I’m excited to launch a new tool on the NCDD website to help you share your success stories more broadly The draft tool can be found at www.ncdd.org/storytelling-tool and I encourage everybody to take a look and give the tool a test drive by entering one of your dialogue and deliberation projects! For a long time now, NCDD has wanted to find a way to collect more stories from our members about their dialogue and deliberation projects.  We’re working with both the Kettering Foundation and Participedia.net to broaden ... (continue)

Here’s an important announcement from John Spady of the National Dialogue Network project… Hello friends, I have important results to share with everyone! The National Dialogue Network (NDN) conducted a survey in April 2013. A total of 415 people participated (including both self-selected and random panel responses). Each participant ranked their top five choices from a provided list of twenty-two issue titles to identify the top issue for our inaugural 2013 national conversations that will take place in communities across the U.S. in September. The top ranked issue ... (continue)

Last fall, Participatory Budgeting Project donors voted to fund a new PB Intro Video – a tool that could be widely used to introduce people to PB at meetings and online, and to promote the process to government officials, community groups, and funders. The PBP staff and advisory board (I’m on the advisory board!) are thrilled to share a preview of the video with you, and we hope you’ll help push it to the next level. We’re so excited about the video’s potential to raise the profile of ... (continue)

I’m excited to share the news today that Pete Peterson of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement & Civic Leadership (an organizational member of NCDD) just announced his candidacy for Secretary of State in California.  Pete has been involved in NCDD since 2008, and I’m a huge fan of his. He was part of our “panel of conservatives” who support public engagement work at our 2008 national conference in Austin (along with Grover Norquist), and we asked him to play a speaking role again at ... (continue)

Hello again friends, This is a quick update from John Spady on the opinions collected so far to help determine the inaugural issue for the 2013 conversations from the National Dialogue Network (this project received the endorsement of the NCDD voting membership in January 2013). At the bottom of this post is a link to the latest results — updated daily until the survey closes on April 30th. And if you haven’t yet contributed your own voice to these results, you can click here to ... (continue)

NCDD is holding a meetup for our members (and potential members) right before this year’s Frontiers of Democracy conference begins at Tufts right outside Boston in Medford, Mass.  We have so many fabulous NCDDers in the area, and we’ll also have some exciting members coming in from outside the region, so we thought this would be a good opportunity for us to get together. Whether or not you’ll be attending the Frontiers conference July 18th through 20th (http://tinyurl.com/ceezm9u), if you’re within driving distance of Boston, please ... (continue)

This post was submitted by John Spady, Coordinator of the National Dialogue Network — winner in the Civic Infrastructure category of the recent NCDD Catalyst Awards. Update:  The deadline has been extended until April 30, 2013. “We need a national dialogue about… X” — but how can we actually do it? After weeks of talking, planning, and preparation, the “working group” team of volunteers with the new National Dialogue Network (NDN) is ready to address this question. NDN is now seeking feedback from NCDD members, and ... (continue)

The following post, written by CommunityMatters fellow Caitlyn Horose, is reposted from the Orton Family Foundation blog. CommunityMatters®, a partnership of seven national organizations including Orton [and NCDD], share the belief that people have the power to solve their community’s problems and direct future growth and change. As leaders in the fields of civic engagement and community and economic development, the partners believe that by strengthening civic infrastructure, communities can become more prosperous, vibrant places to live. Why is civic infrastructure key? Because, like the ... (continue)

Ellen Ernst from IAP2 submitted this post to the blog a couple of weeks ago — so sorry for the delay!  There are still 4 days left to apply for this great position.  I’ll check with Ellen to see if we can get a further extension for NCDD members since we were slow in posting this. Position Title: Professional Development Manager of IAP2 Location: Virtual Office (International Travel Requirement) Salary Range: A flat rate of $4,500 per month – $55,000 per year (USD) Contract Type: ... (continue)

I was thrilled to learn all about the “Sharing Economy” on last week’s CommunityMatters conference call.  A lot of what Neal Gorenflo (Co-founder and Publisher of Shareable Magazine) talked about on the call resonated strongly with me, as I found that Shareable’s philosophy of group decision making and collaboration is very aligned with the dialogue and deliberation community’s principles and work. The Sharing Economy is not just about pooling resources like bikes, cars, yard tools, and office space; it’s also about rebuilding a lost sense of community, ... (continue)