Two weeks ago, NCDD celebrated 20 years of connecting people who care about the way we talk with one another with an exciting and lively event. Thank you to everyone who joined us for this hybrid event, and to the many of our network members who shared remarks for the event and/or contributed a photo for our 20th Anniversary photo project!

If you were not able to join us live, we have now uploaded the video of the event here. Please check it out, as it captures much of this amazing network over the last 20 years, and talks about what we can continue to work on together. Plus, you can check out the announcement we made about our next national conference!

NCDD is excited to announce our next webinar featuring NCDD Member Org EnCiv! Join us on Tuesday, December 13th from 1-2pm Eastern/10-11am Pacific for this FREE webinar sharing more about the development of EnCiv's "Undebates" tool.

EnCiv is a nonpartisan organization looking to challenge sensationalism and polarization in civic discourse by offering social technologies that power widespread, cross-partisan discussion and better decision making. In this webinar, we'll be joined by David Fridley and Adolf Gundersen who will provide us with an overview of their latest tool, Undebates, and talk with us about other discussion processes where a platform of this sort could be helpful. He'll also discuss one such effort, called the Unroundtable. 

Register today to join us!

EnCiv - Undebates for Organizations
For organizations that are run democratically, getting members to participate - meaning vote, is a challenge.  They are forced to compete for people's attention from all the usual sources - social media, mass media, even streaming media.   EnCiv will demo a new tool that allows organizations to create "Undebates" for their elections.  It automates the process recording video Q&A with candidates and assembling it into an interactive viewer for voters to review on their own schedule and quickly decide, and it can be shared on social media, and embedded on a website.  The same process can also be used to present differing views on ballot measures.

For now, you are able to create an account and try it out for free. In this webinar we are also looking to brainstorm other forms of discussion processes to adapt this to, including what we call an "Unroundtable."  The challenge is to create connection between people at large scale when they can't all be in the same place at the same time.

Learn more about EnCiv and the Undebates tool at www.enciv.org/undebates.

NCDD is celebrating 20 years of connecting people who care about the way we talk with one another. By making a gift to NCDD this Giving Tuesday, you are helping us continue to connect and support this amazing community of practice, as well as continue to introduce more people to the communal power of dialogue and deliberation!

Your gift this Giving Tuesday will directly help us:

• Put together the next NCDD Conference in 2023!
• Offer more opportunities for members and the community-at-large to connect through webinars, networking events, and more
• Sustain NCDD’s staff (Courtney, Joy, & Keiva)
• And more!

Please consider a gift of any amount today at www.ncdd.org/donate. 

Or, consider supporting NCDD’s mission by becoming a member: www.ncdd.org/join. 

Thank you!

The holiday season often means more gatherings, which sometimes puts us in the middle of difficult conversations. Talk of politics and other hot topics can be tricky to navigate with family and friends – especially when we don’t see eye to eye. How can we engage in important conversations, without things getting out of hand?

We at NCDD want to share some tips and resources that you can use to help keep the party and dinner conversations more about genuine dialogue and understanding despite differences than heated rhetoric and emotional outbursts.

In addition to our quick tips above, NCDD  has tons more resources that might help you have difficult conversations and good dialogue in our Resource Center. If you’re looking for some additional go-to resources, consider these:

• The Quick How-To Guide for the Conversation Café process includes agreements and questions that can be helpful ways to start and manage conversations that might prove difficult
• For another good list of tips about keeping things civil during holiday dinners, check out the “Holidays or Hellidays?” blog post from NCDD member organization Essential Partners
• And if you need a reminder or cheat sheet with some similar good conversation tips to keep in your pocket in case of emergency, you can print out this short list of dialogue techniques from NCDD member organization Building Dialogue

Even if there are fights and arguments, we hope some of these tips and resources will help you navigate your holiday gatherings better than the past. Whatever happens during your Thanksgiving dinner with friends or family, we are wishing you all a safe and positive weekend.

Those who joined NCDD for our 20th Anniversary Celebration last week were the first to hear our big announcement - the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation is back! After a hiatus due to COVID, we are so thrilled to reconvene our signature event in 2023.

​And, we shared another important opportunity that you'll want to read on to learn more about. 

About the Conference
NCDD 2023 will be held October 13-15, 2023 at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter. A beautiful location perfect for the highly interactive conference, we are so thrilled to bring our event to the Southeast US for the first time! This will be a wonderful opportunity to connect with practitioners in the region, as well as showcase some of the wonderful work being done in the Atlanta area. 

If you haven't attended an NCDD conference before but want to learn more, check out this link.

Opportunity - Join or renew in 2022 to get the very best rate!
At our anniversary event we made another big announcement. We will be offering the lowest rate on conference registration to NCDD members whose dues are in good standing in 2022. That means if you have been thinking about joining or are behind on renewing your membership, now is the time to do it!

NCDD members all received discounted registration for our conference, but this is a special opportunity we're offering for an even deeper discount if you join or renew by December 31st. This helps support NCDD as we start what will be a very busy year, and gives you the very best deal on the conference!

Stay updated on the conference at our new event page: NCDD 2023

We can't wait to gather together with you all in 2023!

This Thursday, November 17th at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific, NCDD is hosting a 20th Anniversary Celebration. Don't miss it - register to receive the webinar information! 

Please join us to Reflect, Recommit, Renew, and Reconnect to our community of practice and the vital work we do in communities and organizations to promote empowering opportunities for engagement.​

This event will feature speakers from different areas of the network and look back at 20 years of community. We'll also be making a special announcement that you won't want to miss!

We are inviting you to gather with us to celebrate our 20 years of collaborative impact and to recommit to being a vital member of the NCDD community of practice, both gaining from and giving to this community. And we are asking you to renew your support of NCDD and the possibilities we create together. 

Register to join us today: bit.ly/NCDD20th

The National Civic League, an NCDD member organization, released the National Civic Review (NCR) Fall 2022 edition and  NCDD members receive a digital copy of NCR for free! (Find the access code below.). This esteemed quarterly journal offers insights and examples of civic engagement and deliberative governance from around the country. Thanks to Rebecca Trout, NCL’s Program Director for All-America City Award & Communications, for sharing this announcement with the NCDD network!

National Civic Review Fall Edition 2022 – Access Code: NCDD22

In this issue of the Review, published in collaboration with the Kettering Foundation, read about: community belonging, experiments in local journalism, the beneficial influence of a community mediator, housing as a platform for early childhood learning, a program to recognize health equity, the potential of regional charters, and a city that applied an equity lens to advertising staff openings.
 
To access this edition, go to the table of contents where you will be prompted to enter your unique access code: NCDD22.

One of the Nation’s Oldest and Most Respected Journals of Civic Affairs
Its cases studies, reports, interviews and essays help communities learn about the latest developments in collaborative problem-solving, civic engagement, local government innovation and democratic governance. Some of the country’s leading doers and thinkers have contributed articles to this invaluable resource for elected officials, public managers, nonprofit leaders, grassroots activists, and public administration scholars seeking to make America’s communities more inclusive, participatory, innovative and successful.

The Strengthening Democracy Challenge (SDC) brought academics, practitioners, and industry experts together in a collective effort to identify interventions to improve Americans' partisan animosity, support for undemocratic practices, support for partisan violence, and other outcomes related to polarization and democracy. We conducted a large experiment testing which of 25 interventions were most effective. The results demonstrated several highly effective strategies for improving these outcomes. We focused on short interventions that can be deployed online, but insights from the SDC could be applied to in-person interactions and other settings as well.

We are now pleased to announce a call for proposals for Bridging Divides & Strengthening Democracy Field Test Grants!

The pandemic forced governments to make changes to how they conduct their public deliberations and engage residents. Today, most local jurisdictions, if not all, have returned to in-person meetings, and many continue to offer online or hybrid options to their conventional engagement practices. 
 
To learn about this new era of digital government-citizen collaboration from the residents’ perspective, PublicInput, a provider of community engagement software, conducted a national survey to study the public’s preferences for digital public engagement with their local government. Key insights identified in the survey include:

1. There is a perception that the government is not listening.
2. The most common engagement approaches don’t match resident preferences.
3. Residents have high expectations for accessible engagement.
4. Residents don’t have enough information to meaningfully participate.
5. Residents expect to be informed of how their input was used.

Download the full report here.

You can access a recorded webinar and hear from three public engagement experts who break down findings from our latest survey report, Residents Weigh in on Post-Pandemic Community Engagement Preferences. They discuss what the data means for today’s public engagement practices and implications for future government-resident exchanges.This webinar also highlights an award-winning resident engagement success story from the city of Virginia Beach. 
Speakers include:

• Valerie Myers, Media and Communications Coordinator, city of Virginia Beach
• Maureen Tobin, Executive Director, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership
• Graham Stone, Co-Founder & VP of Government Relationships, PublicInput