What we’re up to…    

NCDD is running, involved in, and supporting a variety of projects to help advance the rapidly-growing dialogue and deliberation community.

• Upcoming Programs We’re Co-Sponsoring or Supporting
• Current NCDD Projects

Also check out our partners’ upcoming trainings - all of which are discounted significantly for NCDD members who have paid the (optional) membership fee.

Special Project of Note

Public Engagement Principles (PEP) Project

From mid-February through April 2009, NCDD (in collaboration with IAP2, the Co-Intelligence Institute, and others) led this bold attempt to develop a set of Core Principles for Public Engagement most of us involved in the fields of public engagement, conflict resolution, and collaboration can get behind. Dozens of people and organizations got involved in critiquing and composing the Core Principles, and most leading organizations in our field of practice have endorsed the document. Check out the Core Principles, endorsers, and background information at www.ncdd.org/pep, and consider endorsing yourself!

Programs We’re Co-Sponsoring or Supporting…

17th Annual IAP2 Conference: Making Sustainable Decisions

This September 21-23 (2009) in San Diego, California, the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) is holding its 17th annual conference. This year’s theme will be Making Sustainable Decisions: The Price and Promise of Public Participation. As an Conference Partner, NCDD is playing a major role in the San Diego conference and we hope to have a large NCDD contingent there. NCDD members get a $100 discount off the registration fee (just enter “NCDD” in the discount box when you register).

IAP2 wants to expand the definition of sustainability to encompass all the characteristics that make decision-making processes and the resulting decisions sustainable. Specifically, we are focusing on the following themes:

1. Sustainable decision-making processes: what characteristics are necessary for a public participation process to be sustainable?
2. Sustainable decisions: In what ways does public participation lead to decisions that are more workable and enduring than those made without public participation?
3. Sustainable outcomes: How do public participation processes and better decisions specifically contribute to the sustainability of projects and programs?

Learn more about the conference at www.thataway.org/?page_id=1419, or visit www.iap2.org.

4th Annual International Conference on “Engaging the Other”

NCDD is Co-Sponsoring the 4th Annual International Conference on “ENGAGING THE OTHER:” The Power of Compassion, which will take place November 12-15, 2009 in San Francisco (San Mateo), California, USA. This international, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary conference examines concepts of “The OTHER” from a universal, cross-cultural perspective to promote wider public dialogue about concepts of “Us and Them.”

NCDD will be helping to design, promote, and run this innovative event, and we encourage all NCDDers interested in conflict resolution and intergroup relations to attend! Registration is discounted for NCDD members ($290 rather than $350 for the early rate).

This extraordinary conference will address the roots of fear-based belief systems and stereotypes, prejudice, polarization, enemy images, and artificial barriers of misunderstanding and distrust that divide us. A call for workshop presenters and dialogue group facilitators is posted at www.thataway.org/?p=1418. More details on the event are posted at www.thataway.org/?page_id=1351, or you can visit the conference website at www.cbiworld.org/Pages/Conferences_ETO.htm.

The Democracy Communications Network

The Democracy Communications Network is a new collaborative effort to raise awareness about the central role people can and are playing in decision-making and problem-solving. A group of leaders in public engagement (including AmericaSpeaks, the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Everyday Democracy, the Kettering Foundation, NCDD, Public Agenda, and others) recently launched the Democracy Communications Network, in an attempt to:

• coordinate PR efforts (op-eds, blogging, articles, etc.) in response to current events
• develop simple, compelling language to describe public engagement work
• make widely available helpful tools for writing compelling op-eds, working with newspapers, writing for blogs, etc.
• keep track of the blog posts and op-eds that are written, so that others can be inspired by those examples
• raise the visibility of the work we all are doing

Learn more about this important initiative, or email sandy@thataway.org if you’d like to get involved.

Host One of “20,000 Dialogues”

Watch a film… Make a friend… Make peace happen… 20,000 Dialogues is a nationwide initiative bringing interfaith dialogue into the hands of ordinary people who want to make a positive difference. NCDD is partnering with 20,000 Dialogues to encourage you to join a nationwide campaign to bring people of different faiths together using films about Muslims to stimulate discussion and promote understanding.

Host a dialogue in your living room, at your school, or with your congregation. Do it during lunch with your coworkers or with your book club. These dialogues can be as small as 5 people or as large as you want. Get involved now to get your free copy of Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain or Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet. Learn more.

Current NCDD Projects…

Supporting New Coalitions for D&D

Although NCDD has over 100 members from outside the U.S. and welcomes more, we recognize that we are not fully equipped to meet many of the needs of D&D practitioners, researchers, activists and others from outside the U.S. For this reason, we are committed to supporting non-U.S. D&D coalitions and networks that others initiate.

Our programs and offerings have inspired a similar Coalition to form in Canada, and an African coalition is starting to develop. Others from Germany and England have approached us about possible D&D Coalitions in those countries. Learn more.

Guidebook to Dialogue & Deliberation
NCDD is producing a small easy-to-use guidebook that will introduce people to the range of dialogue and deliberation methods that are available to them, and help them decide when to use which method. We plan to publish thousands of copies of the guidebook and make them widely available to the D&D community and others in order to help promote dialogue and deliberation.

The draft guidebook is online at http://thataway.org/index.php/?page_id=952, and we strongly encourage you to look it over and add comments about what you think should be changed, added, or taken away.

Affinity Groups and Regional Networks
NCDD runs discussion lists for several affinity groups, including those interested in higher education, those new to D&D, and those looking into “making a living in D&D.” We also have discussion lists for D&D folks in Northern California, and those based in Colorado. Learn more or subscribe to these lists.

The NCDD Members Network also offers a way for members to create unlimited affinity groups as well, and we launched the network with dozens of groups. Based on where they lived, members were added to 15 regional groups. Members can also join 14 interest-based groups - including groups based on streams of practice (deliberative democracy, conflict resolution, etc.), groups based on the type of work a member does (research, whole system processes, etc.), and others. Join NCDD to participate in these groups.

We encourage NCDD members to form their own local networks. Let us know if you are interested in this - or if you’re already doing it - so we can see how NCDD may be able to help (ncdd@thataway.org). We list regional/local networks in our Learning Exchange, and would love to add more and encourage our members to get involved!

The Learning Exchange
NCDD’s website is recognized by many as having the best, most comprehensive resource collection on dialogue, deliberation and public engagement. Our Learning Exchange alone features over 2,300 discussion guides, films, articles, processes, organizations, and other resources – all of which are carefully organized and accurately described.

Community News & Perspectives Blog
The world of dialogue & deliberation is expanding rapidly, and NCDD has been keeping tabs on what’s going on and what opportunities YOU can take advantage of for years now on our blog. Edited by the lovely Amy Lang and contributed to by a small group of the coolest bloggers around, our dynamic blog is updated almost daily. Email sandy@thataway.org to submit announcements or to join the blogging team.