Community Development Conference Proposals due Feb. 15

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want to make sure our members know about the 46th annual Community Development Conference being hosted by the Community Development Society this July 19-22 and encourage you to submit an abstract for a workshop by the deadline on February 15th. Learn more in the announcement below or visit www.comm-dev.org.

Community Development Society 2015 Conference
July 19-22, 2015
Hilton Lexington Downtown, Lexington, Kentucky

Conference Theme: Creativity and Culture: Community Development Approaches for Strengthening Health, Environment, Economic Vibrancy, Social Justice and Democracy

The Community Development Society has a history of encouraging community transformation through creativity and imagination. The CDS conference provides an excellent environment for community developers to share experiences, research, and strategies through a vast array of events including preconference workshops, panel sessions, keynote speakers, mobile learning workshops, poster sessions, networking receptions and presentations. Elements of creative expression will be infused throughout the 2015 CDS conference to highlight the conference theme.

The deadline for paper or workshop abstracts is February 15, 2015, 11:59 p.m. CST. You can find the full call for submissions at www.comm-dev.org/images/2015.Conference/CDS2015CallforAbstractsRevised1.23.15.pdf. The submission form is available at http://comm-dev.org/about-us/2015-conference/call-for-abstracts.

Apply to the Summer Institute of Civic Studies by Mar. 15

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage NCDD members to apply to be part of the 7th annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies this June 15-25, and also to consider attending the 2015 Frontiers of Democracy conference this June 24-25. Both events have institutions in the field that are stewarded by NCDD supporting members Drs. Peter Levine and Nancy Thomas of Tufts University.

I myself am a Summer Institute alumni and have attended multiple Frontiers conferences, and they are both great opportunities to learn and work with many of the nation’s leaders of civic innovation. Find out more below about both in the announcement below or by clicking here.

The 7th Annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies

The seventh annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies will be an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together faculty, advanced graduate students, and practitioners from many countries and diverse fields of study.

Organized by Peter Levine of Tufts University’s Tisch College and Karol Sołtan of the University of Maryland, the Summer Institute will engage participants in challenging discussions of such topics as:

What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?

The syllabus for the sixth annual seminar (in 2014) is here: Continue reading →

NCDD Director to Speak at Personal Democracy Forum 2015

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want NCDD members to know about Personal Democracy Forum 2015, a cutting-edge event being hosted by Personal Democracy Media this June 4-5 in NYC. PDF will bring together a diverse group of changemakers, and we’re excited to say it will feature NCDD’s director Sandy Heierbacher as one of the featured speakers. Early bird registration is as low as $350, but it ends Jan. 30th, so register ASAP!

Learn more in the announcement below or by visiting www.personaldemocracy.com/conference.

Personal Democracy Forum is the definitive event in the world of technology and politics. PDF brings together a thousand top opinion makers, political practitioners, technologists, and journalists from across the ideological spectrum for two days to network, exchange ideas, and explore how technology and wired citizens are changing politics, governance, and civil society.

We’ve already confirmed these amazing speakers, global leaders and innovators at the cutting edge of technology, politics and social change:

Sunil Abraham – Executive director, Center for Internet & Society, Bangalore
Cory Doctorow – Author and blogger, BoingBoing
Harold Feld – Senior vice president, Public Knowledge
Tristan Harris – Design ethics and product philosopher, Google
Nanjira Sambuli – Research manager, iHub Nairobi
Sandy Heierbacher – Executive director, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
Astra Taylor – Author, “The People’s Platform”
Zephyr Teachout – Professor, Fordham Law School

If past years are any indication, we’ll have a full house, because there’s no other event that gathers the transpartisan community of changemakers and doers that comes to PDF. And our “early bird” rate is our absolute best price, so act now and save!

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

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

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.

Evaluation & Collective Impact Workshops from Tamarack

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want to make sure NCDDers know about two great workshops on evaluation and collective impact being offered this winter by the good people at Tamarack, an NCDD organizational member. We encourage you to read their announcement below or find out more at www.tamarackcommunity.ca.

As you plan your winter learning schedule, we invite you to two of our signature 3-day workshops that are designed to advance your work in community change.

Both of these workshops were completely oversubscribed in 2014, so we encourage you to register or Hold a Seat for these workshops today.

Evaluating Community Impact: Capturing and Making Sense of Outcomes

Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj are leading the ever-popular Evaluating Community Impact workshop in Toronto, ON from February 23-25, 2015. Each year, they carefully incorporate new tools and trends into the curriculum to ensure you are getting the latest and greatest information about how to capture, evaluate and communicate impacts in your community.

Recent upgrades to the Toronto curriculum will include:

How to employ hard and soft data to measure progress
New methods for capturing “systems change”
How to use narratives to communicate community impact to others

For a closer look at the workshop agenda, please visit our event agenda page.

Click here to Register or Hold a Seat for the workshop

Champions for Change: Leading a Backbone Organization for Collective Impact

Champions for Change is an advanced training offered by the Tamarack Institute in collaboration with FSG Social Impact Consultants and will be held in Calgary, AB from April 15-17, 2015.

Plenary sessions and workshops will be led by John Kania and Fay Hanleybrown of FSG, as well as Liz Weaver and Paul Born from the Tamarack Institute. Topics that will be presented include:

Deeply understanding the roles and impact strategies of the backbone organization
Developing and learning from shared measurement
Community engagement to build the will of your community
Making collaborative governance effective
Sustaining funding for collective impact over the long term
Working in complexity and the importance of adaptive leadership
Getting to true impact and systems change

For a closer look at the workshop agenda, please visit our event agenda page.

This dynamic learning experience is an important step for staff of Backbone Organizations and steering committee members of collective impact initiatives to develop their capacity as collaborative leaders.

Click here to Register or Hold a Seat for the workshop

Special rates are available for both workshops for teams registering three or more people. Please feel free to contact Kirsti if you have any questions.

We look forward to hearing from you and we hope that you’ll join us for these workshops for insightful learning and an opportunity to foster meaningful connections.

ALA Midwinter Meeting Includes Engagement Meetup

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

The American Library Association (ALA) has been focusing increasingly on community engagement and using libraries as spaces for civic dialogue recently. As part of that work, they sent out an invitation to a reception of engagement professionals during their 2015 Midwinter Meeting. We encourage NCDD members to read the invitation below and learn more about ALA at alamw15.ala.org.

An invitation for those of you attending ALA’s 2015 Midwinter Meeting:

Are you an expert in engaging your community? Or do you simply want to be? Join ALA’s Public Programs Office for a Libraries Fostering Community Engagement Reception at the 2015 Midwinter Meeting.

The gathering will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, January 31, at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Hyde Park/CC 11A (on-site at the convention center). Connect with like-minded library professionals at this informal networking reception. Share your ideas, vent your frustrations, and hopefully walk away inspired.

Light refreshment will be served.

Please add the event to your Scheduler at the following link so we can know how many people to expect: http://alamw15.ala.org/node/26873

If you have any questions, please contact Brian Russell at brussell@ala.org. Look forward to seeing you there!

This event is sponsored by the ALA initiative Libraries Transforming Communities (ala.org/LTC).

IAF N. American Conference Content Proposals due Jan. 24

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want to make sure that NCDD members are aware of a great opportunity to participate in – and maybe present at – the International Association of Facilitators‘s 2015 North American Conference (IAFNA 2015), which will be taking place this May 14th – 16th in Alberta, Canada. The conference has recently released a call for proposals, and NCDD members are encouraged to submit conference proposals before the January 24th deadline.

IAF was one of the wonderful co-sponsors of our NCDD 2014 conference, and we know that IAFNA 2015 will be a great event that NCDD members will find useful. We want to thank them for supporting NCDD, and we hope you will support them as well!

The theme of IAFNA 2015 is Innovating, Promoting and Applying. This is a bit more on how IAF Canada, who is hosting the event, describes the conference:

The IAFNA 2015 Conference will weave the three learning streams Face-To-Face, Graphic (Visual), and Virtual through the Conference themes of Innovating, Promoting and Applying facilitation expertise. Additionally, the Saturday morning sessions will focus exclusively on how these three streams may be applied in Indigenous/Multi-Cultural situations within any nations. Coupled with the less structured other three half-days, we‘re inviting a wide variety of educational opportunities for our Delegates.

If you are interested in submitting a workshop proposal, you can get started by downloading the detailed call for proposals PDF file, which can be found by clicking here, and downloading the submission form, which you can find by clicking here.

The IAFNA 2015 conference organizers have this to say about content proposals:

All proposals should provide new concepts of high-quality content, solid training, and interactive learning experiences with a focus on application. The extensive range of facilitation experience and diversity of facilitators at all levels should be taken into consideration. Each workshop must be aligned to at least one of IAF‟s Core Facilitator Competencies:

Create Collaborative Client Relationships

Plan Appropriate Group Processes

Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment

Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes

Build and Maintain Professional Knowledge

Model Positive Professional Attitude

We know that there are plenty of NCDD members who have valuable lessons and experiences to share with the IAF community, so we strongly encourage you to apply if you have an idea for a workshop! But content proposals are due Thursday, January 24th, so don’t put it off!

Good luck to all of those who submit content, and we can’t wait to see a successful IAFNA 2015! For more info on the IAFNA conference, visit www.iafna2015.com.

NIF Hosts Live Conversation on Higher Ed & Work, Jan. 21

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We want to encourage you to watch the live broadcast of a key conversation event that the National Issues Forums Institute & the Kettering Foundation – both NCDD organizational members – are hosting on Jan. 21st on the role of higher education in our country and in the economy. You can learn more below or read the original NIF announcement here.

Join us for a national conversation on The Changing World of Work: What Should We Ask of Higher Education?

On Wednesday, January 21, 2015, from 9 am-noon, the National Issues Forums Institute will stream the event live from the National Press Club on the all-new nifi.org.

Speakers and panelists include:

Jamie Studley, Deputy Under Secretary of Education
Nancy Cantor, Chancellor, Rutgers University-Newark
David Mathews, President, Kettering Foundation
Harry Boyte, Senior Scholar in Public Philosophy, Augsburg College
William Muse, President, National Issues Forums Institute
Other distinguished leaders from policymaking institutions, business, and civic and community groups

Organized by the National Issues Forums Institute, the American Commonwealth Partnership at Augsburg College, and the Kettering Foundation, this conversation responds to concerns voiced by thousands of citizens in more than 160 local forums in which participants deliberated on the future of higher education. Cosponsoring organizations include the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the American Democracy Project, Campus Compact, Imagining America, and others.

What kind of economy do we want? Given momentous changes in the economy and the workplace, what should we expect of American higher education? Do our colleges and universities bear some responsibility for the challenges facing young graduates today? Do they owe it to society to train a new generation of entrepreneurs, innovators, job creators, and citizen leaders? And do we still look to them to be the engines of social progress and economic development they have been in the past? During this event, new resources will be released meant to spark local conversations on these and other questions.

Check back here for updates and on the day of the event to view the stream.

You can see the original version of this NIF post at www.nifi.org/en/groups/stream-changing-world-work.

“Resilient Communities” Conference Call from CM, Jan. 22

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

We are pleased to invite NCDD members once again to join CommunityMatters – a joint partnership that NCDD is proud to be a member of – for the next installation in their capacity-building call series. This month’s call on “Resilient Communities”, and it will be taking place on Thursday, January 22nd, from 2-3pm Eastern Time.

The folks at CM describe the upcoming call like this:

Our communities are constantly changing. Most changes are gradual and predictable – a new store opens on Main Street, newcomers come to town and priorities shift. But, sometimes change is abrupt, unexpected – a major natural disaster or an epidemic.

How can your city or town best prepare for unanticipated change? What will help your community respond to challenges not only to bounce back, but to become stronger than ever?

Michael Crowley, senior program officer, Institute for Sustainable Communities, and Christine Morris, chief resilience officer with the City of Norfolk, Virginia, join CommunityMatters for an hour-long conference call on January 22. They’ll share ideas about and lessons learned from building resilient communities.

We highly encourage you to save the date and register for the call today by clicking here.

Before you join the call, we also suggest that you check out the blog piece on boosting community resilience that Caitlyn Davison recently posted on the CM blog to accompany the call. You can read her piece below, or find the original here.

We hope to hear you on the call next week!

7 Ways to Boost Your Community’s Resilience

Do you know what’s around the corner for your community?

Community resilience is about making our cities and towns less vulnerable to major and unexpected change, and establishing positive ways to face change together.

Resilient communities build on local strengths to anticipate change, reduce the impact of major events, and come back from a blow stronger than ever.

What steps can your community take toward resilience? Here are seven ideas from cities and towns working to boost local resilience.

1. Stop, collaborate, and listen. Focus on how people in your area collaborate. In trying times, people in resilient communities mobilize quickly, working together to solve problems and help each other. Promote neighbor-to-neighbor cooperation through collaborative efforts like a community garden, seed library, tool sharing, or solar co-op.

2. Put a dot on it. The Carse of Gowrie area of Scotland is engaging residents in identifying local strengths through community resilience mapping. Residents used online software to map assets in light of potential climate change risks and opportunities. The maps help locals visualize their community and provide valuable data for decision-making.

3. Set an agenda for resilience. To kick-start community conversations about resilience in Norfolk, Virginia – one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities – the city hosted an Agenda-Setting Resilience Workshop. The workshop brought together community leaders and residents to discuss the interconnected impacts of local stresses and shocks, including rising sea level and recurrent tidal flooding. Feedback from the workshop will inform the city’s resilience plan.

4. Create a local resilience task force. In New York’s Hudson Valley, non-profit Scenic Hudson formed a task force to plan for sea level rise and flood-resistant waterfronts. The task force’s final report outlines general and site-specific recommendations that promote resilient and thriving waterfront communities.

5. Practice your plan. You might have the slickest emergency plan ever written, but it isn’t going to do your town much good if no one else knows about it. Still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, the community of Red Hook, New York isn’t messing around. After developing an emergency response plan based on community members’ experience during Sandy, the Red Hook Coalition organized Ready Red Hook Day, a fun practice event to walk through the plan and visit local response stations.

6. Talk about communication during crisis. When a disaster strikes, will people in your community know about it? How will they let others know they are okay, or that they need assistance? In San Francisco, grassroots resilience planning helped develop a simple system for the elderly to communicate – a green door hanger indicates everyone got out safely; red means help is needed.

7. Plan big. Communities in Vermont know that planning for resilience at the local level might not be enough – they experienced crisis first-hand after Hurricane Irene devastated large parts of the state in 2011. Resilient Vermont, led by the Institute for Sustainable Communities, is working to develop an integrated, long-term strategy for resilience that weaves together state, regional, and local initiatives.

On January 22, Michael Crowley, senior program officer, Institute for Sustainable Communities, and Christine Morris, chief resilience officer with the city of Norfolk, Virginia, join CommunityMatters® for an hour-long talk on community resilience. You’ll find tools and lessons learned for boosting resilience in your area. Register now.

You can find the original version of this CM blog piece at www.communitymatters.org/blog/7-ways-boost-your-community%E2%80%99s-resilience. You can find more information on the “Resilient Communities” conference call at www.communitymatters.org/event/resilient-communities.

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

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

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

Are 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.

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.

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