NCDD member Jason Diceman, a Senior Public Consultation Coordinator with the City of Toronto, released a new version of his Dotmocracy Handbook: A simple tool to help large groups find agreement in August 2010. The Dotmocracy Handbook provides a unique set of easy-to-follow instructions for finding useful agreements among many people. At its core is the deceptively simple Dotmocracy sheet, which is a paper based facilitation tool designed to provide participants with equal opportunity to contribute to a reliable and transparent large group decision-making process. (continue)

Keypads are audience response devices that look like little calculators or remote controls. They are used in group meetings or events to collect audience responses or opinions, allowing audience members to interact with presentations, give feedback, and become more engaged in large-group settings. Keypads are often used as an added element in large-group deliberation and dialogue events. This resource lists and links to experts in keypad response system as well as mobile device response systems, as recommended by NCDD members in April 2010. (continue)

Large Group Interventions as a Tool for Community Visioning and Planning (April 2010) is an article by Janet Hammer, Director of the Social Equity and Opportunity Forum at Portland State University’s College of Urban and Public Affairs. Published in Community Development, the Community Development Society‘s quarterly journal, the article discusses the processes through which large group interventions work and their application in the field of community visioning and planning. Below is the article’s abstract. The full article can be found here. You may also be ... (continue)

The first edition of The Change Handbook, published in 1999, was the most comprehensive guide available on methods of organization and community change. The first edition provided a snapshot of a nascent field that broke barriers by engaging 'whole systems' of people from organizations and communities in creating their own future. The completely revised and updated second edition overviews 61 change methods - up from 18 in the first edition. A great introduction to large-group methods for participatory planning and redesign. (continue)

A search conference is a large-group task-oriented 'conversation' (Emery & Purser 1996). Search conferences emphasize face-to-face interaction among stakeholders to create a new community. The process of meeting and discussion engenders new ideas. The venue and seating plan of the conference are designed to engender conversation and good relationship building. (continue)

Large Group Interventions are methods used to gather a whole system together to discuss and take action on the target agenda. The Handbook of Large Group Methods offers a comprehensive review of cutting-edge Large Group Methods currently being implemented to address twenty-first century challenges in organizations and communities. Key challenges addressed include working with organizations facing serious business crisis; working in community settings with diverse interest groups; working with organizations in polarized and politicized environments, and embedding and sustaining new patterns of working together. (continue)