How to Share Stuff with the NCDD Network
There are a whole slew of ways to share relevant news, resources and thought pieces with the dialogue & deliberation community through NCDD. Here’s your how-to guide…
NCDD Community blog
Use the form at www.ncdd.org/submit to create draft posts directly in the NCDD Community blog. Posts here should focus on timely news (i.e. job/facilitation openings, funding opportunities, current D&D programs, proposed projects you want input on) or interesting commentary. This is our long-running main blog, which is shared automatically on our Facebook page, our LinkedIn group, our Twitter feed, GovLoop, and our director Sandy Heierbacher’s Facebook wall. Only NCDD members can post to the main blog, unless you’ve been invited to post something by a staff or Board member.
We also encourage NCDD members who have already vetted a new idea (on the listserv, Facebook group, conference, etc.) and know it to have some support from the community, to post their idea on the Idea Incubator at http://ncdd.org/post-an-idea. The Idea Incubator form creates a special post on the NCDD Community blog, meant to help keep momentum going and provide people with a home base for their idea.
Resource Center
Use the form at www.ncdd.org/rc/add to add resources to the NCDD site. Over 2,700 resources are described, categorized, and archived here: books, videos, articles, evaluation tools, dialogue guides, organizations and programs, web-based databases, blogs, handouts, and more. Resources should be meaty, descriptive, and useful for a long-term archive (in other words, not just a tweet-length post with your new book’s title and link!).
Once approved for the Resource Center, your resource will be automatically posted on NCDD’s Facebook page, LinkedIn group, Twitter feed, GovLoop, and our director Sandy Heierbacher’s personal Facebook wall and Twitter feed.
NCDD’s Listservs
NCDD runs over a dozen email discussion lists and announcement lists, powered and donated by L-Soft’s LISTSERV®. You’ll find instructions for subscribing and posting to all the lists at www.ncdd.org/listservs. All lists are moderated to eliminate spam and keep content relevant to the lists’ focus.
The NCDD Discussion list is our most active and most popular listserv. Most NCDD members (and some non-members) are subscribed, and it’s hands-down the best way to truly connect with NCDDers (i.e. not just share posts). You must be subscribed to post to the list, and subscribers should familiarize themselves with the list’s ground rules. The NCDD Discussion list can be a wonderful resource if you’re looking for advice or resources from thoughtful professionals and up-and-comers who are generous with their know-how and experience.
Our other lists provide a quick way to share relevant announcements, questions, and requests with NCDDers in specific regions (CA, Central TX, CO, Boston, New England, Cascadia, DC) or with specific interests (higher ed, newbies, and making-a-living/job announcements).
NCDD’s Monthly Updates
Over 25,000 people are currently subscribed to NCDD’s monthly email updates. If you’d like to see something shared in an NCDD Update, email NCDD’s director Sandy Heierbacher (sandy [at] ncdd [dot] org) with details. Generally, we’ll ask you to submit your item to the Community blog or Resource Center, and it will be listed in the next Update as one of the latest additions to the site. Special announcements of broad import to our field may be featured more prominently, especially if NCDD is playing a role in the project.
NCDD’s Facebook group
With over 2,200 members, our Facebook group (www.facebook.com/groups/ncddnetwork) is a great place to connect with other movers-and-shakers in dialogue & deliberation, to pose questions about D&D, and to share your own news and resources. Join the group, wait for your group membership to be approved (this slows down those with ill intent since posts aren’t moderated), then introduce yourself and post. Note that people who add posts unrelated to group process and public engagement are removed from the group quickly so content remains focused.
NCDD’s Facebook page
We’re using our newish Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ncddpage) to automatically share posts from the many great blogs run by members of NCDD (and a few valuable Facebook pages of members who don’t have blogs). If you like to stay on top of what’s happening in our field without checking dozens of different websites, we can’t emphasize enough how useful the NCDD page truly is!
You’re more than welcome to post news, announcements, questions, commentary — anything related to public engagement or conflict resolution — on the NCDD Facebook page. Of course, you have to “like” us first! We have over 800 fans or “likes” on the page as of October 2012.
NCDD’s LinkedIn group
Our LinkedIn group has 1,000 members as of February 2012, and it’s a great place to start discussions with professionals in our field. It’s also an easy place to post relevant announcements. Join the group at www.linkedin.com/groups/National-Coalition-Dialogue-Deliberation-NCDD-990997. Our LinkedIn group is managed by NCDD member John Cavanaugh of Cross Cultural Communications LLC.
Twitter tags
NCDD can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ncdd, so please follow us! When you want people in the D&D community to see your tweets, we recommend adding the hashtags #ncdd and #demopart (short for democratic participation) at the end of your tweets.
YouTube playlists
NCDD’s director, Sandy Heierbacher, took the time to sort hundreds of the best D&D-related videos on YouTube into 10 public playlists. At http://www.youtube.com/user/sheierbacher/videos?view=pl you’ll find playlists featuring D&D events, videos about D&D, how-to videos for facilitators, graphic recording videos, NCDD videos, and more. Let Sandy know about your YouTube video related to dialogue, deliberation, public engagement, or group process, and she’ll add it to the appropriate playlist(s). The best way to contact her about videos is via direct message on Facebook rather than email (which gets buried too quickly).
We’re still experimenting with Pinterest, but you can follow Sandy’s boards at www.pinterest.com/heierbacher/ if you’d like — including several on public engagement and social media. Sandy created a joint pinboard titled “Latest in Public Engagement” that you are especially encouraged to follow and pin to! Email sandy@ncdd.org to request to be added to the joint pinboard. As of November 2012, the board has 375 followers and 25 pinners (contributors). We’d love to add more!
NCDD’s Members Network
NCDD members can also share news, requests, and commentary with other members via the NCDD Members Network — our interactive online member directory at www.ncdd.org/members. Just log in and look for the little box that asks you to post something or add an update. Email NCDD’s office manager, Joy Garman, if you forgot your login details. (Please note: we’re looking for a good alternative to the SocialEngine platform we currently use for the members network, so please forgive the bugs and let us know if you have ideas!)
That should do it for now. 
There are a few more social media tools we’ll add later (Slideshare and Pinterest, for example), and we haven’t even mentioned our face-to-face events and confab calls, but we’ll be sure to update this page periodically.
