Join us on Thursday, April 23rd for NCDD’s next “Confab Call.” We’ll be talking with NCDD Member Pete Peterson about lessons learned from running for office on a “civic engagement” platform. The confab will take place from 1-2pm Eastern (10-11am Pacific).  Register today to secure your spot!

Pete Peterson is the Executive Director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy in Malibu, California. In 2014, after earning one of the “top two” slots in the primary, Pete became the Republican candidate for California Secretary of State, running on a platform of increasing informed civic participation and using technology to make government more responsive and transparent. Throughout the campaign, he highlighted many of his experiences at the Davenport Institute as unique qualifications for this statewide office.

Although he finished second in November’s general election, he managed to earn more votes (3.2 million) than any other Republican in California for the 2014 cycle, and along the way, earned the endorsement of nine of the ten largest newspapers in the state.

In their endorsement of Pete, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board noted that Peterson “possesses an almost evangelical passion for public participation, which is exactly what the office needs.” The government/technology website, techpresident.com, named Pete, “the most tech savvy candidate running for statewide office this year.”

In this confab, Pete will talk about what it was like to run for statewide office on a platform he described as becoming California’s first “Chief Engagement Officer” and what promise and challenges the civic participation field faces when translated into a political context.

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

NCDD’s next Confab Call will take place Wednesday, March 25th from 1:00 to 2:00 pm Eastern (10:00 to 11:00 am Pacific). Register today to secure your spot!

On this Confab we will be led in a discussion of ethics for facilitators by Kimberly Bain, author of Becoming a Reflective Practitioner: The Reflective Ethical Facilitator’s Guide and Chair of the International Association of Facilitators. Kimberly will give an overview of ethical values and reflective practice, and then engage with participants in discussion of the ethical issues participants have experienced in their own practice.

As Facilitators we are “architects of trust” and in order to protect that trust we must always be conscious of the ethical values and principles that guide our profession.  Ethics and values allow us to hold ourselves and each other accountable for the power we hold over groups, over processes and over outcomes.  Discussing these issues as a profession is critical in this process.  We not only need to be individual reflective practitioners but we need to be a reflective profession.

For more about this call, check out the original blog post at www.ncdd.org/17546.

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