The City University of New York Dispute Resolution Consortium (CUNY DRC) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice-CUNY, has announced an international competition for short videos of up to 60 seconds using any of the themes in the 24 Make Talk Work® bookmarks. This video project, which is funded by the JAMS Foundation, seeks to increase public awareness about dispute resolution. The bookmarks, also funded by the JAMS Foundation, were created by the CUNY DRC and dispute resolvers in New York City with images designed by Susan Spivack.

Prizes ranging from $100 to $2,000 will be awarded for the winning videos. The winning videos will be premiered at a film festival and award reception at John Jay College near Lincoln Center in New York City . The winning videos will be posted on YouTube and the CUNY DRC’s websites and will be made available for workshops, conferences and public events. Answers to frequently asked questions regarding the Competition will be posted on the CUNY DRC’s website. For specific information, contact CUNY DRC at or call 212-237-8692 ( USA ).

NCDD member, Tom Atlee, recently posted the following message to his organization’s mailing list. It explores the concepts of political will, public judgement, collective wisdom and how this reflects of current issues and how individuals can make a difference. Its an interesting piece and one we thought many of our readers my be interested in.

Originally sent to the Co-Intelligence Institute mailing list…

Dear friends,

More and more people are taking seriously the emerging crises we face. Below is one example. Lester Brown uses what is to me a revealing phrase: “Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option.” Whenever I hear someone saying something like that, I believe they have glimpsed the scope of the challenges we face.

Of course, the rub (as Hamlet says) lies in what they propose as an alternative to “business-as-usual”. How deep or fundamental a shift do they think is possible or necessary, and where they feel we should put our attention? Embedded in what they say will be assumptions — usually unspoken — about how change happens and about who we are as human beings and societies.

Read the entire essay after the break. (more…)

The National League of Cities (www.nlc.org) and  engineering and construction company CH2M HILL have announced  the 2008 Awards for Municipal Excellence. The awards recognize outstanding programs that improve the quality of life in America’s communities, with two awards in each population category. Municipalities that win select a charity to receive $1,000 or $2,000. The awards are presented at the annual  Congress of Cities and Exposition. Nominated cities must be members of NLC. The deadline is May 1, 2008. Visit the NLC Web site for complete program information and nomination materials.

Emily Menn, Director of Education and Professional Development at the New York State Dispute Resolution Association, has sent us her latest lists of jobs in the Dispute Resolution field as first explained in this post. Like the last time, these lists are long and heavy on the detail, so instead of summarizing them I just slapped them into a pdf file. For future job listings, you can join the list by emailing her at emily dot menn at gmail dot com with the subject “ADD TO JOBS IN DISPUTE RESOLUTION LIST”

Jobs in Dispute Resolution, Jan. 29

L-Soft, a leading provider of email list management software and hosting services, generously donated their services to the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation recently. We have used their LISTSERV® email list management software solution for two years now as a paying customer — all our email discussion lists and announcement lists are hosted by L-Soft and they have provided us with a reliable and very flexible solution for our mailing list needs. At the beginning of the year, they decided to switch us over to “donation” status, which is wonderful!

This may sound a little like a commercial, but we’re really happy that L-Soft reached out to us and offered this opportunity, and I don’t mind relaying this and the fact that their product is very good. Although not for small or low traffic lists, L-Soft offers excellent tools for larger organizations, schools and businesses, and if you’re looking for a larger scale mailing list solution, you should at least look at L-Soft as a possible solution.

Educating Students for Civic Engagement is a three-week (February 11-29) online course to learn about how student affairs professionals can educate students to become citizens, scholars, and leaders in their professions, their communities, the nation and the world. Both champions and critics of higher education are demanding that colleges and universities get serious about educating future generations of citizens who are committed to tackling society’s most pressing issues. Participants in this course will gain: understanding of what is civic engagement and why it is central to a college education; knowledge of the state-of-the-art developmental models and program examples; and access to resources for designing programs to achieve desired student learning outcomes.

To register and for the full course description visit www.myacpa.org/pd/e-Learning/.

Questions? Contact the instructor: , Senior Scholar, Adele H. Stamp Student Union – Center for Campus Life, University of Maryland.

NCDD member, Tim Bonnemann, announced at a recent NCDD 2008 planning team conference call that he’s organizing an eDemocracy event in Washington, D.C. at the beginning of March. Although a location has not been chosen yet, eDemocracyCamp (a barcamp on e-democracy) will be held the weekend of March 1-2, 2008. Announcements are being placed through Twitter, and also Facebook, where you can sign up for the event. You can also sign up on the event’s wiki page at the Barcamp website.

More information on barcamps and this event after the break. (more…)

In addition to incredible discounts and a fantastic free book, here’s another example of why you should join NCDD…

Cynthia McDermott just sent this message to the main NCDD discussion list, and I thought a few more people might see it if we added it to the blog:

I am wondering if there is a skilled D and D practitioner in the LA area who might be interested in teaching a graduate level course for our education masters at Antioch University Los Angeles (our campus is in Culver City)? I would like to offer such a course this summer. If you might like to inquire about this possibility please email me at or give me a call 310-578-1080 ext 352.

NCDD member Tod Sloan just sent an announcement about this out to NCDD’s main discussion list…

The Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology (JSACP), a new electronic journal, is accepting manuscripts in English and Spanish that promote reflection on community change and system transformation in which counselors and psychologists play a role. Appropriate manuscripts may include social action research, theory, as well as examples of transformative practice. JSACP is an official publication of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) and Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ). This electronic journal upholds highest academic and professional standards and is published twice a year electronically (pdf) with articles in either English or Spanish. Manuscripts are reviewed through a masked, peer review process. The Fall 2007 issue of JSACP can be accessed free online at www.psysr.org/jsacp. For editorial policy and other information, visit www.psysr.org/social-action.htm. Tod Sloan and Rebecca Toporek, Editors.

Are you tired of the same old politics? So are we.

And so are millions of other Americans, who, polls show, are frustrated by campaigns and politics dominated by mudslinging, sound bites, money, and polarizing partisanship.

But the answer isn’t to walk away. More participation is.

We need to put people back into politics. And we need to start now.

The good news is that there’s a new national coalition focused on doing just that. It’s called the November 5th Coalition, named to send the message that politics and civic engagement isn’t just about election. It’s about what happens after and between elections. It’s about creating what we’re calling a new civic politics—one that truly believes in government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Members of the November 5th Coalition—an all-partisan, grassroots effort—include groups as diverse at the National Civic League, American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project, Mobilize.org, the Association of Young Americans, and NCDD….
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NCDD is a Partner of “DIAC-2008/OD2008” – a conference on online deliberation sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and UC Berkeley School of Information. This year’s theme is “Tools for Participation: Collaboration, Deliberation, and Decision Support. The conference will take place June 26-29, 2008 at the University of California – Berkeley. If you are working in online deliberation, you may want to consider submitting a paper or workshop proposal for consideration…
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Just heard from NCDD member Jeff Conklin of the CogNexus Institute (cognexus.org) with the news that they have rescheduled and relocated their January 23rd Dialogue Mapping event to February 20th & 21st on the SRI campus in Menlo Park, CA. Also, their next free public introductory webinar is set for Feb 13 at 11am PST. You can find out more information abut their trainings at the CogNexus website.

Dialogue Mapping is a proven method for tackling “wicked problems” by building shared understanding and shared commitment. Learn more about Dialogue Mapping.

8/7/08 update to this post:  The great folks at Moo are offering all NCDD Austin attendees 10% off up to three sets of Moo MiniCards. Just use the discount code 78DEYK at checkout to save a couple bucks on each pack.

One thing that’s great about NCDD conferences is the feeling you get when you make new connections you know you’ll have for a long time, or when you put faces to the names of people you’ve read about or connected with via NCDD’s listservs or website. But you meet so many people at the conferences that those faces can start to blur even before the event is over!

Ever since I ordered my first set of Moo MiniCards, with images of our first three conferences on them, I’ve been dreaming about how cool it would be if we asked every participant at our 2008 conference to order Moo cards for themselves (yes, I dream about such things). Moo cards are just $20 for 100 full-color cards, and if we can encourage people to upload pictures of themselves for their cards, it will undoubtedly help us remember who we connected with in Austin.

I take my Moo cards with me to every event I attend now, and people’s reactions are always the same: “What a great idea!” “These are the coolest cards I’ve ever seen.” “How can I get some of these?” Well, you order them from Moo.com. They ship from the U.K., but shipping to the states is only about $5. I recommend uploading about 5 to 10 pictures – although you can upload 100 different photos if you want. And I recommend brightening your photos up a bit before uploading them.

Oh – and you can always get Moo cards printed to advertise your workshop (we’re getting some to advertise the conference), a new book, or whatever.

Feel free to add a comment to let me know what you think of Moo cards and the idea of encouraging all conference participants to bring Moo cards with them with their face shots on them. Any ideas you have about HOW to encourage all of our participants to do this would be more than welcome as well!

All members of the 2008 conference planning team were asked, if possible, to participate in one of two introductory conference calls. The calls took place on January 17th and 21st, and a total of 41 people participated in the two calls. The calls allowed me to talk to everyone about how NCDD conferences are different from typical conferences and to share some of things I think will make NCDD 2008 our best event yet. They also allowed planning team members to hear each other’s voices and learn a bit about what each other does and what their hopes are for the event.

Both calls went surprisingly well for such large calls, and it was wonderful to start hearing people’s ideas and hopes for the Austin conference. Below are some notes I prepared for my segment of the call, and I’d appreciate it if all planning team members who couldn’t make it on one of the calls (or who just joined us!) could take a few minutes to look this over.

We also have PDFs of the notes for each call, and these focus on what team members had to say during their introductions and during some brainstorming/Q&A time, so please look these over as well.

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Windy Lawrence, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Houston – Downtown (and member of the conference planning team) asked me to post the following request to the conference blog. She invites everyone in the D&D community to share their ideas using the comments feature.

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I’m helping to research innovative networking session strategies for the upcoming NCDD conference and I could really use your input.

Sandy mentioned to me that in the past, NCDD has tried different things to help conference participants network – using methods like Open Space (pictured) and World Cafe to help people meet each other, having people self-organize topics during receptions so people can identify others who share their interests, etc. But, as always, we’re looking for innovative new ways to foster quality networking and relationship building at the next NCDD conference – and we’re especially interested in ideas that work well for introverts as well as extroverts.

Beyond the traditional networking that goes on at conferences (time between sessions, meals, etc.), we’d love it if you could tell us about:

• a networking activity or strategy you’ve experienced that was particularly innovative or effective
• people or organizations you think we should talk to about this, or resources you’re aware of that could help us
• any ideas you have about innovative networking activities we should consider for NCDD 2008

Please post your ideas and feedback here, or email it directly to me at . I will be keeping track of all of the input I receive here.

Thanks!!

Windy

Windy Y. Lawrence, Ph.D.
Department of Arts & Humanities
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
University of Houston – Downtown
1 Main Street #S1009-C
Houston, Texas 77002
713-221-8472