We’re excited to announce the winners of the NCDD Catalyst Awards — two $10,000 prizes for team projects run by NCDD members in the areas of Civic Infrastructure and Political Bridge Building. The award winner in the Civic Infrastructure category is: A Collaborative Plan for a National Dialogue Network Infrastructure (main contact: John Spady) — The award winner in the Political Bridge Building category is: Real Dialogues: D&D Reality Show (main contact: Tim Bonnemann) NCDD intends to support the winning teams in whatever ways we are able ... (continue)

Voting opens today for the NCDD Catalyst Awards — two $10,000 prizes for team projects run by NCDD members in the areas of Civic Infrastructure and Political Bridge Building. A special project run in conjunction with NCDD’s 10-year anniversary and 5th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, the Catalyst Awards were designed to tap into NCDD’s most valuable resource — our membership of 1,700 leaders and innovators in public engagement, conflict transformation, group process, and community problem solving. Using a combination of activities (our Seattle ... (continue)

NCDD member John Spady (Community Forums Network) just sent this to the NCDD Discussion list, where we’ve been discussing how we might respond as a community to Friday’s tragedy in Newtown… During our recent NCDD 2012 conference in Seattle, I had the honor to host (then) Sheriff Steve Strachan at my session. He touched on the subject of unmanaged mental illness and the access to firearms. Sheriff Strachan then gave a courageous call for rational dialogue on a problem we keep experiencing over and over ... (continue)

One of the local heroes of our conference in Seattle this year, longtime NCDD member and NCDD2012 All-Star Sponsor John Spady, worked tirelessly during the event to record as much content as he could, and has recently shared the audio recordings he collected on SoundCloud.com. Since many of these items were recorded from the audience, the sound quality does vary, but there’s some great stuff here, with over 20 recordings capturing both workshops and plenary sessions.  I strongly urge you to spend some time with them, ... (continue)

This post was submitted by Sue Woehrlin of Antioch University, summarizing the great pre-conference workshop she led the afternoon before the 2012 NCDD conference in Seattle. There was much intensity, discovery, and laughter from the thirty of us who assembled at Antioch University in Seattle October 11th for the pre-conference “Method Mapping” workshop. What happens when you invite practitioners with deep experience in the field, indeed several originators of participatory methodologies, to play with the Group Works deck of group facilitation patterns to “map” essential ... (continue)

Check out this wonderful write-up of one attendee’s experiences at the 2012 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation in Seattle earlier this month.  Jill Miller Zimon, Director of Partnerships at Civic Commons, posted a review of the conference titled “Dialogue, Deliberate…Do??” this past Friday.  See the original post here, and learn more about Civic Commons at www.theciviccommons.com. Dialogue, Deliberate…Do?? If someone is offering to send me to Seattle, Washington to attend a four-day conference dedicated to talking and cogitating, does anyone who knows even the remotest ... (continue)

Here’s a great post by Janice Thomson that appeared here on Involve.org’s blog this morning. I’m reposting it here on the NCDD blog because it provides a wonderful overview of our efforts at the NCDD Seattle conference (and in the field) to make progress in strengthening our country’s and communities’ civic infrastructure… Janice Thomson’s take on the NCDD conference and American’s vision for Public Dialogue and Deliberation Over a long and rainy weekend in Seattle, I joined 400 members of the US-based National Coalition for Dialogue and ... (continue)

Filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson (Song Of A Citizen) has produced his second video from the 2012 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, which took place earlier this month in Seattle, drawing a total of 400 civic innovators from across the U.S. and several other countries. The second video shares the great speech made by Pete Peterson, director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership, on the second day of the conference. Saturday’s plenary session began with small group dialogue, encouraging people to reflect on ... (continue)

As you have likely heard, we are very excited to launch the NCDD Catalyst Awards to celebrate NCDD’s 10th anniversary!  Two $10,000 prizes will be awarded to team projects organized, led and selected by NCDD members that jump-start the field’s next best ideas and impact our communities’ and our country’s ability to solve its most challenging problems related to either civic infrastructure or bridge building. To support members with ideas for catalyst award projects, there will be two live Q&A opportunities with Sandy Heierbacher (NCDD Executive ... (continue)

Sandy encouraged us to blog about our experience at the conference. Mine was unusual in that I was not able to attend many of the workshops I wished I could have because (as some of you know) I was upstairs filming interviews for most of the weekend. But here’s what really surprised me — by speaking at length with those of you I filmed, and listening to the plenary speeches, and chatting with so many other people throughout the 3 days (and nights), I feel ... (continue)