Written by NCDD director Sandy Heierbacher to expand upon the text on our “What Are Dialogue & Deliberation?” page. This resource provides enough details to enable you to decide which of these leading dialogue and deliberation methods you should learn more about. In addition to looking at which methods fit your intentions, you will need to consider which methods are aligned with your resources, timeline, and the people you feel need to be involved. The text below is drawn from NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework. AmericaSpeaks […] (continue)

This book suggests that the U.S. adopt a Citizens Constitutional Amendment which says: Each year, 24 registered voters will be randomly selected in a lottery to form a Citizens Wisdom Council. This Wisdom Council will be a symbol of the people of the United States. With the aid of a dynamic facilitator, the group will meet for one week to choose issues, talk about them and determine consensus statements. (continue)

Active listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Active listening is a structured form of listening and responding that focuses the attention on the speaker. The listener must take care to attend to the speaker fully, and then repeats, in the listener's own words, what he or she thinks the speaker has said. (continue)

Dynamic Facilitation is an energy-based way of facilitating where people address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, achieving breakthrough results. It creates a process of talking and thinking that builds mutual respect, trust and the sense of community. (continue)

The Wisdom Council is a newly invented structural approach to achieving genuine democracy in cities, unions, associations, counties, or nations ... and even in corporations. No matter how many people are in the system, it structures a creative, thoughtful, system-wide conversation about the most pressing issues. It facilitates everyone to form a unanimous "We the People" viewpoint. (continue)

The following is a working document developed in 2002 to ensure that members of the planning team for the first National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation were aware of the various streams of dialogic and deliberative practice. The 2002 conference was the first major event to bring people together from the entire spectrum of D&D practice, and it was important to us that all of these streams felt welcomed to the conference, and were represented in all aspects of the conference - from the handbook to the break-out sessions. (continue)

Wise Democracy Victoria is a group of citizens concerned about the state of our democracy - in Victoria, in British Columbia, in Canada, and on the planet. Wise Democracy Victoria was initiated by the Victoria Branch of the World Federalist Movement - Canada in the spring of 2006 in order to help create genuine democracy in Victoria and in Canada. It is, however, an independent entity, not connected with the World Federalist Movement or any other organization. The mission of Wise Democracy Victoria is to seek out and investigate processes that can enhance the scope, collabarativeness, and co-intelligence of our democratic system. (continue)

This commentary was submitted for the NCDD website by Tom Atlee and Rosa Zubizarreta in March 2003. The piece is adapted from Tom's book "The Tao of Democracy" (2002). It begins "To 'facilitate' means to 'help make easier.' If our goal is to have meaningful and powerful dialogue, the role of a facilitator is to help make it easier for the group to do so. Dynamic Facilitation, created by consultant Jim Rough, is a leading-edge process designed to help groups have meaningful conversations, access their creativity, and discover practical breakthroughs to challenging situations, even in the midst of divergent opinions, strong emotions, and conflicting beliefs. (continue)

Discussions about participatory democracy frequently focus on levels of participation and its direct effects on policy-making. A new model for community dialogue has been developed called The Wisdom Council. This model focuses on high-quality conversation in a small group of participants, with a goal of affecting overall community conversation. Despite, or because of, its newness, there have been no critical evaluations of this approach. Recently, a Wisdom Council was held in the Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon. This 68-page thesis provides an evaluation of that event. (continue)

In Western Australia the Department for Planning and Infrastructure has taken a leading role in exploring innovations in community engagement, with 21st century town meetings, deliberative surveys, citizens' juries, multi criteria analysis conferences and consensus forums. In May 2005 they assembled in Perth some of the most progressive innovators and experts from the USA and Australia, who led a unique experiment in community engagement. Over two days these initiators and experts took more than 300 participants through their leading edge techniques. (continue)