How D&D Can Help Communities Adapt to Rapid Change Since the 1960s, the US Department of Justice has provided peacekeeping services via its Community Relations Service (CRS) for community conflicts and tensions related to race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability. In 2015, the heads of the CRS and the National …
“Stop the madness for constant group work. Just stop it!” pleads Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Group work, she claims, stifles some of the most insightful and creative thinkers and inflates the influence of extroverts. To generate the best ideas, workplaces and schools need …
Facilitating Introverts: Eliciting the Gifts of the Quiet Ones Read More »
Face-to-face events like public meetings and consultations are, with good reason, at the heart of much public engagement. They provide a dedicated block of time and a common space to learn about, discuss, and gather community input into public issues. However, no matter how well designed the event, such gatherings are pointless if nobody shows …
Engaging on the Edges: Creative Street and Online Engagement Read More »
Methods, Tools, and Resources for Harvesting The articles on this blog primarily focus on civic engagement and democracy. Although I rarely write about it, I also design and facilitate meetings and events. As much as possible, I try to link the two — e.g., designing community conversations to inform public policy. The process to design …
Occupy Targets Participatory Budgeting in Chicago My first thought was “how clever of the conference organizers to welcome us with street theater”. At the entrance to the Second North American Participatory Budgeting Conference, held last month in Chicago, stood a half-dozen casually dressed people wearing photo face masks and holding hand-written signs with questions like …
The Story of Aurora Community Study Circles. Last week a small but dedicated group of Chicago area dialogue & deliberation (D&D) practitioners traveled through a heavy snow storm to Aurora, IL to meet with Mary Jane Hollis, creator of the Aurora Community Study Circles (1996-2007). Our original goal was to learn about her approach to …
Transforming a Community with Sustained Dialogue Read More »
Over a long and rainy weekend in Seattle, I joined members of the US-based National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) in a trendy downtown eco hotel for their semi-annual conference. NCDD celebrated their 10th anniversary as an organisation by taking on the monumental challenge of envisioning a robust “civic infrastructure” for public dialogue and …
Americans envision a civic infrastructure for public dialogue and deliberation Read More »
The eyes of the American public participation community are riveted on the Pacific Northwest state of Oregon. It recently became the first American state to institutionalise a citizens jury-style process to improve one method of lawmaking known as the citizens’ initiative. The tale of how the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) made it into state …
North-Westward ho! Oregon embeds public participation in lawmaking Read More »
While sensible people watched Ghana defeat America in the World Cup, I wandered into the parallel online universe that is Second Life (SL) to join Americans in confronting their national debt. The specifics were American, but the options would be familiar to Europeans: what public spending to cut, which taxes to increase, for whom and …
Since surveys alone cannot provide a complete or nuanced view of public opinion, they are best preceded or complemented by qualitative research. Samples are small and not necessarily random. So, opinions may not be representative of the broader public. But, since questions are open-ended and flexible, a range of opinions can be expressed and unexpected …