This post was submitted via the add-to-blog form by NCDD Supporting Member Avis Ridley-Thomas.  Contact Avis at Days of Dialogue at aridley-thomas@daysofdialogue.org with any questions.

20 years ago, Los Angeles experienced devastating civil unrest, resulting in a billion dollars of property damage and over 50 lives lost. On Friday, April 27, 2012, Los Angeles will come together in a Dialogue on how to make our community stronger. The Dialogue will be held at the First AME Church Renaissance Building. First AME Church was where many gathered the night of the verdict that was the spark to the demonstration of disbelief and rage.  Visit www.daysofdialogue.org to learn more.

Submitted by Dawn Dole, executive director of the Taos Institute (an NCDD organizational member) via the Add-to-Blog form…

Join us in beautiful Mission Bay San Diego, CA for a Taos Institute conference, Nov. 14-17, 2012, titled “Exploring Relational Practices in Peacebuilding, Mediation and Conflict Transformation: From the Intimate to the International.” Practitioners, academics and community members will come together to share and create new forms of practice for peacebuilding informed by social construction. We will feature relational, collaborative, and appreciative practices for conflict transformation and mediation in families, organizations, communities, and the world.

There could not be a more important moment for this gathering. As inequality, interpersonal violence, community conflict, environmental demise, political unrest, terrorism, and general global unease proliferate, it becomes increasingly important for us to share and expand our relational resources to create peacebuilding opportunities among people, communities, and nations. Participants will develop and share ways of moving from conflict-saturated relations to collaborations across divides of meaning.

Our time together will both educate and bring to life new forms of practice and new projects large and small that inspire innovative ways of going on together. General registration is $590 before September 15th; all registration rates are listed at www.taosinstitute.net/registration-sandiego.

In principle, it’s rarely beneficial to say the first thing that comes to mind. I do not have to say the first thing I think. Even when there’s a sense of urgency — especially when there’s a sense of urgency — I’m better off if I take time to breathe, reflect, and consider my words before speaking them.

A reflective pause helps me avoid saying something that I will later regret. When I say regretful things it causes unnecessary tension and potentially huge inefficiencies in my group.

Practical Tip: In a group setting, honor a moment of silence before and after each comment, like bookends. If tensions in a group are dangerously high, call for a break or a few moments of silence before proceeding. As a group participant, refrain from hasty reactions.

We have heard, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” There is a healthy alternative: “Don’t just do something, sit!”

Thank God I have learned the value of placing a pause between receiving and reacting. I have seen how the peacefulness of one breath can avert a windstorm of trouble.

In an April 13th media advisory, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) announced that spitfire David B. Smith will step down as its executive director this fall. Smith was selected to lead the operations of the congressionally chartered non-profit in January 2008. He will be returning to his home state of California to seek new civic leadership opportunities with his wife, Maya Enista Smith, who will remain Chief Executive Officer of Mobilize.org.

Under his leadership, NCoC has seen a rebirth of its namesake annual conference and has expanded the Civic Health Index program from a single national report to partnerships in more than 25 states and cities around the country.

See the full announcement here, but some NCDDers will be interested to know that a search committee has been formed to conduct a national search for a successor to Smith. Prospective candidates and other interested parties may find transition information at www.NCoC.net/leadership or by email at NCoC@transitionguides.com.

Also note that NCoC’s 67th Annual National Conference on Citizenship is set to take place this September 14 at the National Constitution Center (www.NCoC.net/conference). The 2012 Conference is being held in conjunction with the 225th anniversary of the US Constitution and is themed “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Exploring the Link Between Civic Engagement and Employment.”

I found this post by Katie Knobloch, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, on the Participedia website.  I wanted to share it here on the NCDD blog since it might be of interest to our members who teach at colleges and universities.  I’m proud to say I’ve played a small role in the development of Participedia, and plan to continue working with Pat Scully and others on the Participedia team to roll out what promises to be a valuable resource for our field.

This winter, I asked students in my 400-level Political Deliberation course at the University of Washington to create or substantially revise an entry for Participedia. The project was designed to give students an opportunity to learn about participatory projects, analyze and evaluate those projects, and create published content for a web site. To learn how to use Participedia in your classroom, simply visit the course assignment page, there you’ll find detailed instructions for a sample assignment (adaptable for a variety of different levels and needs) and a suggested grading rubric.

The assignment builds off of a project originally developed by John Gastil, at Pennsylvania State University, who created it in the Spring of 2010 for his own Political Deliberation course at UW. Since then, Graham Smith of the University of Southampton and Rodolfo Lewanski of the University of Bologna, Italy have also used this assignment in their courses. After the launch of the new, beta version of Participedia in December 2011, I revised the assignment to meet the needs of the new platform.

For this project, students worked in teams or as individuals to choose a participatory case, method, or organization, research that case, and eventually create content for the site. Although students were initially a bit concerned about the complexity of the project, they quickly began to understand its importance and the opportunity it offered them to develop their writing skills and learn about participatory governance. (more…)

Whether you’re new to a city or a long time resident, you almost certainly have knowledge and perspectives you can share with and learn from your neighbors. If cities had one spot where they could collect and capture the spirit of a thriving area, they might just increase collaboration and knowledge dissemination across an entire region.

LocalWiki is a project devoted to sharing the world’s local knowledge. Communities can download their free, open-source software that serves as a content management platform to include wiki pages, images, and mapping. Supported by the Knight Foundation, LocalWiki, after just one year, has had over 180 independent groups install its software. LocalWiki software has been installed 180 times, possibly by 180 different communities. Out of these 180 installs, we’ve been told that possibly around 40-50 communities are currently experimenting with the software and/or building out new projects. There’s around 15 projects that Philip Neustrom, Executive Director of LocalWiki, has personal knowledge of that are building out strong projects that will launch in the next several months. Additionally, some folks who have installed the software are using LocalWiki for non-local stuff, like this learning website: http://joincollage.com/classes.

Case Study: The Triangle Region

The Triangle Region of the area around Raleigh, North Carolina is LocalWiki’s second focus community now equipped with a way to share culture, places, and current events. At its official public launch mid-March, the community-centric Wikipedia type website was brimming with local history, media, opinions, and interesting characters of Raleigh-Durham. (more…)

Please check out www.interfaithpeacewalk.org and join us if you’re able on April 29, 2012 in Philadelphia at 2:00 p.m. (18th and Spruce St.) for a walking dialogue among Muslims, Jews, Chrisitians, Sikh’s, Buddhists, Hindus, Krishna’s and other religious and secular groups who want to promote communication, dialogue and peace within our city and world.

Submitted via NCDD’s Add-to-Blog form at www.ncdd.org/submit.

This post was submitted by Public Conversations Project’s Chloe Kanas via NCDD’s add-to-blog form…

Once a month, Public Conversations Project hosts Movie + Discussion Night, an activity open to the public. On these nights, we gather in Watertown, MA to watch films that raise issues about diversity, bridging differences, and relating to others in stressful personal and social contexts. In the discussion that follows, the group considers the impact of these issues on how we live together in families and as members of the human community. (more…)

Join us for next month’s NCDD “Confab Call” on Thursday, May 10th from 2:00 to 3:30 EST (register here).  This month’s featured NCDDers are Tree Bressen and Sue Woehrlin, who will be talking with us about the innovative Group Works card deck and the collaboratively-developed pattern language it conveys — and of course sharing a variety of uses for the cards.

NCDD’s “Confab calls” are opportunities for members of the NCDD community to connect with each other, hear about exciting projects in our field, and explore our field’s most pressing challenges.

The Group Works deck consists of 91 full-color cards – as well as a five-panel explanatory categories card and a booklet explaining the purpose and history of the project and suggesting uses for the cards in group process work.

Each card depicts and describes a “pattern” – a factor that can help you make conversations, meetings and conferences more productive and full of life.  It also directs you to other pattern cards related to the topic featured on the card you are holding.  The patterns range from “Aesthetics of space” to “Yes, and…”  They address everything from the purpose of a meeting to the relationships among the participants, from emotion to accomplishment, from creativity and spirit to courage and learning.  See a longer intro to the cards here.

Register for May’s Confab call today, at http://ncdd.org/community/confabreg-may2012, to receive the call-in details.

We’ll save the last 15 minutes of our time on the call together to hear from NCDD members who have announcements to share that are of interest to their colleagues.  Let us know on the registration form what you might want to share, so we can determine who to call on at the end of the call.  Announcements about upcoming events, job or funding opportunities, facilitation gigs, new and interesting programs… it’s all good!

I’m really excited about a book that’s about to be published by the Kettering Foundation, called Democratizing Deliberation.  We’re going to be working with Kettering to engage NCDDers around the book’s content, because we feel the book covers topics of great import to our field.  It’s always challenging for practitioners to find the time to stay on top of research in the field, so we’re going to be running NCDD’s first-ever online book club to help bridge that ever-challenging research-practice gap — and hopefully have fun doing it!

Democratizing Deliberation: A Political Theory Anthology brings together recent and cutting-edge political theory scholarship on deliberative democracy. Edited by Derek Barker, Noelle McAfee, and David McIvor, the collection reframes deliberative democracy to be sensitive to the deep conflicts, multiple forms of communication, and aspirations for civic agency that characterize real public deliberation. In so doing, the book addresses many of the most common challenges to the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

Here’s what NCDD member Katherine Cramer Walsh (University of Wisconsin-Madison) says about the book:

“This book is a great resource for deliberative democracy practitioners and scholars alike.  It puts in one place seven gems from the literature on deliberative democracy and wraps them in a concise yet thorough genealogy of the concept. This book is not just theory, however. The pieces were carefully chosen to challenge all of us to contemplate the link between talk and action. Presented in this way, the volume provides inspiration and knowledge that will nourish the practice of deliberative democracy in its wide variety of forms.”

I recommend you order your copy as soon as possible so you can participate fully in the book club NCDD will be running.

Call 1-800-600-4060 to order your copy of the 184-page book, or email your order to info@ait.net.  The list price is $15.95, but there is a 20% discount in effect until October.  In addition, Kettering is willing to send out free review copies to people who have networks of their own they can share the book with, and to faculty members who could potentially use the book as part of their curriculum.  Just email Kriss Gang at kgang@kettering.org to request a review copy if you think you may be eligible (and please let him know you heard about the book through NCDD!).

Here is a chapter list from the table of contents…

• Foreward by David Mathews
• Introduction by editors Derek W. M. Barker, Noelle McAfee, and David W. McIvor

PUBLIC REASON AND BEYOND: BROADENING CONCEPTS OF DELIBERATION

• Three Models of Democratic Deliberation by Noelle McAfee
• Rhetoric and Public Reasoning: An Aristotelian Understanding of Political Deliberation by Bernard Yack
• Difference Democracy: The Consciousness-Raising Group Against the Gentlemen’s Club by John S. Dryzek

DELIBERATION IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS: EVERYDAY TALK AND DE-CENTERED DEMOCRACY

• Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System by Jane Mansbridge
• De-centering Deliberative Democracy by Iris Marion Young

FROM TALK TO ACTION: DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE AND PUBLIC WORK

• Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities by Elena Fagotto and Archon Fung
• Constructive Politics as Public Work: Organizing the Literature by Harry C. Boyte

Check out the book flyer for more details.  And send me an email if you’re interested in serving as a chapter leader in the book club, which includes writing up a summary of your assigned chapter for the NCDD blog.