Here’s an Idea Incubator post from Jon Denn of organizational member A Greater Publishing… Common-sense supermajority-supported answers, to many of our most pressing problems, abound. But they cannot be easily found and honed because of the hyperpartisan smokescreen. www.aGREATER.US is the only place I know of where these ideas can be aggregated. Then rated and ranked. But the final step in honing them into a platform requires the expertise of NCDDers. I’m looking for NCDDers to adopt a topic (existing or new) and set up ... See full idea & comment!

Here’s an important opportunity for our community to provide ideas that will positively influence the evolution of public participation at federal agencies. The following is the full text of a White House blog post from December 6, 2011: On September 20, 2011, on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly, the President announced the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan.  The Plan was developed through a process that involved extensive consultations with external stakeholders, including a broad range of civil society groups and members of the private sector, ... See full idea & comment!

In tandem with the release of the US National Open Government Plan at the UN, the White House launched WeThePeople, an e-petition tool. AmericaSpeaks, IAP2USA, NCDD, and DDC are organizing a collective response from the American participation and deliberative democracy communities to offer guidance to administration officials on how it can be made as strong as possible. NCDD and organizations listed above set up an online suggestion box to aggregate our ideas on how the new platform can be approved.  We invite you to check out the White House’s petition ... See full idea & comment!

J.H. Snider, NCDD member and president of iSolon.org, put forward the following proposal to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in response to their solicitation for ideas for the Open Government Plan at opengov@ostp.gov. He begins: "Let’s take cost away as an excuse for not webcasting and recording public meetings...." See full idea & comment!

In an era where what gets measured matters, how do we measure a movement towards more participatory forms of democracy or greater transparency? I've been in conversation with a municipality that is about to develop a Charter for Citizens Engagement. Part of the challenge is that councillors want to know how they will measure progress. Any ideas? See full idea & comment!

The theme I would like to explore with NCDD is suggested by the titles of several books, including "Global Mind Change," "Global Shift," "The Global Brain," and "Towards A New World View. What is a "world view"? What is meant by "global mind change"? As I understand them they are related to what the author of the book, "Global Shift" describes as "a remarkable change ... taking place that will profoundly influence the way we see ourselves and our world." I expect that a conversation on NCDD can help us develop our understanding of what appears to be a very profound change -- and how we can relate to it. See full idea & comment!

Libraries For Democracy is a new (as of July 4th, 2011) web-based service to libraries and the general public. It encourages libraries to provide democracy and social issues related information and programming to their communities. It also provides free, non-partisan information to the public. LFD needs library members. NCDD members can help by encouraging their local libraries (public and academic) to become members and to provide programming with the help of local NCDD moderators. Please visit the LFD website at www.LibrariesForDemocracy.com, and consider becoming an ... See full idea & comment!

Looking for NCDDers in Northern New Jersey. Our foundation convenes civic and educational leaders to discuss/resolve shared problems/opportunities in the fields of Education, Public Health, and Civic Engagement. We have recently instituted “The Hackensack River Compact” as a “tent” under which six communities: Bergenfield, Bogota, Englewood, Hackensack, New Milford, and Teaneck come together to benefit together by collaborating on many projects which heretofore were not even imagined as possible. We are asking, system-wide, “What might you be able to accomplish together that you cannot alone?” ... See full idea & comment!

What would happen if professional organizers and facilitators of dialogue and deliberation decisively and publicly demonstrated their capacity to help cities and states solve their biggest problem -- collapsing budgets -- and then broadly promoted that fact? See full idea & comment!

The next Conversation Week is just around the corner: March 24-31 2011! In late 2009, Bob and Jacquelyn Pogue were offered the stewardship of Conversation Café by Vicki Robin and Susan Partnow, and the stewardship of Conversation Cafe has been transferred to Community Action Dialogues, which now serves as an umbrella for Conversation Café and Richmond Action Dialogues. Community Action Dialogues invites you to vote on your favorite questions that have been submitted for Conversation Week. Select up to ten of your favorite questions (download ... See full idea & comment!