Below is a summary of a brainstorming call about a sub-plenary session scheduled to be held at NCDD Austin on Saturday, October 4th from 2:15 to 4:00 pm. Those of you who were on the call are strongly encouraged to use the comment box at the bottom of this page to share your reactions to the three scenarios outlined. Which scenario do you prefer? Are there elements of one scenario you would like to see incorporated into a different scenario? Is there something missing? Anyone […] (continue)

We are putting together a panel of conservative leaders who support public engagement for a sub-plenary session at NCDD Austin on Saturday afternoon. The dialogue and deliberation community and related communities of practice like the deliberative democracy community and the conflict resolution community 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 as D&D participants. This […] (continue)

You’re coming to the conference, in large part, to meet people who share your interests. At NCDD conferences, people tend to leave knowing that they’ve built a slew of new supportive, collaborative relationships. To help this along at NCDD Austin, we’re holding a structured networking session during the very first plenary session of the conference. This networking session will allow participants, right off the bat, to meet people with similar interests as them. Maybe you’re passionate about a particular issue, like climate change, racism or […] (continue)

We’re very excited to announce the special role that musician and educator Eric Haltmeier will be playing at the 2008 NCDD conference. Using a variety of acoustic and digital instruments, and collecting sound samples throughout the 3-day conference, Eric will create and perform music that will serve to reflectively represent conference themes in sound.  Eric will work with our graphic recording team, and conference attendees will have the opportunity to become a part of the musical creation. Update: Listen to Eric’s NCDD 2008 composition at […] (continue)

At the first three NCDD conferences, we used a multi-tiered process to encourage participants to think about what needs to be done to move this “field” or community of practice forward.  What are we not doing as well as we could be or should be doing?  What vital questions do we seem not to have sufficient answers to?  What are our greatest barriers to doing this work effectively? At NCDD 2008, we focused in on 5 of the most pressing and challenging issues our field […] (continue)

Below is a list of the amazing workshops offered at NCDD Austin, our 2008 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation.  You can see resources generated at/for the workshops by visiting www.ncdd.org/rc/item/tag/ncdd2008. Friday 1:30-3:30 Debriefing Issues Raised in Traces of the Trade Harold Fields, National Training Director for Traces of the Trade, and Holly Fulton, Facilitator and Family Participant in Traces of the Trade Participants interested in this workshop are encouraged to view the screening of “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North” […] (continue)

Conference call participants: Catherine Orland, Rogier Gregoire, Harold Fields, Sandy Heierbacher, Landon Shultz, P.J. Longoni, Leanne Nurse Before the call began, Rogier discussed some of his work with encouraging school districts to move from Aristotelian to Socratic pedagogy, to move towards a student-centered, dialogue based, approach to education.  The intractability of established curricula makes this process very difficult, since millions of dollars are invested in current textbooks.  Also, teachers are not used to having a genuine intellectual relationship with their students, given the Industrial Mode […] (continue)

Friday, October 3rd, 4:00-5:30 pm We’ve decided to try something new on the first day of this year’s conference, before the reception – a D&D Marketplace.  We’re really excited about this session, and the associated posters, because we think they provide a way for people to expose their work and their ideas to the majority of conference participants. Here’s how this high-energy session will work… Conference planners will select people to present during the D&D Marketplace who are passionate about sharing tools, concepts, and success […] (continue)

Table topics during our Opening Session at NCDD Austin will allow you to meet others who share your interests and affinities right off the bat. We’ve been asking conference participants to submit “networking topics” if they are passionate about a topic, process, venue, etc. and they’d like to meet others who feel the same. Below are the topics we’re going forward with so far (and the people who submitted them and will be hosting the tables) and some more details about what we’ll be doing […] (continue)

Here is a summary of ideas generated on our 5/12/08 call on inclusion and bias at NCDD conferences, and what we may do differently this year. Our thanks to Judith Mowry for putting these notes together! On the call: Steven Fearing, Deborah Goldblatt, Rogier Gregoire, Sandy Heierbacher, Jacob Hess, Dave Joseph, Erin Kreeger, Lauren Kucera, Windy Lawrence, PJ Longoni, Diane Miller, Judith Mowry, Leanne Nurse, Catherine Orland, Nancy Polk, Polly Riddims, Landon Shultz, John Spady, Carrie Stewart, Brian Sullivan, Mary Thompson, Madeleine van Hecke Not […] (continue)