The Participation Company
While I was assembling my off-the-cuff analysis of input types on Change.gov, I felt compelled to revisit two existing facilitation techniques that help guide participation by adding to the process the kind of structure that I believe could work very well for large-scale efforts. First, Dynamic Facilitation, a method I first learned about at the 2006 National Conference on [...]
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As I pointed out previously, some of the discussions we saw on Change.gov were all over the place even when they were supposed to focus on specific topic-related questions (e.g. “What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?”) or tasks (suggesting a question or an idea to the president-elect). At the massive [...]
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Following a recent IAP2 Northern California chapter meeting, I came across this definition of public participation: What is Public Participation? Public participation is the process by which an organization consults with interested or affected individuals, organizations, and government entities before making a decision. Public participation is two-way communication and collaborative problem solving with the goal [...]
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Interesting conference coming up right in our backyard: Tools for Participation At the dawn of the 21st century humankind faces challenges of profound proportions. The ability of people around the world to discuss, work, make decisions, and take action collaboratively is one of the most important capabilities for addressing these challenges. Researchers, scholars, activists, advocates, [...]
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From the November 26 issue of the Deliberative Democracy eBulletin (a must-read resource for us, click here to get to their archive and email subscription): 1 | Four Years of DDC Research and Practice —– Matt Leighninger writes about a draft discussion report, “Where is Democracy Headed? Four years of DDC research and practice” which [...]
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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, [...]
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Conversations Elsewhere