NCDD is excited to announce our full lineup of sponsorship opportunities are now available for the upcoming 2023 conference! Below is our invitation to sponsor, followed by details on where to find more information, and how to sign up. ​

Many of us are grappling with how to help communities bridge divides and collaborate meaningfully together. The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation has a long history of doing this work. We are also a scrappy nonprofit, long overdue for full-time staff and programmatic support.

Many funders and organizations are looking to support efforts that strengthen democracy at this important moment in our history. NCDD sponsorship is a way to make this contribution that offers a multitude of benefits to you as an organization. Your support directly enables the production of our conference, and helps us to bring our staff to full-time capacity. 

As you may have heard, we are thrilled to announce that NCDD’s National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is back for its 9th year in person! Our biennial conferences convene hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people in public engagement and group process work across the U.S., Canada, and throughout the world. Nearly 5,000 people have attended NCDD’s national and regional events, and we expect to have about 500 attendees join us in Atlanta. Your support makes mobilizing global change possible. 

BECOME A SPONSOR TODAY! Explore NCDD's Sponsorship Brochure and various levels of support  here. Contact Courtney@ncdd.org to sign on now as a sponsor. 

Sponsorship is crucial in a post-2020 environment. We can’t do it without you! Your patronage of the NCDD conference is a strong signal of leadership in and commitment to public engagement and community problem solving in our growing community of practice. 

Partnering with us via sponsorship has tangible benefits,  and instant, public, prestigious name recognition during and after the event. These highly desired sponsorship placements are a windfall for your brand, as you’ll simultaneously build good will and name recognition.

We work with the leading innovators in the field, and our sponsors are the benchmarks of that progress. By sponsoring NCDD 2023, you will be featured as one of the pioneering leaders in dialogue and deliberation. That’s something to talk about!

Becoming an NCDD Sponsor - Expands Reach and Increases Impact

As an NCDD sponsor, you are playing a major role in promoting knowledge-sharing and networking among dialogue and deliberation professionals, community leaders, and public managers. Your help is strengthening the capacity of people in our field to bridge divides and solve complex community challenges.

Your sponsorship dollars come with other benefits. We are an extremely lean-running organization, and your sponsorship means NCDD can hire full-time staff this year, continue to produce our world-class conferences, give conference scholarships, and ensure the inclusion of diverse populations in our field. 

Your sponsorship develops the field, enhances professionals, and increases the efficacy of our dialogue and deliberation offerings. In a post-COVID era, these small asks accomplish big things. 

Peruse the full brochure outlining all opportunities here. 

We hope to add you to the ranks of sponsor for NCDD 2023. Reach out to courtney@ncdd.org with your questions, or to support this event!

NCDD’s 2023 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is coming up October 13-15 in Atlanta, Georgia. NCDD conferences bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada.

Today we’re announcing our call for proposals for our concurrent sessions at NCDD 2023. We’re interested in finding creative ways to highlight the best of what’s happening in public engagement, group process, community problem-solving, civic tech, and arts-based dialogue — and we know you have lots of ideas!

Check out the Application for Session Leaders now to see what we ask for, and start cooking up those great proposals we’ve come to expect from our network! If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration, look over the fabulous sessions offered at the 2018 and 2016 NCDD conferences.

Please note that the deadline for proposals is Friday, April 14th.

If your work involves dialogue and deliberation, or you want to get involved with this work, you’ll love this conference. Imagine spending three days with some of the most amazing leaders in this field, forming new relationships and reconnecting with old colleagues and friends, hearing about innovative new approaches to the challenges you’re facing, and exploring together how we can shape the future of this important movement, all while using innovative group techniques there’s really nothing like it. 

Here is some guidance for those thinking about presenting sessions at NCDD 2023…

Our theme for the 2023 conference is Our Return: Reconnect, Reflect, Renew, Recommit.

It will be nearly five years since our last in-person national conference, and we want to focus on the opportunities that coming together in person will allow us - the opportunities to reconnect, reflect, renew, and recommit to our work. Join us as we: 

• Reconnect with one another, sharing our experiences, practices, learning, and passions
• Reflect on our community, celebrate our history, and examine opportunities for growth
• Renew our purpose in bringing communities together in conversations that matter
• Recommit to these practices, this community, and our collective next steps

​
​NCDD 2023 will be a return to our roots - gathering together to make connections, expand our learning, explore new possibilities, and chart a course for our community of practice.

We encourage session proposals which will help attendees network, reflect on our work and practices, learn new skills, and/or explore new efforts, projects, and collaborations. Sessions which are interactive in nature, including sessions which get participants involved in experiencing a process, discussing challenges with one another, or working together to advance our community of practice are encouraged. 

Some advice for potential session leaders:

1. Identify great co-presenters.  Most workshops at NCDD conferences are collaborative efforts involving multiple presenters from different organizations and universities. Have you thought about who you can co-present with? Now’s the time to contact them to see if they’d like to offer a session with you! (Use the NCDD Main Discussion list and the comments below to put out feelers for potential co-presenters if you’d like. NCDD has also created a Collaborative Document to help facilitate connections.)
2. Look over past workshop descriptions. Peruse the list of workshops from NCDD Denver to get a sense of the kinds of sessions the planning team selects. Sessions focused on innovative solutions to common challenges, ways to take this work to scale or to new audiences, and deep dives into great projects (and thoughtful explorations of failed projects!) are especially welcome.
3. Be innovative with your session.  NCDD attendees are usually not too impressed with traditional panels or long speeches. Get them engaging with you and each other! Think about how you can get them out of their seats and moving around the room. And think about what you’d like to learn from them (not just what they can learn from you). 
4. Share your stories.  NCDDers prefer hearing your stories to getting a run-down of your organization or methodology.  People are interested in learning about what you did, what you learned, and how they may be able to learn from your experience.
5. Share the latest.  What’s the latest research? What are the latest innovations in the field? What new challenges are you facing? What are your latest accomplishments?
6. Create a working session. What is the next innovation we can create together? What tools or resources can we build to help more communities? Challenge participants to work together to build the next best steps for our field and our communities. 

Not quite ready to draw up a proposal yet? Use the comment field, Collaborative Doc, (and/or the NCDD Main Discussion listserv) to float your ideas by other NCDDers and members of the planning team. We may be able to match you up with potential co-presenters who can address the same challenge or issue you’re interested in focusing on.

Deadline for submissions

To have your session proposal considered, we need you to submit the session application by the end of the day on Friday, April 14th. Members of the conference planning team will review the proposals and plan to respond by email to the first contact listed in your proposal by May 15th.

Don’t forget that the super early bird tickets are NOW AVAILABLE! Get yours at this great low rate before it goes up!

Registration has officially launched for #NCDD2023 - the 9th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, happening October 13-15 in Atlanta, Georgia! Early bird registration is $480 and is available until May 31! Regular registration will be $580, and our rate for full-time students is just $300. Over 3,000 people, from dozens of countries, have attended our biennial national and regional events, and we're expecting 500 this year - Register at www.tinyurl.com/NCDD2023reg. Learn more details about the conference in the post below.

We invite you to shape the conference by letting us know what you would like to see via this short survey.  Excited to see you in October!

We are thrilled for what the upcoming year has in store for NCDD, both at the conference and with the wider coalition - and we want to hear from you! 

In case you hadn't heard yet, NCDD will be hosting the 9th National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation (#NCDD2023), October 13-15 in Atlanta, Georgia! We would love to hear your thoughts on what you want to experience at the conference. In addition to hearing your visions for the conference, we want to check in with our community on where you are at now and how you would like to get involved with the wider coalition. 

Please fill out this short survey - linked here. Thank you so much for sharing your feedback in the survey, it is greatly appreciated!

If you have any conference related questions and/or would like to be involved in the conference planning team, please contact NCDD communications coordinator, Keiva Hummel at keiva@ncdd.org. If you’d like to talk about broader NCDD topics, please reach out to Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org.

Last week NCDD held our December webinar, featuring EnCiv and their "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, David Fridley and Adolf Gundersen provided an overview of their latest tool, Undebates, and talked about other discussion processes where a platform of this sort could be helpful, including their Unroundtable tool. Thank you to everyone who joined us and shared your questions and feedback!

Check out the webinar recording here.  

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 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. 

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

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.

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

How to Get Involved ​
​Take a picture of yourself holding a sign or next to one that expresses (briefly!) what you would like to recommit to.