D&D Community News

I was trying to find new ways to articulate some of the daunting challenges in our field. I was trying to make abstract concepts more real to the average reader. OK, I admit it – I was just hungry.

I hope that my Recipes for Innovation in Public Engagement can help satisfy your own appetite!

NCDD member Cindy Gibson sent me this fascinating article from nextgov.com this afternoon, and I thought those of you following Open Gov would be interested… (more…)

In principle, in order for people to avoid conflict there has to be a way for them to talk. When in tension with someone else in my group, rather than talk with them directly, it is easiest to assume a superior position and take steps to prove my righteousness. It is also relatively easy to propose changes to the system in which we both operate: new rules, new policies, new ways of doing things that I think will make the tension go away. But both of these approaches create conflict and/or burden for my group.

Sometimes the barrier to direct communication is of a mechanical nature such as language or physical proximity or connection. But most often the barrier is our own fear about having a hard conversation. We don’t trust ourselves to say the right things or react the right ways. We are afraid that in a one-on-one setting we will lose the battle we are trying to win.

Practical Tip: Don’t view tensions as battles to be won or lost but rather as shared problems to be solved in shared ways. Before doing anything else, seek first to find a way to talk with those who are part of the problem.

If there are mechanical barriers to talking, work to fix them. In today’s world, going to war because one party can’t physically communicate with another is no excuse. If there are personal emotional barriers in the way, work to fix them. You are part of the problem; have a talk with yourself. Creating conflict or requiring your group to consider systemic changes because of your own emotional issues is selfish and inefficient.

And if someone else proposes a way to talk with you about a shared problem, accept the opportunity. Always talk first. Find a way.

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Group Decision Tips are written by Craig Freshley. At his website you can access a complete archive of all previously published Tips, comment and view comments of others. Free distribution of Group Decision Tips for non-commercial purposes is encouraged with proper credit to Craig Freshley. Providing Group Decision Tips™ to others for commercial purposes and/or for any type of compensation is strictly prohibited.

NCDD member David Kahane from the University of Alberta asked me to share this job opening with the network…

Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD) seeks a Project Lead to guide an ambitious citizen engagement initiative that will operate first in municipalities across Alberta, Canada and then scale up to the provincial level.

ABCD is a five-year project premised on the conviction that well-designed citizen deliberations can play a crucial role in creating effective Albertan responses to climate change, by shaping the policies of participating municipal and provincial governments and motivating individual and community action. The project currently has $1 million in funding from the Community-University Research Alliance program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as $2 million in matching cash and in-kind support from community organizations and partners; the Project Lead will work with partners to develop further funding from public, private, and not-for profit sources. (more…)

NCDD member Steven Kull asked me to share this interesting job description with the NCDD community, for Executive Director of a new advocacy organization for renewing democracy.  If you are interested in this position, send your resume and cover letter to Steven at . (more…)

Amelia Law asked me to share this important announcement with NCDDers.  If you have questions, you can contact her at 800-221-3657 or .

The Charles F. Kettering Foundation offers one-year research positions at their Dayton, Ohio offices to undergraduate, doctoral candidates and recent Ph.D.’s.  Research Assistants and Associates receive excellent full-time compensation and benefits including medical insurance.

As an operating research foundation, Kettering explores practical ways that democracy can be strengthened. The research, done in collaboration with people and organizations around the world, emphasizes the roles of citizens and the qualities of their interactions as decision-making actors in public life.  We especially encourage applications from scholars who have interests in topics such as deliberative democracy, civic engagement, social capital, civic education, civil society, and social movements, regardless of discipline or methodology.

For more information on the positions, including the application guidelines, visit http://www.kettering.org/research-positions.  Note:  the application cut-off date for research fellowships is March 15th!

What would happen if professional organizers and facilitators of dialogue and deliberation decisively and publicly demonstrated their capacity to help cities and states solve their biggest problem — collapsing budgets — and then broadly promoted that fact?

What’s the crisis?  States, cities and towns across the United States are collapsing under mountains of debt.  The mortgage crisis crashed property taxes, the primary source of revenue for cities.  Cities are cutting off services from education to police to road repair. Comparable crises are hitting state governments, some of whom are selling off public properties, utilities and service institutions, resulting in a major privatization of the commons.  Some states and cities are contemplating bankruptcy, thereby scaring off bond investors.  See these articles for fascinating and troubling information on all this.

Advocates and practitioners of processes like Study Circles, Future Search, Dynamic Facilitation, Open Space Technology, and many other approaches have proclaimed the power of whole-system conversations, citizen engagement and stakeholder dialogues to solve the problems of communities.  Shouldn’t the power of such conversations be seriously considered by every legislature and administration? Shouldn’t the dialogue-and-deliberation approach be in the news as much as problematic solutions like staff layoffs, union-busting, bankruptcy, and increasing elementary school classroom size to 60 students?

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, the International Association for Public Participation, the International Association of Facilitators, and the many networks of practitioners would clearly benefit from greater demand for powerful facilitated conversations. Clearly, the budget crisis is an opportunity of epic proportions.  But how might it be engaged? (more…)

The following was posted on the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) website here, but I know they would like to see many people from the broader dialogue and deliberation community get involved!

Read about taking part in an NIF national conversation about Economic Security:

The Kettering Foundation, in partnership with the National Issues Forums Institute, is seeking innovative ways to communicate the results of forums to policy makers.  Those of you who convene and moderate forums recognize how valuable they can be to participants and see them as a welcome antidote to polarized political talk. The public thinking that emerges from forums can provide valuable insights to policy makers about the kinds of things the public is ready to act on, and where the public might need further thinking. We also recognize that the results of forums might be more useful to state policy makers if they are analyzed regionally.

This year, we are promoting a national conversation on Economic Security, with national, state and local implications. Five, regional coordinators are working to encourage forums, analyze the results, and share their insights with each region and with Washington, D.C. policy makers at events in the spring, 2011. They are focusing on how ready the public is to act on various aspects of this issue. The Guide to Forums and the Questionnaire are both intended to encourage moderators and participants to emphasize a strong focus on the tensions the public wrestles with, and the tensions where the public has decided. We believe this information is vital to policy makers and to local action.

We need your help. We hope you will:

• Hold many forums
• Send in questionnaires promptly
• Include your zip code and state on the questionnaires (must be received by March 31, 2011)
• Complete and submit a moderator report along with questionnaires
• Talk with the regional coordinator (more…)

Have you joined NCDD’s LinkedIn group yet?  The group has about 800 members, and it’s a great way to stay updated on what’s happening in the field and connect with new people who work in dialogue and deliberation.  We’ve had some rich discussions there as well, like the one on “Groundrules necessary to make the best of virtual meetings” initiated by Martin Pearson about a month ago.

Martin wrote that he was starting to use Skype more for meetings, and asked group members if they have created specific ground rules for their own virtual meetings (like asking people to not to browse the internet while participating in the meeting).  The conversation morphed into a rich discussion on best practices for virtual meetings, with over 30 comments shared.

Group member Geoffrey Morton-Haworth took the time to summarize this excellent conversation, and posted the summary on his yalaworld.net site here (you can also download a PDF of the summary).  Definitely worth checking out!

In principle, the amount of energy (time, money, etc.) invested in a group decision should be in proportion to the amount of impact it’s likely to have. The magnitude of the impact is a combination of how many people are affected, how deeply, and for how long into the future.

Consensus decisions are best suited to those that we expect to affect many people and last a long time—decisions that are expected to live longer than the current generation of decision makers. Consensus decisions are characterized by inclusive participation, shared understanding, and acceptance among all key stakeholders. This is when everybody decides for everybody.

Majority rule works well for medium-size decisions: decisions that are expected to last for awhile but are open to challenge and easily changed as majorities change (as generations of decision makers turn over). This is when most of the people decide for everybody.

One person in charge works well for decisions expected to last a short time with limited impact. Here, one person makes decisions on behalf of everybody. (more…)

As many of you know, Taylor Willingham is not doing so well.  Taylor, who is a real shining star in our community, was diagnosed with kidney cancer this past fall. Despite multiples surgeries and various treatments, her recovery is not going well at this point.

Though she’s not up for too many phone calls and visitors, she LOVES getting and reading email messages.  Her good friend Diane Miller tells me she prints them out and re-reads them often.  You can email Taylor directly at , but I want to encourage NCDDers to add a comment to this post with a brief message to Taylor.  I’ll make sure she sees your comments.

I received this sobering message from Taylor today:

My health is deteriorating faster than I expected, but I am fighting to keep my head above water. My goal is to live to see the wildflowers this spring, but this cancer is not going to make it easy on me!

You may certainly let anyone in our network know about my situation. Renal cell carcinoma is not treatable. It can’t be cured. I can only strive to live a few more weeks as pain free as possible. Prayer seems to be a pretty good antidote (in between the morphine and methadone!).

So many things I wanted to do that I will have to leave for others who follow behind. But that is the cycle of life.

If you’ve attended an NCDD conference you probably know Taylor.  She’s a firecracker (that’s the best word I know for Taylor), with boundless energy and enthusiasm for public dialogue work.  You certainly know Taylor if you’re involved with National Issues Forums, as Taylor is an absolute star in the NIF network, having (among other things) co-founded and directed Texas Forums, an initiative of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum.

Taylor has been a wonderfully active member of NCDD, and served as the Secretary of our Board of Directors for the past couple of years.  She was instrumental in planning the 2008 NCDD conference in Austin (she lives near Austin in Salado, TX), and she was a key member of the planning team for the Austin regional NCDD workshop in October 2010 until she learned of her cancer and needed to pull back on some of her many commitments. She also ran a National Issues Forum event for conference participants and locals on the final day of the 2004 NCDD conference in Denver, Colorado.

Even with stage 4 kidney cancer, Taylor is more productive than most of us!  An email from Patty Dineen on the 17th included this update:

Meanwhile, Taylor continues pretty much full speed ahead, working online, teaching her online university course (via computer in her hospital room), to the point that her family and hospital staff conspired to put a time limit on her “connected” activities so she will rest.  She has the support and presence of her husband Terry, her parents, and other family and friends there with her, and her doctors have put together a team to oversee her treatments and care.  I’m not sure who the doctors believe to be leading the team, but I’m pretty sure that it is really Taylor.

If you know Taylor, please take a minute to add a brief note of appreciation and encouragement as a comment below.  I know she’d love to hear from a lot of NCDDers!

How might the proposed federal budget cuts effect the dialogue and deliberation community, and the larger democracy reform movement D&D is a part of?  What can each of us do to fight for the programs we feel are critically important to our democracy — like public media, national service, civic education, and more?

Take a look at the Take Action page on the Campaign for a Stronger Democracy website. Over the coming weeks, CSD (the campaign that morphed out of Strengthening Our Nation’s Democracy) will be using their new site to rally support from across the democracy reform community against cuts to the federal budget that threaten our democracy.  NCDD is involved in and supports the Campaign for a Stronger Democracy, and encourage all of you to check out the Action Alert: Hands Off Our Democracy page and consider how you can best respond.

Join us in taking action today!

John Cavanaugh and Leanne Nurse alerted me to this news today (this text is from the February 21, 2011 Washington post article by Sari Horwitz)…

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush will serve as honorary chairmen of a new center at the University of Arizona that will focus on civility in political debate. The National Institute for Civil Discourse – a nonpartisan center for debate, research, education and policy about civility in public discourse – will open Monday in Tucson. It was created in the aftermath of the Jan. 8 shootings in the city where six people were killed and 13 injured, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) will serve as honorary co-chairmen. Board members will include former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright; Kenneth M. Duberstein, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan; Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren; Trey Grayson, director of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; and former congressman Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.).

“This institute is the right people in the right place at the right time,” said Fred DuVal, vice chairman of the Arizona Board of Regents and former co-chairman of Giffords’s finance committee.

The center will be funded with private donations, and $1 million has already been raised, said DuVal, who will head the working board of the institute, which is his brainchild. The institute plans to organize workshops and conferences in Tucson, Washington and elsewhere nationwide, and will bring together leaders from across the political spectrum to develop programs to promote civil discourse.

“Our country needs a setting for political debate that is both frank and civil,” Bush said in a statement.

Clinton said in a statement that the new institute “can elevate the tone of dialogue in our country.” …

See the full article here.

Re-posted by Tom Atlee from http://bit.ly/ParticBudgetList1…

Recently I’ve seen a swirl of information (mostly on the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv) about participatory budgeting. Below, you’ll find a sampling of this info, in relatively raw form. I do not know enough to sort it all out, but it looks really fascinating.

Most of this material is about online public budgeting exercises, but some of it also describes the kind of face-to-face, seriously empowered mass-participatory civic budgeting processes developed in Brazil which have spread widely in the last decade or so. (more…)

A few days ago, the Bertelsmann Stiftung (Bertelsmann Foundation in the U.S.) added a bunch of new videos to its YouTube channel.  They really are must-see videos for people in our field; they’re very well-made videos (about 4 minutes long each) that feature the finalists in the 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize.  I can see the videos being used in the classroom, in workshops, as part of presentations to local government, and so much more.

I just added them to my dialogue & deliberation playlists on YouTube, where you can find hundreds of D&D-related videos.

With the 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize, the Bertelsmann Stiftung wants to bring new momentum to the debate on how democratic systems can be made “future ready” by helping them respond to current and future challenges. As many of you know, the 7 finalists of the Mohn Prize (to be awarded this spring) emerged from an international search to identify innovative, exemplary approaches to strengthening democracy through citizen engagement.

Check out the videos for these finalists:

• B.C. Citizens Assemblies (NCDD’s Susanna Haas Lyons is featured in this one, and I spotted Mark Warren as well)
• 2029 Vision (long-term project in Geraldton, Australia led by NCDD’s Janette Hartz-Karp)
• Portsmouth Listens (NCDD member Everyday Democracy is a huge player in this project)
• The Hampton Way (Hampton, VA)
• Participatory budgeting in Recife, Brazil (we’ve been talking about PB on the NCDD listserv a lot lately, but a great place to start if you’re new to this is NCDD member Tiago Peixoto’s PB facebook page)
• Participatory budgeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
• Participatory budgeting in La Plata, Argentina