Update on John Spady's Catalyst Proposal to begin a National Dialogue Network infrastructure

This post is from John Spady, who has been working for months on a project to develop a National Dialogue Network infrastructure. He would like to see many NCDD members sign on to show their support.  The easiest way to do this is to add a comment to this blog post (with your name, organization, email and what role you could see yourself eventually playing in this project).  You can also check out his CivicEvolution page and his Hackpad document.

Dear NCDD Community:

Nine months ago, back in April 2011, I posted to the NCDD Idea Incubator here about how might we go about developing a collaborative and decentralized national dialogue network infrastructure in the US. Then, at our recent NCDD national conference in Seattle, Tom Atlee and I hosted a session with the title "Co-Creating a Diverse and Coherent National Infrastructure for Powerful Conversations about Public Issues" where we addressed the questions, "What possibilities can we create together for infrastructure that promotes high quality public conversation about public issues?" and "How can we instill such conversations into American society to empower the public's voice and wisdom?"

Since then, the Catalyst Award proposal for "A Collaborative Plan for a National Dialogue Network Infrastructure" has garnered sixteen endorsements plus its first four "working group" and its first three "advisory committee" members. I am grateful for the level of interest and support that has been shown so far. To add your own endorsement and/or other insights on the proposal, please visit its official page on the Civic Evolution website at http://ncdd.civicevolution.org/proposal/10096.

I have also posted a slightly more detailed public draft document about the proposal that includes the goals, design principles, and values I would like to see in a national dialogue network. I invite our NCDD community to review, comment, and make any direct edit suggestions at this link: https://hackpad.com/National-Dialogue-Network-draft-plan-x5MZhwscm4W

And finally (and most importantly) please add a comment below if you would like to play ANY kind of role in this particular project going forward. This is absolutely a collaborative project and will showcase the many different methodologies in our field for wise and meaningful conversations. If you are interested in being involved in this effort at any level, please add your name, organization, email address, and what role you could see yourself playing via the comment field below.  I'll  be asked to list all NCDD members who have shown interest in the project when I submit our final proposal for the Catalyst Awards this weekend.

To help stay in touch about this developing project, I have created the following resources that you are invited to use:

1. A new [NATIONAL-DIALOGUE] listserv that is hosted on the NCDD site:
http://lists.thataway.org/scripts/wa-THATAWAY.exe?A0=NATIONAL-DIALOGUE

2. A new Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/NatDialogue

3. And a new Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/NatDialogue

Thank you!