What follows are David Messerschmidt's notes from the workshop on "Practical Communications Theory" at the 2008 NCDD Conference in Austin. The session was co-facilitated by Barnett Pearce, Professor at Fielding Graduate University; Kimberly Pearce, Professor at De Anza College and co-founder of The Public Dialogue Consortium and Pearce Associates; and Linda Blong, Program Co-Leader of the Dialogue, Deliberation and Public Engagement Certificate Program at Fielding Graduate University. (continue)

We’re holding a free Conversation Café and host training the night before the conference begins, open to conference participants and anyone else in Austin that wants to join us. If you’re in Austin or know people who are, please send them a link to this post, or give them this Conversation Cafe flyer. — Are you curious to learn how ‘the other guys’ are thinking?  Have you wondered how to talk to others who hold very different points of view?  Come experience a FREE Conversation […] (continue)

Here’s the final info for Saturday’s sub-plenary session (one of two large sessions) featuring four conservatives who support public engagement work. Walking our Talk: What the D&D Community Can Learn from Conservatives Saturday 2:15 to 4:00 pm – Ballroom A The D&D community and related fields struggle with the fact that this kind of work attracts many more progressives than conservatives. The vast majority of D&D practitioners are politically progressive, and it’s often more challenging to recruit people with more traditional or conservative views to […] (continue)

Friday 4-5:30 pm Meet some of the movers-and-shakers in the field, and learn about some of the newest and most innovative D&D tools, resources, and programs during this 90-minute plenary session. Presenters include… (continue)

We will end our second day together on Saturday (October 4th) with our signature “Reflective Panel” featuring four prominent leaders in our field: Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Bill Isaacs, David Campt and Najeeba Syeed-Miller. The Reflective Panel is the closest we come to a “keynote speech” at NCDD conferences, enabling conference participants to hear from D&D figureheads without enduring long speeches without any dialogic quality to them. Each panelist will address major challenges facing the D&D community as part of an Inquiry Circle.  Unlike traditional “talking head” […] (continue)

The Graphic Recording Team at NCDD 2008 included Sunni Brown, Julie Gieseke, Mariah Howard, Marilyn Martin and team leader Avril Orloff. NCDD owes each of these women a huge debt of gratitude for the incredible contributions they made to the 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation! Graphic recording has long been a feature of NCDD conferences, but for the 2008 conference we took it up a few notches. Instead of just one or two graphic recorders, we had a whole team — and rather […] (continue)

Thought I’d add a quick post about this… Our thanks to Central Texas Team member and NCDD Board member Taylor Willingham for coordinating this performance! Austin City-Wide Youth Poetry Slam This performance during Saturday’s lunch is sponsored by the Texas Youth Word Collective (TYWC) – a nonprofit youth literacy program that encourages middle school and high school students’ interest in writing through youth poetry slams, open mics and online anthologies. It is our hope that the performance will inspire you and get your minds all […] (continue)

Finding Our Way: Trans-Generational Leadership Although we are inheritors of the future, too often younger people, who are also committed to dialogue as a process for sustainable change, lack a seat at the table and a voice in the conversations that shape our future. In today’s world, as people are recognizing the need for more collaborative approaches to problem solving and decision making, D&D processes need to include spaces for younger leaders to be effective in meeting those challenges. NCDD welcomes the Rockrose Institute’s Youth […] (continue)

I wanted to give all conference attendees the chance to recommend books we should include in the NCDD 2008 conference bookstore. I already provided the folks organizing our bookstore with a list of suggestions, but I’m sure I’ve missed some books you guys would recommend we include. I’m especially interested in books YOU folks (conference attendees) have published recently. Phil Neisser, who will be joining us in Austin, just sent a message out to the NCDD discussion list about his new book, United We Fall, […] (continue)

Here are some great new outreach pieces that members of our Central Texas Team created recently. Please use them to tell your networks and colleagues about NCDD Austin! There is a piece geared towards general audiences, and one geared towards practitioners. (continue)