In an article released today, Journal for Public Deliberation editor Ted Becker announced that he is leaving the post of Coordinating Editor of the Journal, which will now be housed at Kansas State University’s Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy (ICDD). The new editors of the 7-year journal (both NCDD members) are Drs. Tim Steffensmeier and David Procter of Kansas State University. They are both professors, administrators and authors in the Communications Studies Department at KSU and they will serve as the new Coordinating Editors.

The article also talks about plans to JPD to put more of an emphasis on the teaching of public deliberation in various fields in higher education. Read Ted’s full article, titled An Innovation for JPD and a Transition: The Profession and a Confession of an Editor at http://services.bepress.com/jpd/vol6/iss1/art12.

We just heard from our friends at 20,000 Dialogues about this excellent collection of resources focusing on the recent controversy involving the construction of a Mosque near Ground Zero in New York City…

“We have created www.groundzerodialogue.org, a new website where you can view several of our award-winning PBS films online, in their entirety, at no cost. We have chosen these films because they speak directly to the issue. They include: “Talking through Walls: How the Struggle to Build a Mosque United a Community”, “Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet” and “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think”.”

“In addition, as part of our ongoing 20,000 Dialogues project (www.20000dialogues.org), you and your friends can get free DVD’s and discussion guides of these films to show in book clubs, classrooms, and houses of worship. Finally, to bolster the impact of our online efforts, we are working with PBS stations around the country to rebroadcast these films.”

“Whatever your position on the specifics of the Community Center, all Americans need to take the time to understand the broader issues at stake, get to know our American Muslim neighbors, and remember our nation’s highest principles.  Through this process, we will all come out better.  Please share these films with your friends and colleagues, and help promote peace.”

Below is an August 16, 2010 news release from our friends at the Portland Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Portland is pretty ahead of the curve, in my opinion… On August 4th, the Portland City Council unanimously adopted public involvement principles to guide the City’s public involvement processes on August 4.  The principles are designed to explain what the public can expect from City government.  Principles include partnership, early involvement, building relationships and community capacity, inclusiveness and equity, good quality process design and implementation, transparency, and accountability. (more…)

For those who don’t know, we’re using NCDD’s recently-relaunched forum at http://ncdd.org/forum to gather materials and insights on the 3 focus areas for our one-day regional events in Austin, Boston, Denver, San Francisco and Portland.

Matt Leighninger (Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium), who’s working on a report on online engagement, just posted a question in the forum that he’d love your responses to.  Matt’s question asks whether you agree that there are two main ways of thinking about online engagement:  go where they are (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or create an online space and convene people there.  He asks, “Is this a fair assessment of the two main approaches? Is it too stark a contrast – perhaps most real-world projects fall somewhere in between? What are their relative strengths and weaknesses? Is there a third approach? (and a fourth?)”

Using the forum is easy:  go to http://ncdd.org/forum and click on the link to Register (if you used to participate in NCDD’s old forum, you can just log in). Then click on the title of the 4th topic down (Effective Online Engagement), click into Matt’s post and respond.

The Project on Civic Reflection will be holding two Facilitation Training Workshops in Northern California during the first week in November. The two-day workshops, hosted by Cal Corps Public Service Center (Berkeley) and California Campus Compact (Daly City), are open to interested individuals and organizations. Workshop participants may include program directors, teachers, faculty members, students, service-learning staff, national service groups, community partners, and anyone wanting to deepen community and commitment in their organizations.

NCDD Member Discounts!

You’ll find more information in this informational flyer, including a registration form. Dues-paying NCDD members pay only $225, a 10% discount off the already low registration fee of $250. Please note on the registration form that you are an NCDD member.

Participants will gain hands-on facilitation skills taught by expert trainers and be equipped to lead civic reflection discussions in their communities. They will also receive a facilitation handbook with tips and answers to frequently asked questions, a copy of The Civically Engaged Reader, and program consultation and ongoing support.

Please submit the registration form to Debbie Garbukas at . If you have questions, please contact Kelli Covey at or at 312.750.1760. Registration closes on October 1, so register soon!

The following post by NCDD members Tyrone Reitman and Elliot Shuford of Healthy Democracy Oregon is part of an ongoing effort to highlight the extraordinary people and groups involved in the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD). We encourage you to add a comment here today (or anywhere else you see a post about this).  Tyrone and Elliot will be watching NCDD’s blog, listserv, facebook and other social media, and will respond to any questions or comments you have.

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Hi, NCDD Community – Tyrone Reitman and Elliot Shuford of Healthy Democracy Oregon here. We’re just winding down a major phase of our project, the Citizens’ Initiative Review, and we wanted to share some of what we’re doing and learning with the NCDD community.

We’re pioneering an historic first for deliberative democracy in the U.S. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a model of deliberative democracy relying upon random sampling has ever been legislatively empowered and directly tied to an election in this way in the United States.

All day today (Wednesday, August 18th) we’ll be watching NCDD’s social media (blog, listserv, facebook group, linkedin group and twitter feed) so we can answer any questions you have about what we’ve been up to — and so we can learn about what you’re doing.

First, a little background:

We (Tyrone Reitman and Elliot Shuford) formed Healthy Democracy Oregon in early 2007. We were colleagues from the University of Oregon’s Public Policy Master’s Program. While in graduate school in 2003, we studied methods of citizen deliberation and democratic reform policies. A few short years later we began discussing with Ned Crosby and Pat Benn of the Jefferson Center a new proposal for using the Citizen Jury method of public deliberation to evaluate ballot measures (or propositions) as a way to provide voters with clear, useful, and trustworthy information at election time.

In 2007 and 2008 we met with legislators, refined our legislative proposal, and ran a full scale test of the Citizens’ Initiative Review process. In 2009, we successfully lobbied the Oregon Legislature to officially use the Citizens’ Initiative Review process during the 2010 general election. From August 9th – 20th, Healthy Democracy Oregon is conducting two Citizens’ Initiative Reviews; the results of which will be published and distributed to every voting household in Oregon as a prominent new part of the official statewide Voters’ Pamphlet published by the Secretary of State. Following this pilot project, a research team led by John Gastil, and funded by a $218K grant from the National Science Foundation will determine the impact of the Citizens’ Initiative Review on the election.

Now, to the Citizens’ Initiative Review:

The CIR is an adaptation of the well established Citizens Jury process to evaluate ballot measures (or propositions). Over five days, 24 randomly selected and demographically balanced voters hear from advocates and experts, deliberate, and provide an evaluation to be sent to every voter. You can learn more about the CIR and Healthy Democracy Oregon here on our website.

The first Citizens’ Initiative Review, conducted last week, was a big success. It was a review of a measure requiring mandatory minimum sentences for certain sex crimes and repeat drunk drivers. You can read about it in Oregon’s three largest newspapers here, here, and here.

This week we’re running a second CIR on a measure to legalize medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon. You can check out the live stream here, or get updates about it via Facebook and Twitter.

I look forward to discussing the CIR and more with the NCDD community today. Thanks again to Sandy Heierbacher for helping create this opportunity to share what we’re doing here in Oregon.

Best regards,

Tyrone Reitman and Elliot Shuford

Co-Directors
Healthy Democracy Oregon
[email protected] and [email protected]

I just heard from NCDD member David Kahane today that the groundbreaking Alberta Climate Dialogue project is looking to hire a Project Manager to be based in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada).

They will begin considering applications on August 27, 2010 and continue until the position is filled. The Project Manager will support the activities of a new and innovative project—the Alberta Climate Dialogue (ABCD) —in the areas of financial and budget management, organizational and event planning, research coordination, fund development, and communication and outreach. Download the full position description here: ABCD-ProjectMgrDescription. (more…)

Those of you on NCDD’s Updates list saw a message about this yesterday. NCDD is working with our members to hold 5 regional events this fall: In Denver (Oct 22), the San Francisco Bay Area (Oct 29), Boston (Oct 29), Austin (Nov 5) and Portland (Nov 13). I hope you can join us at one of these regional events!

We’re conducting a quick 10-question survey of potential attendees (and others who want to share ideas) about the 3 topic areas we’re focusing on: quality public engagement, online engagement, and collaborations that work.

Would you mind taking a few minutes to share your thoughts and ideas on these 3 topics with members of our local planning teams? Your participation will help them design more valuable and productive events!

The survey is online at www.surveymonkey.com/s/ncdd2010.

If you complete the survey by the end of the day on Friday (Aug. 13), you will have a chance to win one of the following books written and donated by NCDD members (14 respondents will win a book!):

• The Wisdom of Group Decisions by Craig Freshley (3 of these will be awarded!)
• The Leaderful Fieldbook:  Strategies and Activities for Developing Leadership in Everyone by Joe Raelin
• Communicating Across The Divides In Our Everyday Lives by Don Schneider (3 copies will be awarded)
• Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love by Adrian Segar
• Standing in the Fire: Leading High-Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage by Larry Dressler
• Next Generation Democracy: What the Open-Source Revolution Means for Power Politics, and Change by Jared Duval (3 copies will be awarded, and sent in Oct/Nov when published)
• United We Fall by Phil Neisser
• Society’s Breakthrough! Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People by Jim Rough

The survey will primarily ask you your thoughts and ideas on the following 3 topics:

• Quality Public Engagement: What is quality public engagement and how do we educate others about it so it becomes broadly adapted?
• Online Engagement: What new tools are available and how do they support effective engagement?
• Collaborations that Work: How can we strengthen connections between public administrators, engagement practitioners and the public?

Feel free to share this post with your colleagues and encourage them to complete the survey as well.  Thanks in advance for your participation!

NCDD member Joe Raelin recently published a new book he’d like NCDDers to know about, titled “The Leaderful Fieldbook: Strategies and Activities for Developing Leadership in Everyone.”  Joe will be giving out a free copy of the book to one respondent (randomly selected) of an NCDD survey we’re about to launch related to our fall events.

Here’s a synopsis of the book:

As NCDDers already know well, the flattened network world demands a new type of leadership: one that is collective and collaborative, where solutions and vision are co-created by everyone. Although foreshadowed in Joe Raelin’s Creating Leaderful Organizations, the practical application of collective leadership remains a mystery to many practicing managers and professionals.

It is evident that the development of leaderful organizations cannot happen overnight; in fact, we need agents to emerge to help us learn how to change longstanding regressive organizational cultures into more leaderful communities. When we say “leaderful,” we refer to leadership practices that are collective and concurrent – people can serve as leaders all together and at the same time.

The Leaderful Fieldbook is designed for these change agents – coaches, facilitators, OD consultants, and weavers – wishing to embark with their clients on a leaderful journey across a range of levels – from individual to network – and adopting a style of collective engagement that matches the democratic processes that they are seeking to produce. The fieldbook presents the most practical of recommendations to promote dialogue in the form of an array of exercises that can be adopted immediately across these multiple levels of experience. It also features a set of cases that demonstrate the use of the exercises in each of these levels – individual, interpersonal, team, organizational, and social network.

One of the cases in the network chapter is co-written by long-time NCDD member Rosa Zubizarreta, and also in this same chapter is an exercise on network weaving based on the Core Principles of Public Engagement co-developed by NCDD, IAP2, and the Co-Intelligence Institute. For more information, please consult the fieldbook’s website at www.leaderful.org/bookHome.html.

About the Author:

JOE RAELIN holds the Asa S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University where he is also Professor of Management and Organization Development. His research has focused on the practice of management in such areas as managing professionals, collective leadership, and work-based learning.

I wanted to encourage everyone to visit this page on the new ncdd.org site: http://ncdd.org/rc/beginners-guide

It’s our “Beginner’s Guide,” and it lists and links to some of the best resources NCDD offers, including…

• our Engagement Streams framework for helping people determine which methods fit their circumstances
• the collaboratively-created Core Principles for Public Engagement
• the town hall articles and flyer we developed for public managers last year
• a glossary of terms
• pages full of quotes about D&D

This is a great page to share with colleagues who are newer to dialogue and deliberation!

Also, for those who use the NCDD site frequently, take note of the new bottom bar.  Andy Fluke (our Creative Director), finished the bottom bar for the new site design yesterday, and it’s gorgeous and highly functional.  We’re moving a lot of navigation to the bottom of the page (administrative links, popular pages, etc.) to keep the site simpler at the top.  It also includes links to our fall events, social media buttons so people can follow us on facebook, linkedin, youtube, etc. (note: the youtube link goes to all the playlists I created of D&D videos on youtube), and a brief description of NCDD.

11 new members joined the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) during the month of July: 1 organizational member and 10 individuals (2 dues-paying and 8 non-dues). 2 non-dues members became full dues-paying members, and 22 of our dues-paying members renewed their memberships (1 organization and 21 individuals). Thanks everybody, and welcome to our new members!

We post these monthly summaries not only to welcome our new members and to thank those who re-upped, but also to help members connect with one another. Click on anyone’s name below to learn more about them and connect with them.

Our new organizational member:

Conflict Resolution Institute (Tamra Pearson D’Estrée and Karen Feste)

Our 10 new individual members (some dues-paying and some non-dues) are:

1. Janice Thomson, EU Public Engagement Advisor of Involve
2. Joel Denis, Manager of Intergovernmental Affairs at the Public Health Agency
3. Nicole Reade, University of Sydney
4. Maria Rubio, Human Rights Commission Inter-Group Dialogues
5. Elizabeth Hudson, University of Michigan
6. Jennifer Mair, Public Dialogue Consortium
7. Janice Son, Public Dialogue Consortium
8. Gregory Crowley, Coro Center for Civic Leadership Pittsburgh
9. Elizabeth Kennedy-Wong, City of Portland, Parks & Recreation
10. Timothy Shaffer, Graduate Student at Cornell University

We also had 2 of our existing members become full dues-paying members last month, which we greatly appreciate! They are:

1. Laura Keir, Conservation Ecology Student at Sterling College
2. Michael Sayler, Owner of Praxis One Consulting

In the month of July, 22 NCDDers renewed their memberships. 1 organizational member renewed:

• Common Knowledge (Susan S. Clark)

And 21 people renewed as dues-paying individual members, and those are:

1. Tina Nabatchi at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University
2. Tamyra Freeman, professional facilitator in Indianapolis, IN
3. Greg Nelson, Retired General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (Los Angeles)
4. Tim Steffensmeier at Kansas State University
5. Regina Sneed at the US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights
6. Peggy Holman with Open Circle Company and Open Space Institute
7. Marty Jacobs at Systems In Sync
8. Lou Klepner at Gateway to Gov
9. Caroline Lee at Lafayette College
10. Polly Riddims with Fusion Partnerships, Inc.
11. Lyn Carson with Centre for Citizenship & Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney
12. Rosalind Spigelf of the Jewish Dialogue Group
13. Jennifer Meigs at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs
14. Jacquie Dale with One World, Inc.
15. Hina Pendle at US Partners: Personal & Collective Evolution
16. Folorunsho Moshood at the Kettering Foundation
17. Theo Brown with AmericaSpeaks
18. Arjun Singh of British Columbia, Canada
19. Andrew Russell at the United Nations Development Program
20. Alice Warner-Mehlhorn at the WK Kellogg Foundation
21. Avril Orloff, Graphic Facilitator

Welcome and thanks, everyone!

To learn about other NCDD members (there are 1,297 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 if you have questions about your status, need payment instructions, or want to change the info on your profile page.

NCDD member Jason Diceman, a Senior Public Consultation Coordinator with the City of Toronto, has released a new version of his Dotmocracy Handbook: A simple tool to help large groups find agreement.

The Dotmocracy Handbook provides a unique set of easy-to-follow instructions for finding useful agreements among many people. At its core is the deceptively simple Dotmocracy sheet, which is a paper based facilitation tool designed to provide participants with equal opportunity to contribute to a reliable and transparent large group decision-making process.

C2D2′s Rob Janousek says this about the handbook:

An ingenious framework for participatory groups. Jason Diceman outlines the use of a very valuable tool for group based decision making in the Dotmocracy Handbook. This approach is a great way to ensure that amongst a large, heterogeneous group of stakeholders, everyone has an opportunity to express ideas and propose solutions on equal footing.

You can download a free PDF of the complete handbook at: www.dotmocracy.org/handbook

Jason has also offered members of NCDD a 25% discount on orders of printed versions of the book.

With its glossy cover, standard book binding and higher resolution photos, the print version of the handbook is ideal for educational institutions, professional learning and impressing clients.

To order print copies…

• Full colour version for $11.21 CDN, go to https://www.createspace.com/3437340 and click “Add to Cart” then apply discount code: MJP6K7AG
• Black & white version for $7.46 CDN, go to https://www.createspace.com/3442283 and click “Add to Cart” then apply discount code: YJAFNSHK
• Alternatively, you can get the print version at normal price from Amazon.com, at: http://amzn.com/145152708X

I shared this on the NCDD Discussion list today, but wanted to post it here as well for those of you not on the listserv. Our Canadian sister organization, the Canadian Community for Dialogue & Deliberation (C2D2), invites interested NCDDers to participate in a conversation (the first of an ongoing dialogue) to explore the all-important topic of evaluation of dialogue and deliberation processes.

C2D2′s Miriam Wyman, Jacquie Dale and Pattie LaCroix are the dynamic trio moving the evaluation discussion forward.

The conference call will take place on August 17 from noon-1:30pm EDT. Note that C2D2 is asking people to respond to some questions by August 9th (Monday) if they’d like to participate in the call.

And for those whose interest is piqued by this invitation, you might want to also check out the Assessment Tools category in NCDD’s Resource Center, where we currently have 30 tools listed and described.

Here’s the full invitation… (I was given permission to extend the invitation to NCDDers) (more…)

Faithful visitors to the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) website may have noticed there are some major changes going on.  We’re in the middle of transitioning our whole site from www.thataway.org to ncdd.org (don’t worry – www.thataway.org will always take people to ncdd.org automagically).  We’re not only changing URLs, though; we’re also changing our logo and site design.

We’re trying very hard to make the new site design friendlier, bolder, less overwhelming, and – most importantly – easier to navigate. We have LOTS of content on the NCDD site, with thousands of resources, newsy blog posts, discussions and member pages, so this is no easy feat!

Check out what’s now on the new site at www.ncdd.org…

NCDD’s Fall 2010 Events

Learn about the 5 one-day regional events we’re holding this October and November: in Austin, Boston, Denver, Portland, and San Francisco (and a follow-up event in Washington, DC next spring).

NCDD Resource Center

Our resources are back online and growing (there are over 2,400 of them!)… dialogue guides, D&D methods, videos, case studies, evaluation tools, articles, books, and more.

Beginner’s Guide

A good resource for everyone in our field to know about, this page lists and links to some of the best resources NCDD offers to help people understand dialogue and deliberation and get started in this work.

NCDD Forum

A social space where you can introduce yourself, post questions, and interact with other NCDDers.