confab Call, featuring our good friends at Everyday Democracy. They will share with us their resources for evaluating community engagement, specifically Ripple Effects Mapping, which allows visual documentation of your work’s impacts over time.

Dialogue can lead to many positive changes in communities, but direct impacts can be tough to track over time.  Yet we all know how useful data about impact is to funders and partners, and for improving our work going forward. Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) allows you and those you work with to capture longer-term impacts your work has had on individuals, institutions, and systems. November’s Confab is a great opportunity to learn more about these free resources and the REM process!

This free call will take place on Thursday, November 14th from 2-3 pm Eastern, 11am-noon PacificRegister today so you don’t miss out on this event!

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The Ripple Effects Mapping Tip Sheet outlines the process of creating the ripple effects map through a community engagement event. It’s a two-page document which gives you all the key information on how to use this tool to assess the impacts of your work in a collaborative way. It’s a fantastic resource! If you want to dig a little deeper into ripple effects mapping, you can also read the report Communities Creating Racial Equity – Ripple Effects of Dialogue to Change, which includes five case studies from Everyday Democracy’s work, and includes the Ripple Effects Mapping for each.

In addition to the the tip sheet and report, Everyday Democracy has also developed a practical guide to Evaluating Community Engagement as well as an accompanying Toolkit. These are invaluable resources for the dialogue, deliberation and public engagement field, where many of us seek to improve our evaluation process but are limited in our resources for doing so!

On this call, we will be joined by Deloris Vaughn, Director of Evaluation and Learning for Everyday Democracy, as well as Sandy Heierbacher, Interim Communications Director (and, of course, NCDD’s Co-Founder!). Deloris will share from her years of experience in evaluation how Ripple Effects Mapping can be used as a participatory evaluation activity. They will both help us learn more about the resources available from Everyday Democracy to strengthen our evaluation efforts.

This is a great event for anyone looking to learn more about evaluation, and certainly those who want to learn more about Everyday Democracy’s work. Make sure you register today to secure your spot!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

Confab bubble imageNCDD’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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Announcing NCDD’s November Confab: Evaluating Community Engagement with Everyday Democracy

We are excited to announce our November Confab Call, featuring our good friends at Everyday Democracy. They will share with us their resources for evaluating community engagement, specifically Ripple Effects Mapping, which allows visual documentation of your work’s impacts over time.

Dialogue can lead to many positive changes in communities, but direct impacts can be tough to track over time.  Yet we all know how useful data about impact is to funders and partners, and for improving our work going forward. Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) allows you and those you work with to capture longer-term impacts your work has had on individuals, institutions, and systems.

November’s Confab is a great opportunity to learn more about these free resources and the REM process!

This free call will take place on Thursday, November 14th from 2-3 pm Eastern, 11am-noon PacificRegister today so you don’t miss out on this event!

reg-button-2

The Ripple Effects Mapping Tip Sheet outlines the process of creating the ripple effects map through a community engagement event. It’s a two-page document which gives you all the key information on how to use this tool to assess the impacts of your work in a collaborative way. It’s a fantastic resource! If you want to dig a little deeper into ripple effects mapping, you can also read the report Communities Creating Racial Equity – Ripple Effects of Dialogue to Change, which includes five case studies from Everyday Democracy’s work, and includes the Ripple Effects Mapping for each.

In addition to the the tip sheet and report, Everyday Democracy has also developed a practical guide to Evaluating Community Engagement as well as an accompanying Toolkit. These are invaluable resources for the dialogue, deliberation and public engagement field, where many of us seek to improve our evaluation process but are limited in our resources for doing so!

On this call, we will be joined by Deloris Vaughn, Director of Evaluation and Learning for Everyday Democracy, as well as Sandy Heierbacher, Interim Communications Director (and, of course, NCDD’s Co-Founder!). Deloris will share from her years of experience in evaluation how Ripple Effects Mapping can be used as a participatory evaluation activity. They will both help us learn more about the resources available from Everyday Democracy to strengthen our evaluation efforts.

This is a great event for anyone looking to learn more about evaluation, and certainly those who want to learn more about Everyday Democracy’s work. Make sure you register today to secure your spot!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

Confab bubble imageNCDD’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. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!