Written by NCDD director Sandy Heierbacher to expand upon the text on our “What Are Dialogue & Deliberation?” page. This resource provides enough details to enable you to decide which of these leading dialogue and deliberation methods you should learn more about. In addition to looking at which methods fit your intentions, you will need to consider which methods are aligned with your resources, timeline, and the people you feel need to be involved. The text below is drawn from NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework. AmericaSpeaks ... (continue)

Possibilities for Transformational Conferences is an 8-page primer on how to plan events for 50 or more people that are interactive, engaging, and generally fabulous. Author Tree Bressen (with Debby Sugarman and Sunrise Facilitation) briefly introduces techniques for making events more participatory and engaging, including Open Space Technology, World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry, fishbowls, “speed dating,” storytelling, and more. Download at http://treegroup.info/topics/Transformational_Conferences.pdf. About Tree Bressen… From her home in Eugene, Oregon, Tree Bressen consults with a wide variety of organizations on how to have meetings that ... (continue)

Imagine Chicago is a Chicago-based nonprofit that facilitates and trains people in community visioning practices. Founded by Bliss Browne in 1992, the organization utilizes a three-step process of understanding what is, imagining what could be through collaboration, and creating what will be through action. Its community visioning and planning model incorporates Appreciative Inquiry (with an emphasis on intergenerational collaboration), Open Space Technology, the World Café, and asset based community development. This approach has inspired the creation of Imagine and other community planning projects spanning six ... (continue)

Knowledge mapping offers a tremendous resource for deliberation about issues or problems. We can lay out what we collectively know, visually clarifying relationships among the relevant factors, actors, sectors, etc., involved with the problem being deliberated. (continue)

The AI Commons is a worldwide portal devoted to the fullest sharing of academic resources and practical tools on Appreciative Inquiry and the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. This site is a resource for leaders of change, scholars, students, and business managers--and it is hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. appreciativeinquiry.case.edu (continue)

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives "life" to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. (continue)

Convened by the Institute for Advanced Appreciative Inquiry, The Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization and the Visions of a Better World Foundation, Images and Voices of Hope is an international conversation about the impact of images and stories on people, families, communities, cultures and the world. The purpose of IV of Hope is to strengthen the role of media as agents of world benefit, expanding awareness of the choices those in media make that raise public trust, generate constructive meaning, and amplify human hope, thus enhancing humanity's capacity for life-promoting action. (continue)

This concentration is designed for current and future leaders in all types of organizations (business, educational, health care, community service, government). Students learn the skills important for the creation, design and management of organizations that are able to adapt to continual changes while respecting core human values. The concentration teaches skills of leading change and of active inquiry as a means of addressing complex organizational challenges. (continue)

The Taos Institute is a community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the social processes essential for the construction of reason, knowledge, and human value. The Taos Institute's workshops and publications focus in large part on the Appreciative Inquiry method. (continue)

This quick-reading 100-page book is a how-to collection of tools that have proven to be highly effective for facilitation of group conversation about difficult topics. The book shows how to help people hear each other when they feel like shouting; how to focus on the issues at stake rather than having a war of personalities; how to employ actual practices for better understanding (interviews, small-group discussions, role-reversal presentations); and how to move a group toward making a decision that all can honestly support. (continue)