Steve Zikman brought an interesting article to my attention today, suggesting we share it with the network…

In a brief article titled “Appeals court rejects public comment time” at PNJ.com, a Florida appeals court upheld a year-old judgment that, in essence, found that government meetings required to be “open to the public” don’t necessarily have to give citizens a chance to speak at them.

View the whole article here at PNJ.com, but I’ve copied it below so we have an archive of it.  Please comment on this post and share what you think about this judgment and its implications. (more…)

The American Library Association (ALA) and the Kettering Foundation have signed a research agreement to establish a Center for Public Life.  The Center will train librarians from different types of libraries to convene and moderate deliberative forums and frame issues of local and national concern, using National Issues Forums materials and processes.

During the first year, ALA will form an advisory committee and begin training moderators to convene and conduct local deliberative forums.  Initially, the new Centers will tap into the experience of libraries already convening deliberative forums.  They will form the hub of a network of active mentors capable of strengthening and expanding their work locally, statewide and nationally and connecting it with other forum conveners throughout the country. (more…)

All NCDDers are welcome to join us next Thursday (March 18) at 7-8pm Eastern / 4-5pm Pacific) for an NCDD Confab call with Martin Carcasson, director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University. We’ll be talking to Martin about his must-read Public Agenda occasional paper titled Beginning with the End in Mind: A Call for Goal-Driven Deliberative Practice (Summer 2009).

Martin’s article, which can be downloaded for free from www.publicagenda.org/cape, outlines three broad categories of goals for deliberation. The essay explores how a clearer understanding of the goals and purposes we are trying to achieve through public engagement can sharpen our methods and increase our impacts. It offers a practical framework to help practitioners systematically consider both their short-term and long-term goals and the strategies that will set them up for success.

If you plan to join us on the Confab call, be sure to look over Martin’s article.  I also encourage you to check out the July NCDD blog post titled New Framework for Understanding the Goals of Public Engagement, which reflects on Martin’s article and introduces a graphic I created that expands on the article’s three orders of goals slightly.

“NCDD Confabs” are conference calls for NCDD members where we explore dialogue & deliberation’s role in current issues, learn about exciting projects and interesting methods from fellow NCDD members, and encourage new connections among members.

Hi, all!  I am a new NCDD blogger, and I am also the founder of Idealogue, Inc., which develops interactive web platforms to empower people and organizations to solve difficult challenges through dialogue and collaboration.

The active NCDD listserv recently addressed the question of the ability of online dialogue to provide value to the practitioner’s toolkit. At Idealogue, Inc. we have been developing an online platform for dialogue on difficult and pressing issues. On the one hand, online interaction and social networking is enormously popular, but on the other hand, public discussion boards and comment systems are not the first place many people think of for constructive dialogues–me included.

Maybe the lack of face-to-face interaction is part of the problem, but can we also better implement technology?

A recent experience with our first dialogue site, BeyondTolerance.org, an online network that promotes discussion and understanding within academic and non-profit communities about religious, social and political issues, illustrated to me that some important elements of in-person dialogue can be transferred online. (more…)

In February, NCDD gained 1 new organizational member, 10 new individual members (6 dues-paying and 4 non-dues-paying) and 14 of our dues-paying members renewed their memberships (2 organizations and 12 individuals). Welcome to our new members, and thank you to all those who re-upped!

Our new organization member is Politalk (Contact: Tim Erickson).  Tim has been an individual member since 2002 and upgraded his membership.

Our new 6 dues-paying individual members are

1. Stephanie Miller, Executive Director at the Health Consumers Alliance of South Australia
2. David Kimball, Former Host of the Conversational Café
3. Barbara Chappell, Consultant
4. Tammy Bormann, Principle Consultant for Tammy Bormann Consultants
5. Julie Stuart, Owner of Making Ideas Visible
6. Daniel Fisher of New York

We gained 4 new individual NCDD members (non-dues):

1. Jan Levinson at the Russell Forum for Civic Life in Georgia
2. Cathy Kelly at KRIO Consulting
3. William Ball at Stetson University
4. Laura Keir at Sterling College

In the month of February, 14 NCDDers renewed their membership.  The following 2 organizational members renewed:

1. Dialogue Partners, Inc. (Stephani McCallum)
2. Columbia University (Beth Fisher-Yoshida)

And the following 12 people renewed as dues-paying individual members:

1. Susan Clark at Woodbury College
2. Kathleen Conway with the Law Offices of Kathleen M. Conway, LLC.
3. John Spady at the Forum Foundation
4. Patricia Perry with Patricia D. Perry Associates
5. Ariana McBride at the Orton Family Foundation
6. Daniel Horsey at the 3 Story Stage
7. Richard Chasin at the Public Conversations Project
8. Rod Reyna at the Pflugerville Neighborhood Association
9. Tom Murray at Perspegrity Consulting.
10. Richard Alper at Conflict Resolution Center of Montgomery County
11. Shara Pavlow at University of Miami’s School of Communication
12. Luigi Morelli of Haverhill, MA

To learn about other NCDD members (there are over 1,240 of us now!), find members in your state or city, etc., visit the NCDD members network at www.thataway.org/ncddnet/.

And to see if your membership is in good standing, search for yourself in the members network and look at what’s in the Member Type field in your profile.  If it says “lapsed” or “non-dues-paying,” please consider becoming a current dues-paying member (see payment details here).  You can also email office manager Joy Garman at joy@thataway.org if you have questions about your status, need payment instructions, or want to change the info on your profile page.

Check out these two videos on YouTube by Matt Leighninger (pictured), E.D. of NCDD organizational member the Deliberative Democracy Consortium.

The videos feature photos of deliberation, voice-over about how democracy is evolving to incorporate more citizen input, and footage of Matt’s three boys. The videos were produced for the No Better Time conference and the recent Recentering Democracy Around Citizens meeting.  One of the videos is about 6 minutes long and the other is 4 minutes long, and most of the content of the shorter one is included in the longer version.

You can view both videos at www.youtube.com/user/mattleighningerddc.

This article is co-authored by Lucas Cioffi and Alexander Moll, the two NCDD members who co-organized the February Open Government Directive Workshop in partnership with the US General Services Administration, the National Academy of Public Administration, NCDD, and GovLoop.

Summary and Purpose of the OGD Workshop

The February 17^th OGD Workshop in Washington, DC was a blast.  We convened sixty participants working in-person and online, from the public and private sectors, and across agencies.  Third in an evolving four-part workshop series, this workshop was designed to help the federal government implement its recent Open Government Directive.  Fellow NCDD member Kaliya Hamlin facilitated the previous two workshops.

Since federal agencies are currently working on their individual open government plans that are due on April 7^th, frontline federal managers needed the opportunity to exchange best practices across agencies.  The purpose of this particular workshop was to provide that opportunity, to synthesize, cross-pollinate, and transform great ideas into actionable recommendations.

(more…)

NCDD member Jim Fishkin sent this out to the main NCDD listserv the other day…  Jim wrote, “see veteran columnist Walter Shapiro’s musings about whether a deliberative democracy process could be used among republicans to start the next presidential nomination process.”

Shapiro’s article, titled Taking Republicans’ Presidential Pulse at a Political Reality Show appears on Politics Daily.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut, will inaugurate the Stowe Prize(tm) in 2011.  The Stowe Prize is a $10,000 biennial award to an individual from the United States whose written work embodies the tradition and impact of Stowe’s most famous work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by making a tangible impact on a social justice issue critical to contemporary society.

Submissions must be postmarked by June 1, 2010.  The Stowe Prize winner will be announced in March 2011, with an award ceremony in June 2011. (more…)

We wanted to share the audio from Thursday’s NCDD Confab call. The call focused on the role of dialogue & deliberation practitioners and organizations in Haiti, and in disaster recovery in general.  Featured guests were BJ Diamond of the Global Facilitator Service Corps (GFSC) and John Engle, co-founder of Haiti Partners. Larry Schooler initiated and facilitated the call.

BJ talked with us about GFSC’s work helping communities deal with crises.  John Engle was kind enough to call in from Haiti,  to tell us about his work fostering participatory leadership and discussion-based education in Haiti before and since the earthquake.  He also talked about his involvement in and knowledge of various relief efforts in Haiti, and helped NCDDers on the call think about what they can do now to help.

You can listen to the audio by clicking below if you’re interested (press the play button or download the mp3 file).

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Or download: NCDD Confab – February 25, 2010: Haiti (~50 MB)

The NCDD Confabs are a new series of regular conference calls for NCDD members where we explore dialogue & deliberation’s role in current issues, learn about exciting projects and interesting methods from fellow NCDD members, and just get to know each other a little better. Add a comment here if you have ideas about topics and featured guests for future Confab calls.

NCDD member Tyrone Reitman sent us this opening to share with the network…

Healthy Democracy Oregon is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that was founded in 2007.  The mission of the organization is to develop and implement innovative political reforms based upon deliberative methods of public engagement.  The organization is currently focused on a reform to Oregon’s ballot initiative process, called the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). The Citizens’ Initiative Review is an application of the Citizens Jury model of public deliberation, designed to evaluate ballot measures, and provide voters with a new source of clear, useful, and trustworthy information during elections.  A bill passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2009 allows for one to three Reviews will be conducted during the 2010 election cycle.  Healthy Democracy Oregon is currently working to convene these Reviews in August, 2010.

Healthy Democracy Oregon is seeking an Outreach & Research Coordinator.  The Outreach and Research Coordinator will raise awareness of the Citizens’ Initiative Review though community event organizing, and public relations work both with print media and online.  The Outreach & Research Coordinator will also work with HDO’s Directors and Staff to coordinate presentations, and conduct background research, for the Citizens’ Initiative Reviews.  The ideal applicant for this position will have both strong communications and research skills.

Download the February 23, 2010 job announcement for more details.

Here’s a report to the NCDD community from Courtney Breese, an NCDD member who is an up-and-coming leader in our field.  I asked Courtney to represent NCDD at a conference at Clark University on dialogue in higher ed a couple of weeks ago.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend a conference titled Inviting Dialogue: Renewing the Deep Purposes of Higher Education.  Organized by Sarah Buie, Director of the Difficult Dialogues Initiative at Clark University, and Dave Joseph, Vice-President of Programs at the Public Conversations Project, this small conference was attended by approximately 50 individuals from colleges and universities and professional dialogue practitioners from the Northeast Region.

I was invited to attend as a representative of NCDD (thanks, Sandy!) to provide people with information on the coalition and also to report back about my experience at this conference. From a quick browse through NCDD’s members, I think it’s a safe estimate that about 25 percent of conference attendees were members of the Coalition. However, in introducing myself and NCDD in conversations and workshops, it appears that many more of the people present were familiar with and supportive of  NCDD. Some pointed out that most of the people in the room were probably familiar with NCDD (or should have been). For those who weren’t familiar, I found a great deal of interest in the access to resources and other practitioners, researchers, and organizations that can be found through NCDD. Hopefully we will be adding some new members to our ranks in the days to come!

As a practitioner in the dialogue/deliberation and conflict resolution field with the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution and Public Collaboration, an institute of the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was excited and curious to see what kind of dialogue work is being done on other college and university campuses, as our office continues to work to incorporate dialogue into the university curriculum. From integrating dialogue into curriculum, engaging faculty and staff in dialogue, to addressing larger issues of diversity, there is a lot going on in this region! Below is a brief recap of just some of the content of this conference. (more…)

Join us tomorrow (Thursday) from 2-3 pm EST (11 am Pacific) for an “NCDD Confab” call on the role of dialogue & deliberation practitioners and organizations in Haiti, and in disaster recovery in general.  Featured guests on the call are BJ Diamond and Marieann Shovlin of the Global Facilitator Service Corps and John Engle, co-founder of Haiti Partners, and Larry Schooler will facilitate.

BJ and Marieann will talk about GFSC’s work helping communities deal with crises.  John Engle will talk with us about his work fostering participatory leadership and discussion-based education in Haiti before and since the hurricane.

We’d greatly appreciate it if you would RSVP for the call ahead of time by emailing Larry at larry.schooler@ci.austin.tx.us or me at sandy@thataway.org, but here are the call-in details in case you don’t get a chance:

1-605-475-6350 (long distance call to Midwest U.S.)
Access Code:  444839

This is one of a new series of “NCDD Confab Calls” where we’ll be exploring dialogue & deliberation’s role in current issues, learn about exciting projects and interesting methods from fellow NCDD members, and just get to know each other a little better.

Here are some more details about our featured guests and the facilitator/initiator of the call… (more…)

Here is my final post excerpting my IJP2 article on the Systems and Framing challenges. Although I got sidetracked and should have posted this weeks ago with the others (sorry about that!), I think this segment is actually the most important one for practitioners, funders and community leaders to take note of…

Cultivate and Support Public Engagement Practitioners

In Sustaining Public Engagement, Archon Fung and Elana Fagotto (2006) credit much of the success of embedded public engagement to deliberative or civic entrepreneurs – highly skilled and capable individuals who understand there is a market for public engagement. Civic entrepreneurs know “the general public favors more opportunities to participate in public discussion and provide input in policy-making,” and that public engagement is a much-needed tool for problem-solving. Fung and Fagotto acknowledge that, “like other voluntary and private sector initiatives, the uptake of these novel practices inevitably depends upon the tenacity, expertise, and persuasiveness of the individuals who introduce them.”

In their case study on a decade of public engagement work in Bridgeport, Connecticut, our challenge co-leader Will Friedman and his co-authors contend that “the evolution of key actors from the role of deliberative entrepreneur to that of deliberative maven” (p. 14) can be a vital factor in embedding deliberation in communities. Not only do such “deliberative mavens” bring deliberation to a community, but they also inspire and support the emergence of other practitioners and entrepreneurs and serve as information banks and deliberative resources for the community. They begin, the authors say, “as importers of deliberation and become, over time, catalysts and resources for further deliberative practices across the community” (p. 14).

Organizations that focus on building civic capacity in the region rather than importing talent temporarily from outside the community are more likely to create local deliberative mavens, and thus to facilitate embedding public engagement. The authors suggest the more user-friendly and affordable the approach or method of public engagement used, the easier it is for local civic entrepreneurs to “master it quickly, adapt it to their needs, and make it their own.”

Dialogue and deliberation cannot be embedded in our systems at the local level if the capacity to organize and convene public engagement efforts cannot be maintained. Local civic capacity includes trained moderators and facilitators, the capacity to mobilize and recruit participants representing a cross-section of the community, and the know-how and initiative required to organize programs and events.

–

Note from Sandy:

This is my ninth blog post featuring content of an article published in a recent edition of the International Journal of Public Participation (IJP2), titled Taking our Work to the Next Level: Addressing Challenges Facing the Dialogue and Deliberation Community. The article outlines our learnings in two of the five challenges we focused on at the 2008 NCDD conference in Austin: the “Systems Challenge” (How can we make D&D values and practices integral to government, schools, and other systems?) and the The “Framing Challenge” (How can we talk about and present D&D work in more accessible ways?). You can download the full article from the IJP2 site.

I’ve been wanting to ask people who use the NCDD site what they think of the blog categories.  If you’re reading this on the NCDD blog (www.thataway.org if you’re reading this on Facebook or elsewhere), look in the left column and you’ll see all the categories listed in the second box titled “NCDD’s News & Perspectives.”

Andy’s working on a site redesign and though we love using a WordPress blog to manage most of our site content, we plan to simplify the site’s appearance A LOT so it’s not so text-heavy and there aren’t so many links everywhere.

We’ll be simplifying our blog categories considerably, and we’d love your feedback on what should stay and what should go.  Which of the categories (if any) do you tend to use?  Or do you never use the categories?  Would you be happy if we just kept the first set of categories under “D&D Community News” (educational opps, jobs, research, etc.)? Please add a comment and let us know (or email me at sandy@thataway.org).

We’d really appreciate your input on this!  Here’s all the current News & Perspectives blog categories… (more…)