Our friends at the Participation Company are offering three great trainings this year, all of which NCDD members can get a discount on! The trainings are given within the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) framework and are a great opportunity to earn an official IAP2 certification. Learn more about the trainings in the announcement below or by clicking here. Upcoming IAP2 Training Events in 2015-16 If you work in communications, public relations, public affairs, planning, public outreach and understanding, community development, advocacy, or lobbying, this training […] (continue)

The Future Search Network, an NCDD member organization, recently shared the opportunity for NCDDers to get a great discount on two workshops they are offering later this year. These two workshops will be offered this Aug. 17-23 in Berlin, Germany and again from Dec. 7-11 in Philadelphia, PA. The early bird deadline ends August 4th for NCDDers, so make sure to register ASAP. You can learn more from the FSN announcement below. The Annual Future Search Learning Exchange We hope you can join us! Future Search has events scheduled for August […] (continue)

We encourage you to mark you calendars and register for a useful webinar being offered next week by MetroQuest, an NCDD member organization. MetroQuest is hosting this online event titled “Going Viral: How Your Project Can Engage Thousands Online” on Wednesday, July 29th from 1 – 1:45pm EST. This webinar will be a quick and easy way to learn more about how to engage a bigger online audience, and we know it could be helpful to many of our members. Here’s how MetroQuest describes the event. This free webinar will […] (continue)

We want to encourage our network to check out the fascinating video that the National Issues Forums Institute – an NCDD organizational member – made recently to showcase how their signature deliberative forums can be amazing learning exercises in everyday classrooms. Here’s what NIF said in their recent blog post about the video: This 19-minute YouTube video features students in Wisconsin and Alabama as they participate in deliberative forums using materials from the National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI). In Birmingham, Alabama, teacher, Zakiya Jenkins, with […] (continue)

Those of you within driving distance of Boston won’t want to miss this event at UMass Boston on the 20th… A partnership involving the Public Conversations Project, University of Massachusetts Boston’s Center for Peace, Democracy and Development, and the Bridge Alliance (which NCDD is part of) is hosting Boston’s first Transpartisan movement event at UMass Boston on June 20th, from 10am to 4pm. This event is part of a national series of gatherings aimed at shifting our polarized political landscape, and finding more constructive ways to communicate across […] (continue)

As we recently announced on the blog, NCDD is hosting another one of our Tech Tuesday events next Tuesday, June 9th from 2-3pm EST, this time featuring NCDD Member Matthew Crozier, CEO and Co-Founder of Bang the Table. Don’t forget to register before it’s too late! Matthew’s talk will offer lessons on engaging communities online, risk management in online spaces, and doing online engagement work when resources are scarce. He’ll also touch on Bang the Table’s online engagement platform EngagementHQ as well as the Budget Allocator, their participatory budgeting tool. […] (continue)

We recently mentioned here on the blog that the pivotal Frontiers of Democracy conference is happening in Boston this June 25th – 27th, and the conference itself is reason enough to make the trip. But with the announcement of two pre-conference workshop, both headed by NCDD members, there’s even more reason to attend. Both of these pre-conference sessions will happen on Thursday, June 25th from 1-4pm, so unfortunately, you have to choose one, but both promise to be excellent learning opporutinities. NCDD Supporting Member Cornell Woolridge, […] (continue)

We encourage you to check out what promises to be a fascinating webinar that the Participatory Budgeting Project, an NCDD member organization, is hosting on Thursday, June 4th from 2-3pm EST / 11am-12pm PST.  The webinar is titled “Democratizing Schools with Participatory Budgeting” and will be an in-depth discussion of the nation’s first school-based participatory budgeting (PB) processes, featuring representatives from PB projects at schools in San Jose, CA and Chicago, IL. The webinar will seek to use insights from these cases studies to explore the impact that democratic processes like PB can have on young people, […] (continue)

We want to encourage our members to take a look at the newest issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation, which is not just a great resource for our field, but also features the work of some of our great NCDD members. The JPD itself is a joint effort between two NCDD organizations – the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and the International Association of Public Participation. You can find the list of articles in this issue below with links to their abstracts and full PDF downloads. We encourage you to learn more […] (continue)

We are happy to share the announcement below from NCDD Supporting Member Amy Lenzo of weDialogue. Amy’s announcement came via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog! I’m excited to be offering four online courses over the next three months – each a short series packed with learning and inspiration. Two are official “World Cafe Signature Learning Programs” co-hosted by Amy Lenzo and Samantha Tan, and two are original, long-requested offerings from […] (continue)