It’s been a long 3 days, but Andy and I are back home. The Boston NCDD event was wonderful yesterday, and attendees had these things to say at the event:
- “This may be the best conference I’ve ever attended.”
- “The people and conversations here have been amazing!”
- “You guys really know how to do this.”
Many people told me they were energized by the event, and reminded why the work we do in this field is so important. I feel the same way having experienced the Boston event: completely energized and reminded why I put in the long hours.
I’ve been hearing great buzz about yesterday’s NorCal NCDD event in Cupertino, too — Boston and NorCal were both on Friday, and it broke my heart that I couldn’t attend both.
Here’s some of what attendee Craig Paterson sent to his email list last night in reflection:
Today was a very good day! I attended the Northern California gathering of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) in Cupertino, CA. No surprise…it was very well planned and facilitated! The theme for the session was “Making Tough Decisions…Together”…focusing on our natural professional partnerships with city and county administrators where budget shortfalls are causing significant adjustments and turmoil. It wasn’t a good day because of all the turmoil in our current fiscal crisis…it was a good day because once again I was totally impressed with the commitment and capabilities of these NCDD professionals and government administrators.
Credit for designing these smashing events goes to our local planning teams, with a special shout-out to superstars Peg Carlson-Bowen and Jennifer Mair in NorCal and Courtney Breese and Barbara Simonetti in Boston. More props and kudos to come, for these folks and many others.
Of course, if you’re in Texas or in the Cascadia region, don’t forget to register for the Austin event next Friday (Nov 5) and the Portland event the following Saturday (Nov 13) if you haven’t already. We’ll easily have over 150 people at each of those events, and you won’t want to miss out. I’ll be attending both, so I look forward to seeing many of you there!
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 30, 2010.
Our Denver event was on Friday, and it was a smashing success! Attendee reviews are coming in now, and include:
- “The collection of people was great. Many different sectors of public life.”
- “I gained some new connections and reconnected with others, but above all for me, it always reenergizes me to get together with people passionate about this work.”
- “The energy was high, and I thought the event was a big success.”
Boston is full and NorCal is about to be capped, but you can still join us in Austin (Nov. 5) and Portland (Nov. 13) if you’d like! More details about all of NCDD’s fall regional events is posted at www.ncdd.org/events.
A huge THANK-YOU to our all-volunteer Denver Planning Team for pulling off the event with grace:
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Ashlee Stadig (Co-Team Leader), Sales Manager, The Wellshire Inn
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Anne Neal (Co-Team Leader), Dialogue Partner, Coach & President, Vision-Mission-Strategy, Inc.
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Stephen Konieczka, Doctoral Candidate & Teaching Assistant, Univ of Colorado’s Communication Dept at Boulder
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Peter Adler, President, The Keystone Center for Science & Public Policy
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Drew O’Connor, Associate, Community Initiatives Network and the Civic Canopy
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Martin Carcasson, Assistant Professor and Director, Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University
And THANK YOU to our local sponsors (below) as well as all our national sponsors!
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 25, 2010.
Steve Ressler (GovLoop Founder and President) and I have a little arrangement. He recently featured our 5 upcoming regional events on GovLoop, and I want to make sure NCDDers know about the GovUp events. In conjunction with GSA, GovLoop has been doing a nationwide (12) city GovUp tour this fall.
GovUps are free “MeetUp-style” evening networking events of fed/state/local/university govies (and future govies) with a great speaker (such as NYC Deputy Mayor, San Fran CIO). They’re a great way to network and meet government practitioners.
I know many NCDDers are already on GovLoop.com, but for those not familiar with it, GovLoop is a hopping social network that connects 35,000+ federal, state, local government innovators. I’m a big fan of GovLoop.
NCDD members are all invited to attend, and I encourage you to take advantage of these opportunities:
Click on the links above to RSVP for these free evening meetups.
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 20, 2010.
Register now for a top-notch 4-day Appreciative Inquiry Summits Workshop held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina next month (November 8-11). Dues-paying NCDD members get a 20% discount on registration! (Call 303.972.5155 for instructions on how to register with the discount – which saves you over $300).
Join Appreciative Inquiry pioneer Diana Whitney and master practitioners Barbara Lewis and Ralph Weickel as you learn to design and conduct an Appreciative Inquiry Summit. Summits accelerate organizational creativity and change by enabling groups of 50 to 3,000 people to discover their strengths and chart their collective future.
Trainers Barbara Lewis and Ralph Weickel showcase how to apply Appreciative Inquiry Summits to non-profits, communities, businesses and government initiatives. The lead for the internationally award-winning Focus on Longmont strategic planning process, Barbara Lewis will share her insights on exceptional community engagement through Appreciative Inquiry while innovative practitioner Ralph Weickel brings his entrepreneurial passion to forging exceptional organizational results. Appreciative Inquiry thought leader Diana Whitney, co-author of the best-seller The Power of Appreciative Inquiry (now in its second edition), and Appreciative Leadership will make a special presentation highlighting leading-edge Appreciative Inquiry practices. You are sure to be inspired by the many ways in which you can apply this innovative change process.
The Corporation for Positive Change (CPC) is the premier international consulting firm dedicated to the design and development of appreciative organizations and communities – those capable of sustaining innovation, financial well-being and leadership by inspiring the best in human beings. Learn more about CPC and upcoming workshops at www.positivechange.org.
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 19, 2010.
Don’t wait much longer to register for NCDD’s regional events! Boston is almost full (and we will have to close registration very soon), and Denver is a little over a week away! All 5 events are attracting some impressive participants, and you can see the attendee list on each of the registration pages. Altogether, we have about 350 attendees so far!
Like all NCDD events, these events are member-led, highly participatory, and highly creative, and they are bringing together extraordinary people you’ll enjoy meeting and networking with.
Register today or to look over the attendee list by clicking on the event near you at this link:
www.eventbrite.com/org/541747874?s=1990243
And if you’re not able to join us and haven’t signed on as a sponsor or partner, consider showing your support by making a small donation to the event of your choice. We’ll use it to help students and others attend, and contributions of $20 or more will be acknowledged on the NCDD site.
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 13, 2010.
Check out this great new video about AmericaSpeaks’ recent national discussion on the nation’s fiscal challenges. AmericaSpeaks is one of our national sponsors for the upcoming regional NCDD events.
The core video is only about 6 minutes long, but included at the end are several minutes of interviews with participants and partners about their experience at the event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfOqh_yKPR0
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 12, 2010.
NCDD is partnering with the Security and Sustainability Forum (SSF) to promote its upcoming webinars. SSF hosts free monthly webinars featuring decision makers who share the status and direction of programs that protect the environment, promote clean energy and address the integrity of the nation’s borders and infrastructure.
SSF welcomes NCDDers to register for the free webinar Civic Engagement for Rivers, which will take place October 20 from 2:15 to 3:15, and features two NCDD members: Carolyn Lukensmeyer (AmericaSpeaks) and Tim Bonnemann (Intellitics).
I encourage you to participate! You will join government officials, contractors and vendors, business services firms, financial and investment firms, law firms, researchers, and specialty companies to hear from leaders in civic engagement. View a preview of the webinar here.
Civic Engagement for Rivers: Build Success into your Sustainability Projects, led by Founder, America’s Waterway, Anne Lewis will include panel members: Robyn Colosimo, The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), White House; Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks; and Tim Bonnemann, founder and CEO of Intellitics, Inc.
Online: October 20, 2010 2:15 – 3:45pm EDT, Registration Open Now! (more…)
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 8, 2010.
We’re bringing the much-loved National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation to you this year, with NCDD members stepping up to organize regional one-day events in Austin, Boston, Denver, Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area this fall. The events will connect community leaders, public managers and practitioners to help build knowledge and capacity in solving tough community problems regionally through dialogue, deliberation and action.
The events are quite the community effort, with dozens of people donating their time and expertise to put on valuable events, and with numerous national, regional and local organizations showing their support of the events by becoming sponsors. We created this post to acknowledge and thank our amazing national (All-Star) and local sponsors.
It’s not too late to add your own organization (or yourself) to the list of Sponsors and Partners! All-Star Sponsors contribute $1500, Sponsors contribute $500, and Partners contribute $250 to help offset event costs and foster local and national networking and knowledge-sharing (more info on sponsorship).
Our All-Star Sponsors for all 5 upcoming NCDD regional events:
Learn more about our amazing All-Star Sponsors.
Our Sponsors for the Northern California event:
- De Anza College’s Institute for Community & Civic Engagement (our co-host)
- City of Cupertino (our co-host)
- BayNVC
- California Forward
- Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership
- The Institute for Local Government’s Public Engagement and Collaborative Governance program
- Public Dialogue Consortium
Our Partners for the Northern California event:
- Cohousing California
- Common Knowledge
- Community At Work
- Institute for Conflict Analysis and Engagement at Antioch University Midwest
- Municipal Management Association of Northern California
- San Francisco Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NEN)
- SEEDS Community Resolution Center
- Deborah Goldblatt of Wiser Together
Learn more about our NorCal Sponsors and Partners.
Our Sponsor for the Denver event:
- Conflict Resolution Institute at the University of Denver
Our Partners for the Denver event:
- Co-Intelligence Institute
- Corporation for Positive Change
Learn more about our Denver Sponsors.
Our Sponsors for the Austin event:
- St. Edward’s University, New College (our host)
- The City of Austin
- Bluebonnet Hills Christian Church
- Capital Metro
- E3 Alliance
- Lower Colorado River Authority
Our Partners for the Austin event:
- American Planning Association, Central Texas Section
- Civic Engagement Initiative of the UT Center for Sustainable Development
- Community Action Network
- Conflict Resolution Center at the University of Texas in Austin
- Greenlights
- Liveable City
- Omega Point International, Inc.
- United Way Capital Area
- Juli Fellows, Ph.D.
- Linda Anderson Welsh, Ph.D.
Learn more about our Austin Sponsors and Partners.
Our Sponsors for the Boston event:
- University of Mass. Boston’s Office of Public Collaboration (our host)
- Clark University Difficult Dialogues Initiative
- Consensus Building Institute
- The Democracy Imperative
- Englewood Area Community Foundation
- Meister Consultants Group
Our Partners for the Boston event:
- Diapraxis
- New England Center for Civic Life at Franklin Pierce University
- Orton Family Foundation
Learn more about our Boston Sponsors and Partners.
Our Sponsors for the Portland event:
- City of Portland, Office of Neighborhood Involvement (our host)
- Healthy Democracy Oregon
Our Partners for the Portland event:
- Co-Intelligence Institute
- Countywide Community Forums of King County
- IAP2 Cascade Chapter
- Policy Consensus Initiative (PCI)
Learn more about our Portland Sponsors and Partners.
Thank you, so much, to all our Sponsors and Partners, for helping NCDD make these events successful!
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 4, 2010.
If you’re based in Colorado, please plan to join us at the networking luncheon and dialogue we’re holding in Denver on Friday, October 22nd at The Wellshire Inn. We will meet at 10:30am at the Wellshire, and enjoy lunch and group discussions until 3:30pm. After 3:30, you are welcome to stick around for additional networking and an early happy hour!
The planning team is putting together a great program, with impressive leaders in public engagement playing various roles:
- Peggy Kerns, Director of the Center for Ethics in Government of the National Conference of State Legislatures
- Peter Adler, President of the Keystone Center
- Martin Carcasson, Director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University
- Stan Deetz, Director of the CU Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration and Creative Governance
- Paul Alexander, Director of the Regis University Institute for the Common Good
- Amanda Roman, Executive Director of the Citizens in Charge Foundation
- Steve Konieczka, Doctoral Candidate in UC Boulder Communication Department
- Drew O’Connor, Co-Director of the Civic Canopy
Register now at http://ncdddenver.eventbrite.com. Registration is just $30 for dues-paying NCDD members and students ($40 for others).
Our amazing All-Star Sponsors (for all 5 upcoming events) include the National Conference of State Legislatures, AmericaSpeaks, the Public Conversations Project, Everyday Democracy, the Citizens in Charge Foundation and the University of Mass. Boston Office of Public Collaboration.
We’re excited to say that the Conflict Resolution Institute at the University of Denver has stepped up as a sponsor of the Denver event, but they could use some company so let me know () if you’d like more info about sponsorship!
Posted by Sandy Heierbacher on October 1, 2010.
