In Eugene, Oregon, the Co-Intelligence Institute is engineering a community-focused process to increase local capacity for healthy, creative group dialogue. By combining trainings and workshops with a series of dialogues around a substantive issue — in this case, the economy — we plan to demonstrate the generative power of group process even as we stimulate conversations that strengthen the Eugene community. We’re calling the project “Let’s Talk: Our New Economy,” and we’re holding the opening events early next month. The people of Eugene are no ... (continue)

Harry Boyte, Director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College, asked me to share with the NCDD community an article he co-wrote with Blase Scarnati for the Huffington Post (published 5/3/12), titled “Building Democracy Colleges: A Different Kind of Politics.” The article begins… A fit with the season of tornadoes across the nation this year, the Citizens United Versus the Federal Elections Commission court decision has unleashed a venomous tsunami of attack ads by Super PACs. The political weather threatens to get worse ... (continue)

Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff are offering A Master Class on June 11th and 12th for professionals in community, organization, and personal development, in Philadelphia, PA at the Crowne Plaza Philadelphia West. The regular fee for the course is $695, but the discount we’ve negotiated for dues-paying NCDD members brings the rate to $556. Marvin and Sandra’s Master Class, titled “What Would You Do If…?”, uses eight of their “ten principles for leading meetings that matter,” as described in the book, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There! (Berrett-Koehler, 2010). They ... (continue)

I saw this on the Participatory Budgeting Project website and thought I’d mention it here as well. Looks like Vallejo, California just approved the first city-wide participatory budgeting process in the US! Residents will decide how to spend around $3 million from new sales tax revenue. The April 20, 2012 article about this in the Times Herald seems to no longer be available, but here is a segment from the article… The City Council of Vallejo, California, approved the first city-wide Participatory Budgeting process in the ... (continue)

I got a nice message yesterday from Robert Luskin at the University of Texas at Austin, asking me to pass along the following announcement to the NCDD network.  Bob has worked with Jim Fishkin on Deliberative Polling projects for many years, for those not familiar with the name. I’ll be offering a one-week course on “Deliberative Polling and the Empirics of Deliberation” at the ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) Summer School in Methods and Techniques at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) from July 30 ... (continue)

Offered in a partnership between the World Cafe Community Foundation and Fielding Graduate University and co-presented by Amy Lenzo and Bo Gyllenpalm, both pioneers in the adapting the World Cafe format to an online environment, Hosting World Cafe: A World Cafe Signature Learning Program covers the fundamentals of World Cafe hosting in an accessible asynchronous format convenient and adaptable to any schedule. A robust learning experience, the course also offers graduates 6 CEUs. This online (distance-learning format) program runs from May 6 – June 6 ... (continue)

Jim Smith, Senior Public Information Officer at Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco, asked us to let NCDDers know about this opportunity… The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air District) is requesting proposals from all qualified firms experienced in social marketing to influence behaviors at the community-scale. Bidders should be experienced in bringing together businesses, civic organizations and local governments to collectively develop and implement collaborative, community-wide air pollution reduction programs. Bidders should demonstrate the capability to foster innovative ideas among team members. The ... (continue)

Both in the U.S. and around the world we find ourselves in a dramatic period of civic awakening. We know this work and ideas under different names: public engagement, deliberative and participatory democracy, collaborative governance, educating for democracy and civic learning, public work, building social capital, and strengthening democracy. We promote it using diverse means; we think about it in diverse ways. With a civic awakening all around us, in US, in the Arab world, in Russia and Burma, in India, Greece, Spain and Hungary, ... (continue)

As NCDD’s representative to the White House’s Open Government Initiative, I have attended some informative meetings and phone calls in the past month.  The purpose of this blog post is to share information about how you can get engaged and to hear your ideas for how NCDD can help to continue shaping the Open Government Initiative. The hub of open government activity at the federal level is the US’s action plan of 26 commitments to the international Open Government Partnership. The commitments that are most ... (continue)

Healthy Democracy Oregon’s ground-breaking Citizens’ Initiative Review sets the benchmark for deliberative reform and is becoming recognized as a national standard for reforming the initiative process – but its future is at stake. Based upon the pioneering work of the Jefferson Center’s Citizen Jury method of public deliberation, the CIR employs a randomly-selected, demographically-balanced panel to hear testimony on a ballot measure, deliberate and then publish its findings in the statewide voters’ pamphlet as the Citizens’ Statement — a trusted alternative to the spin and ... (continue)