Last week NCDD held our first virtual Conversation Cafe session, and we were blown away by the turnout – thank you to the 125+ of you who joined us to learn about how to host Cafes online and participated in one on the call! The level of interest and enthusiasm was overwhelming, and so we wanted to make sure that anyone who is interested in this simple, open-source model for dialogue has the information and resources to do so! The following is a list of […] (continue)

Friends, the desire for connection and thinking together is overwhelming in this time of physical distancing. NCDD, along with our member and dear friend Susan Partnow, have decided to offer another opportunity for our network to come together in dialogue to support us all during this time. Next Wednesday, March 25th from 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM-Noon Pacific, we will hold a virtual Conversation Cafe – all are welcome! Register here to join us. This Cafe is intended as an opportunity for us to connect around […] (continue)

The NCDD staff has been up to some exciting ventures this last month that we wanted to fill you in on! June 22nd, in particular, was a busy day for the NCDD team as we each trekked to several exciting events that were happening in our network; Co-Founder Sandy Heierbacher was at ALA’s Annual Conference in New Orleans, Managing Director Courtney Breese was at the Frontiers of Democracy conference at Tufts University, and I attended NCL’s National Conference on Local Governance in Denver where NCDD Board Chair Martín Carcasson presented. […] (continue)

Looking back, 2016 was an important year for NCDD and the dialogue & deliberation community. NCDD and the field saw a lot of important things happen and transitions take place, and as we look forward to the work ahead, we also wanted to look back at what we’ve accomplished and what’s changed. NCDD 2016 Of course, the biggest effort on NCDD’s part was organizing the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation on “Bridging Our Divides,” a timely focus on the important work of bringing people together across […] (continue)

NCDD was pleased to host a training webinar for those wanting to learn to host the Conversation Café (CC) process earlier this week, but we were even more pleased by the great turnout we had! We were joined by 45 participants, who spent 90 minutes learning about the ins and outs of hosting Conversation Cafés from Susan Partnow, one of the CC co-founders. It was a great training! If you missed the training, don’t worry – we recorded the whole thing! You can find the whole training […] (continue)

Last week, NCDD hosted another one of our Confab Call events featuring the co-founders of Conversation Café (CC), Susan Partnow and Vicki Robin. The call featured a history of the CC process, reflections from the experiences of CC hosts, and a brief tour of the new CC website at www.conversationcafe.org. If you missed this engaging discussion, don’t worry. You can still listen in on what the Conf Call was like by finding the recording at this link. There is also a great next step that came out […] (continue)

As 2016 comes to a close, our NCDD team has been looking back proudly at what we’ve accomplished this year, but also reflecting soberly on the challenges that 2017 will bring for the nation and the dialogue & deliberation field. And as we reflect on our next year, we know one thing is for sure: we will need your help. NCDD is here to support our members and the broader network of people and organizations working to help people come together across divides and make […] (continue)

The 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation brought together 350 innovators in dialogue and deliberation to discuss the conference theme of Bridging Our Divides. Over the course of three days we discussed how to tackle some of today’s toughest divides, including partisan, racial, economic, and more. For a recap of the conference in numbers, see our earlier blog post. Since the conference, NCDD has been producing and gathering media that captures our time together and the stories of our work. And, we’ve been following up […] (continue)

In case you missed our post last week, we want to share a friendly reminder encouraging our NCDD network to register for our next Confab Call this Monday, December 19th, from 1-2pm Eastern/10-11am Pacific! This Confab will feature the insights of long-time NCDD members Susan Partnow and Vicki Robin – two of the three original co-creators of the Conversation Café (CC) process that NCDD now stewards – and leading practitioners from across the country who host Cafés in their communities. The CC process is easily accessible and flexible […] (continue)

NCDD’s second podcast episode is now live on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Play! It features the story of Conversation Café as told by three stewards of this process: co-creator Susan Partnow, past steward Jacquelyn Pogue, and NCDD Resource Curator Keiva Hummel, who plays a key role in helping NCDD serve as the steward of the Conversation Café (CC) process. As you may remember from our post last week, the first series of episodes in the NCDD Podcast were recorded at the NCDD 2016 Conference, where […] (continue)