Opportunities to lead workshops, innovation sessions and networking topics    

At NCDD Austin, we’re offering more ways than ever for conference participants to contribute content, share their work, and make progress on issues they care about. Here are a few you can submit proposals/ideas for now…

Call for Workshop Proposals

For every NCDD conference, we seek inspiring, educational and engaging concurrent sessions that highlight the best the dialogue and deliberation community has to offer. We look for high-quality, well thought out workshops that help meet our goals for the conference, utilize qualified presenters, and cover topics of interest to a cross-section of our participants. As much as possible, we also look for unique sessions about programs and approaches that haven’t been featured at previous NCDD conferences. And we love collaborative proposals that are submitted by several people – especially when the presenters represent different organizations and use different approaches.

For ideas and inspiration, you can read about the workshops we offered at the last NCDD conference in the 2006 conference guidebook. You can also get ideas for handouts, presentations, etc. by looking some of the 2006 workshop materials we collected.

Follow the link below to submit your workshop proposal for NCDD 2008. The deadline for workshop proposals is Friday, May 16th.

Call for Innovations

Here’s something new we’re trying this year as a way to address some of the challenges and issues that were identified at past NCDD conferences…

Have you found an innovative way to address one of our field’s major challenges, like moving from dialogue to action or policy change, or embedding collaborative processes in organizations, schools, or government? Have you addressed a specific issue area, like climate change, racism, political polarization, or gentrification in an innovative way? If so, we invite you to submit a description of your innovative project, program or strategy. We’ll select the most compelling “innovations” and match them up according to the challenge area or issue they address – then we’ll help you work with with two or three others to collaboratively plan a dynamic workshop (concurrent session) on that challenge area. Of course, you are also more than welcome to identify your own partners and collaboratively submit a workshop on your and your partners’ innovative programs using the workshop proposal form.

You can also use this form to suggest others’ Innovations for consideration, and we encourage you to do so! If it’s a good fit for the conference, we’ll contact the person associated with the Innovation and tell them how to proceed if they are interested.

Learn more about how this process will work, or follow the link below to submit your Innovation for consideration. Although the deadline for submitting Innovations is May 16th, the Innovation groups that are formed after the deadline will have two months to plan their collaborative workshop.

Call for Topics and Facilitators for the Day 1 Networking Session

On the first day of the conference, we will provide a structured opportunity for participants to meet others who share their interests. Perhaps you’d like to meet people who are working on specific issues like climate change or racism? Or maybe you’d like to meet others who do Jewish-Palestinian dialogue or facilitate World Cafe or Open Space? Maybe you’d like to meet other researchers who are at the conference, other college students, or others from outside the U.S.? Or maybe you’d like to see who’s interested in helping launch a project on bridging the partisan divide?

[Almost] anything goes, but we need you to take the initiative and propose the topic(s) that interest you. All conference participants are invited to suggest topics for this networking session – whether or not you are willing to serve as the “table host” for that topic and move the conversation forward with some light facilitation. The point of this session is networking – meeting and starting to get to know others who share your interests, so hosts will ensure people have the chance to introduce themselves and share how their work relates to the topic.

Follow the link below to suggest topics and/or offer to serve as a table host. The deadline for submitting topics is July 19th.

Pre-Conference Workshops

Our call for pre-conference events has closed and the workshops have been chosen. You can learn more by visiting our page on this year’s fantastic Pre-Conference Workshops. Also check out the 2-day post-conference training on Facilitative Disaster and Crisis Intervention offered by conference co-sponsor the Global Facilitator Service Corps.

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Check out our Support & Sponsorship Opportunities page for additional opportunities to share your work – like reserving an exhibit table, placing an ad in the conference guidebook, or including your materials in conference participants’ tote bags.