I’m excited to launch a new tool on the NCDD website to help you share your success stories more broadly The draft tool can be found at www.ncdd.org/storytelling-tool and I encourage everybody to take a look and give the tool a test drive by entering one of your dialogue and deliberation projects! For a longRead… Read more »

We had another great NCDD “Confab Call” last week and as always, if you couldn’t join us we welcome you to listen to the audio recording. Our latest Confab featured NCDD members Jacob Hess and Phil Neisser, co-authers of “You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought, But You’re Still Wrong,” leading a discussion on red-blueRead… Read more »

We hope you’ll join us in congratulating our friends at the Kettering Foundation on their new opportunity to develop deliberative decision-making forums for Israeli Jews and Arabs in Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most difficult problems of dialogue and bridge building in the world, and we are excited to see the KetteringRead… Read more »

In principle, my initial reaction — my first thought — is very rarely my best thought. Often my first thought is absurd and shows me how not to react. Like first brush strokes on a canvas, first thoughts provide a starting place for more refined thoughts, for subsequent brush strokes. First thoughts, like initial brushRead… Read more »

Here’s an important announcement from John Spady of the National Dialogue Network project… Hello friends, I have important results to share with everyone! The National Dialogue Network (NDN) conducted a survey in April 2013. A total of 415 people participated (including both self-selected and random panel responses). Each participant ranked their top five choices fromRead… Read more »

This post was submitted by NCDD member Joan Blades, co-founder of Living Room Conversations and MoveOn.org… At times I feel like a mad scientist bringing together people with diverse views to have conversations about challenging issues. In unstructured social circumstances, I would be concerned about potential blow-ups. What awes me again and again — theRead… Read more »

Happy Saturday, everybody! Voting is underway in the Looking@Democracy video contest, and a bunch of NCDD members have submitted videos for consideration — Jeffrey Abelson (Song of a Citizen), Living Room Conversations, the Participatory Budgeting Project, Evelyn Messinger, and Cynthia Farrar’s Purple States project. There are $100,000 in prizes altogether (first prize is $25,000), andRead… Read more »

Here’s a thoughtful message and some great questions from Jacob Hess, one of our two featured speakers on next Wednesday’s confab call on red-blue dialogue. See the full description of the confab, and register here if you’d like to join us. We’re excited that 110 people have already signed up! Rush Limbaugh taught me, inRead… Read more »

There are many exciting ways in which civic data is improving governance in towns and cities across the country. We want to invite you to check out one of the newest blog posts from our friends at the Davenport Institute highlighting a new project using open data called Data-Smart City Solutions. You can read moreRead… Read more »

In principle, if a disagreement is caused by an outside issue that has nothing to do with the group issue at hand, then it must be dealt with outside the group. An outside issue is a disagreement because of, for example, some incident between the parties that happened years ago and was never dealt with,Read… Read more »