Posts By Sandy Heierbacher

Publish Your Work in a Special Issue of the FACTS Reports

From the Participedia news page… The FACTS Initiative and CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation have announced a call for proposals on local democratic innovations for publication in a special issue of the FACTS Reports, on the 2013 website of the journal, and on the CIVICUS website. This special issue of the FACTS Report, inRead… Read more »

Group Decision Tip: Freedom of Speech

In principle, to make good group decisions we need to hear all perspectives. We need be able to openly disagree with respect and civility. We need to have the courage to speak what’s on our minds and hearts even in the face of opposition. When a group’s culture makes it not okay to voice certainRead… Read more »

Tuesday’s C2D2 webinar on the current trajectory of citizen engagement

The Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation, NCDD’s sister organization in Canada, invites the NCDD community to join them for the next installment in their Big Questions webinar series on THIS TUESDAY, February 12th, from 11:30am to 12:30pm Eastern. At their October 2012 face-to-face meeting, C2D2 Board members discussed some big questions about this fieldRead… Read more »

Group Decision Tip: Us Over Me

In principle, the most likely path for a group to be highly productive, happy, and endure over generations is for individuals to put group needs over individual needs. In western culture we receive many messages that encourage us to put self first, the most likely path to short term gain. In a me-first culture individualsRead… Read more »

Detroit News from the Davenport Institute

We want to make the NCDD community aware of some interesting content the Davenport Institute has been posting on their inCommon blog. As of late, they have highlighted a number of different projects the City of Detroit has undertaken over the last year to increase civic engagement. Most recently, the city launched its “Detroit FutureRead… Read more »

Knight News Challenge on open gov launches Feb. 12

The Knight News Challenge on open government will run from Feb. 12 to March 18. It’s an opportunity to win part of the $5 million the Knight Foundation will use this year to support innovative projects. In a post on the Knight blog on Wednesday, John Bracken (Director of Journalism and Media Innovation at Knight)Read… Read more »

Surveying the D&D Territory of a City: Lessons from Chicago

This extraordinary post was submitted by NCDD supporting member Janice Thomson. Janice has been working in collaboration with UIC’s Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement to map the D&D terrain in Chicago, an effort which has led to the development of a new Community of Practice for dialogue and deliberation practitioners in the city. NCDDRead… Read more »

Call for Nominations for the John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement

Nomination materials for the 2013 Saltmarsh Award are due Monday, April 8, 2013. The award is given in recognition of exemplary early-career leaders who are advancing the wider civic engagement movement through higher education to build a broader public culture of democracy. In an effort to recognize, support and encourage the next generation of leadersRead… Read more »

Group Decision Tip: Carrots are Better than Sticks

In principle, you can get a donkey to move forward in two ways: entice her in front with a carrot or hit her from behind with a stick. Carrots are rewards, incentives, appreciation, and — the most compelling — visions of how things can be better. Sticks are punishments, criticisms, and — the most destructiveRead… Read more »

Next steps on NCDD’s response to Newtown shooting

On December 17th (three days after the Newtown tragedy), NCDD launched a collaborative workspace on Hackpad to help the dialogue and deliberation community think through how we might respond — both individually and collectively — to the shooting and all it surfaced. There has been a lot of activity on the Hackpad site at www.bit.ly/natdial,Read… Read more »