In preparation for our NCDD Confab call on Wednesday at 2pm on the current state of liberal-conservative dialogue, we’ve been thinking about key milestones and programs in this area that NCDD members have spearheaded or have played a major role in. Andy Fluke, NCDD’s creative director and co-founder, created a timeline for us to take a look at during this popular confab call (over 120 people have signed up so far!), to help us think about the trajectory of red-blue (or transpartisan, or political bridge-building) dialogue ... (continue)

For those of you joining us on today’s confab call at 2pm Eastern, here are a few quick links you may need… Original blog post describing the call:  http://ncdd.org/11135 Registration page in case you never signed up:  http://ncdd.org/community/confabreg-april2013 Link to download the NIF issue advisory we’ll be discussing:  http://www.nifi.org/stream_document.aspx?rID=23978&catID=6&itemID=23975&typeID=8 Hackpad page where we’re engaging during the call (optional, but recommended): http://tinyurl.com/confab4-13 Bio on Brad Rourke:  http://kettering.org/people/brad-rourke/ (continue)

The following post, written by CommunityMatters fellow Caitlyn Horose, is reposted from the Orton Family Foundation blog. CommunityMatters®, a partnership of seven national organizations including Orton [and NCDD], share the belief that people have the power to solve their community’s problems and direct future growth and change. As leaders in the fields of civic engagement and community and economic development, the partners believe that by strengthening civic infrastructure, communities can become more prosperous, vibrant places to live. Why is civic infrastructure key? Because, like the ... (continue)

I was just playing around with the awesome Debategraph one of our members (David Price) entered the Core Principles for Public Participation into, and wanted to encourage others to use this. The Core Principles are one of those NCDD tools that was created in a truly open and collaborative fashion, jointly owned and endorsed by many organizations and leaders in our field. Click on a principle to see excerpts pop up from the additional text our community crafted about what that principle looks like in practice, ... (continue)

Update 4/1/13:  Look over my summary of what we’ve gleaned so far from this great discussion!  And keep adding comments here so we can learn even more. Some of you may remember the 2004/2005 national dialogue project “Let’s Talk America.” LTA was a joint project of the Utne Institute, Conversation Cafe, World Cafe, and NCDD run in/around 2004.  The project aimed to bring Americans from all points on the political spectrum together in cafes, bookstores, churches and living rooms for lively, open-hearted dialogue to consider ... (continue)

You may have noticed the same people’s posts always showing up on your Facebook news feed lately, but you may not have realized that even your Google searches are tailored to what a not-so-thoughtful algorithm thinks you want to see. One of the most disturbing and pervasive trends happening on the interwebs is described brilliantly by Eli Pariser (board president of MoveOn.org) in this 9-minute Ted Talk. As Pariser notes in his talk, there has been a gradual shift in the way information is being posted ... (continue)

On December 17th (three days after the Newtown tragedy), NCDD launched a collaborative workspace on Hackpad to help the dialogue and deliberation community think through how we might respond — both individually and collectively — to the shooting and all it surfaced. Here is a compilation of some of the best resources that were shared on the site to help people run dialogue and deliberation programs to address the myriad social and political issues surfaced by the Newtown shooting.  The first two resources were created ... (continue)

We wrote a month ago about the extraordinary work being done in Chicago to map the city’s D&D terrain, and to launch a new Community of Practice for dialogue and deliberation innovators in the city (see the report if you haven’t already!). Now, we want to let you know about the new listserv that’s been launched to support the Community of Practice. NCDD is hosting the listserv, and those of you in and around Chicago are welcome to subscribe by sending a blank email to ChicagoDD-subscribe-request@lists.thataway.org.  You may ... (continue)

We’re excited to report that on February 4th, NCDD and the 6 other organizations in the CommunityMatters Partnership (a collective impact initiative launched by the Orton Family Foundation in June of last year), collaborated to run a workshop for 40 community leaders in Newport, Vermont. We wanted to pool our resources to offer tools and techniques to encourage broad citizen participation and improve local decision-making in a town that’s on the cusp of a lot of exciting developments that will greatly effect every resident. The one-day workshop on the 4th was ... (continue)

NCDD is the Core Collaborator of the highly regarded Dialogue, Deliberation and Public Engagement Certificate Program (DDP&E for short).  The certificate program is now hosted by Kansas State University, and the first course launches next month! We wanted to alert the NCDD community to an opportunity to learn more about the program next Wednesday at 5pm Eastern on an conference call with program leaders.  You can sign up here to participate in the call. I have heard nothing but great things about this program, which ... (continue)