The Participation Company
For the past three years (ever since attending “The Underlying Dynamics of Conversations that Matter”, a most excellent pre-conference workshop with Tom Atlee and Peggy Holman at NCDD 2008 in Austin, TX), I’ve been following the Group Pattern Language Project, a very exciting endeavor led by Tree Bressen, Sue Woehrlin and Dave Pollard and involving dozens of contributors from a [...]
{ 0 comments }
Over the weekend, I came across you+me+politics, a new online dialogue research project coming out of New York University. From their about page: For our midterm assignment, our class was tasked with creating a conversational space centered on a specific piece of content. Our group decided to focus our work around something controversial. So often, online conversations [...]
{ 0 comments }
The following appeared in Public Involvement Techniques: A Reader of Ten Years Experience at the Institute for Water Resources (PDF, pages 265-270), a collection of articles on public involvement from 1983, prepared by James L. Creighton, Jerome Delli Priscoli and C. Mark Dunning for the Institute for Water Resources, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: The [...]
{ 0 comments }
Sandy Heierbacher, Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), gives a nice two-paragraph summary this morning of what her organization’s work is all about: [...] Our most urgent problems seem even more unsolvable because of our inability to come together civilly and discuss issues and potential solutions in depth with all “sides.” [...]
{ 1 comment }
Another project worth mentioning that’s very much related to the ROI discussions that are happening elsewhere is the Making the Case campaign by the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2). It must have launched shortly after I last wrote about their efforts back in November of last year. From the site: Dialogue and deliberation (D&D) [...]
{ 1 comment }
Last week, I attended a conference call hosted by the Public Health Agency of Canada as part of the ongoing D&D Evaluation Project by the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation (C2D2). On their resources page, C2D2 states: The C2D2 community asks, “How do we know – what is the evidence to demonstrate – that using dialogue [...]
{ 3 comments }
The following comparison of dialogue and debate seems to have first appeared in the Winter 1993 edition of Focus on Study Circles: The Newsletter of the Study Circles Resource Center (now Everyday Democracy). Thanks to the Wayback Machine’s vast internet archives, a snapshot from 2002 (?) is still available today: Comparison of Dialogue and Debate Dialogue is collaborative: [...]
{ 1 comment }
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may well be one of the leading government agencies in the world when it comes to public participation. Their public engagement site offers a plethora of useful information including tools, definitions, case studies and much more. Their Public Involvement Network News electronic newsletter is another great resource. A feature article in [...]
{ 2 comments }
Last Tuesday on Change.gov (the official website of President-elect Barack Obama), the transition team launched a public online discussion on the topic of healthcare. From the announcement on their blog: Join the Discussion Today we’re trying out a new feature on our website that will allow us get instant feedback from you about our top priorities. We [...]
{ 11 comments }
It came up in the last post, and it is something we’ve been thinking about quite a bit: How to listen online? Listening in real life is sometimes hard enough. It may require skilled facilitation. Oftentimes, we’re not trained to listen well. It is much easier to talk than to listen, and listen carefully. Online, [...]
{ 3 comments }
The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) provides a good definition of dialogue and deliberation, and describes how the two relate to each other: So what are dialogue and deliberation anyway? Dialogue is a process that allows people, usually in small groups, to share their perspectives and experiences with one another about difficult issues [...]
{ 3 comments }
Conversations Elsewhere