It is clear that dialogue can be distinguished from more one-sided or contentious activities like lecturing or interrogating, and still further from contentious activities like debate or courtroom proceedings. Those distinctions made, however, there yet remains a huge variety of verbal exchanges regarded as laudable (perhaps simply because they involve some seriousness and some good will) that are frequently regarded as dialogue by at least one of the involved parties but which disappointingly fail to produce any of the expected outcomes of dialogue. Aside from understanding the perhaps inescapable slippage back into debate or monologue that frequently occurs under the strain of dialogue, an enormous number of factors need to be taken into consideration before we ought to say that a dialogue was likely or possible, and/or that it succeeded or failed. This presentation attempts to catalogue the variety of such factors... (continue)

This phenomenal 36-page handout was distributed at Janette Hartz-Karp's workshop ("Breakthrough Initiatives in Governing with the People: The Australian Experience") at the 2004 NCDD Conference in Denver, Colorado. It provides detailed information about a variety of community engagement techniques, including citizens jury, consensus conference, future search, charrette, consensus forum, multi criteria analysis conference, local area forum, people's panel, deliberative poll/survey, televote/telesurvey, and e-democracy. Under each method are details about why, when and how they are used, as well as a useful how-to flowchart. (continue)

The 2004 conference guidebook is available for download in PDF format. It includes a complete schedule of events, lists all the conference sessions, workshops and post-conference trainings, along with information about the location and arts programming at the conference. The guidebook provides an excellent look at the structure of the conference. (continue)

This five-minute video shows highlights from and participant comments on the 2006 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in San Francisco. (continue)

One of the most memorable moments from NCDD's 2006 conference in San Francisco is when Japanese participant Machiko Conway stood up and grounded us with her touching story about what the date - August 6th - means to her and her family. This is a 6-minute video. (continue)

At the 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, we focused on 5 challenges identified by participants at our past conferences as being vitally important for our field to address. This is one in a series of five posts featuring the final reports from our “challenge leaders.” Action & Change Challenge: Strengthening the relationship between D&D and action and policy change. How can we increase the likelihood that D&D engagement streams of “exploration,” “conflict transformation,” and “collaborative action” will result in community action? How can ... (continue)

Please note: We are providing the following material in the format provided to us by the session leader. Most of the materials are MSOffice documents. Materials from the Pre-Conference Trainings Deliberative Democracy and Higher Education: A Workshop on Innovative Democratic Education and Leadership - Practicing What We Preach, presentation by Bruce Mallory [download file] - Venues for Democratic Leadership and Decision Making [download file] - Venues for Teaching and Learning Deliberative Democracy [download file] Materials from the Concurrent Workshops Attracting Conservative Citizens to Dialogue Events: Liberal-Conservative Campus Dialogue & Mormon-Evangelical Interfaith Initiatives - Slide Presentation [download file] ... (continue)