The COVID-19 pandemic led many practitioners to shift to online engagement tools. Our friends at Dialogue + Design Associates team put together a resource of different digital facilitation and project management tools and resources, to help navigate some of the digital choices available for dialogue and deliberation practice. 

While it may not be exhaustive, this is an incredibly thorough resource with a whole variety of tools that may be useful, now and long into the future. If there is something that's been missed, please add to it!

Resource link: 
​https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P6qfWP5ybNgBKNSuOPT1Ii3Fnz5OyT-Ey26MTtEHcF0/edit#gid=0

The Reunited States is a documentary profiling several Americans who are dedicating their lives to promoting depolarization and communication across the political divide. These visionaries come from both right and left. They believe that we have more in common with our political opposites than what separates us. They are focused on helping communities around the country find common ground through shared stories.

From the Creators:
​At a time when America is ripping apart at the seams, The Reunited States is a powerful and urgent documentary that follows four everyday heroes on the difficult journey of bridging our political and racial divides.

This post lists several podcasts that our members have created and/or host. Do you have a podcast to add to this list? Please submit it to us via the Add-A-Resource Form!

Co-creating Peace: a podcast focused on Conscious Communication and Conflict Transformation

​Do you have an important conversation that you know you need to have, but are dreading because you fear it will not go well?

Do you avoid confrontation because you equate confrontation with conflict?

Do you avoid conflict because you believe the only two approaches to conflict are fight or flight, and that nothing good ever comes from conflict?

Then, Co-creating Peace is the podcast for you! In each 30-minute weekly episode, we will explore powerful tools and practices you can use to evolve your approaches to the important, yet difficult conversations you need to have.

Russ Charvonia’s The Civility Mosaic, written with Michael Ashley, is a 21st Century treatise on restoring civility as a matter of our survival. As past Grand Master of Masons in California, Charvonia provides readers with a first-of-its-kind, insider look at Freemasonry and how the practical application of its underlying ethos of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth can help us rise above the world’s bickering and violence to create a more compassionate, more humane, and more civil society.

The book is designed to help readers develop their own personal civility journey, using exercises built into the chapters. 

From the Publisher:
Civil discourse is in a state of crisis. Public dialogues today are celebrated not for what they accomplish, but for whom they divide. Incivility has become the new normal just as humanity faces existential, political and environment challenges that will require unprecedented global cooperation. The Civility Mosaic by Russ Charvonia with Michael Ashley is not only an urgent call to restore civility but it is also an instruction manual on how we might save ourselves from our most destructive impulses.

Written with screenwriter, author, and fellow Freemason Michael Ashley, The Civility Mosaic teaches us to take self-responsibility for transforming our troubled world by applying the cornerstone principles found in one of the world’s oldest and most influential societies—Freemasonry.

Resource Link: ​https://civilitymosaic.com/​

Submitted by: Lauren Barthold
​This book describes how civic dialogue can serve as an antidote to a polarized public square. It argues that when pervasive polarization renders rational and fact-based argumentation ineffective, we first need to engage in a way that builds trust. Civic dialogue is a form of structured discourse that utilizes first-person narratives in order to promote trust, openness and mutual understanding. By creating a dialogic structure that encourages listening and reflection, particularities and differences about fraught identities can be expressed in such a way that leads to the possibility of connecting through our fundamental, shared and deeply felt humanity. Drawing on Plato, Buber, Gadamer, Dewey, cognitive bias research, as well as the work of dialogue practitioners, Lauren Swayne Barthold provides a sustained defense of civic dialogue as an effective strategy for avoiding futile political arguments and for creating pluralistic democratic communities.

http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-45586-6​

A Conversation Café is a 90-minute hosted conversation which is held in a public setting like a coffee shop, bookstore or library, where anyone is welcome to join. Its simple format helps people feel at ease and gives everyone who wants to a chance to speak.

The CC method was created by Vicki Robin, Susan Partnow and Habib Rose. During the summer of 2001, Habib, a natural networker, invited Vicki Robin and Susan Partnow to experiment with organizing neighborhood gatherings of “Cultural Creatives” in Seattle. The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World is a nonfiction social sciences and sociology book by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson.

​The three Seattleites were set to launch Conversation Cafés in September 2001, but changed gears after the 9-11 terror attacks took place.  They immediately began hosting CCs to help people process their emotions and thoughts on what had and was happening in the country.

Posted by NCDD Community  |  March 27th, 2019
The following meeting facilitation tips were submitted by John Godec of The Participation Company. As public sector consultants, The Participation Company helps government agencies manage public issues to accomplish agency objectives. Their private sector business clients are able to maintain or improve their relationships with the public and gain support for their projects.
Facilitating meetings can be both an art and a science when the issues being discussed are comparably complex. Getting the right people involved in the discussion from the start can go a long way in your being able to facilitate successfully. Inviting those “right” people is key to reaching consensus. But how to craft an effective invitation is not always a skill everyone has. Here are some meeting facilitation tips to help when creating meeting invitations:
Build Excitement
You want your invitation to create anticipation in the recipient. Craft an announcement to your event in a way that will make it feel more like an invitation to a special event. Those invited will be excited to attend and will feel honored to have been included.
Help People Decide
A successful invitation also gives those who are not interested in your event permission to miss it. Knowing those who do actually show up are those who really wanted to be there and that those who chose not to be there didn’t attend is sure to be a relief. Design your invitation to help people easily decide if they even want to be a part of the facilitation process. Facilitating such meetings is made easier when those who want to be there are the ones who attend.
Explain the Way it Works
If you’re trying to figure out how to facilitate a meeting or if you’re planning to host a series of events, describe the order in a way that lets people choose when they want to become engaged. Describing each event will help them feel like they aren’t missing opportunities along the way.
An example of how to accomplish this could be to:

• explain how the event will affect the invited person, their family, and their community;
• how the event will give those invited the chance to have a say in the way the project turns out, and which days they’ll need to attend in order to present their opinion or solution;
• what the objective of each meeting will be, whether it will be a stating of the problem, a brainstorming session with others, or a resolution meeting.

Continue the Engagement
Just because the invitations have been sent doesn’t mean the excitement should end. Restating the purpose of the event during the opening remarks will help focus the discussions you as facilitator anticipate. Reminding attendees of the intended purpose of the event will also make it easier to refocus everyone if people stray off topic.
Happy Successful Facilitating
These meeting facilitation tips should help you create engaging invitations to public participation events, resulting in your facilitating successfully. No matter how effective a facilitator you are, invitations are an important way to make those events even more successful from the beginning.

Posted by D&D Resources  |  December 24th, 2009
Dialogue and deliberation are dynamic processes which can be empathy-enhancing, relationship-changing, problem-solving, action-planning, organization-developing, community-building, conflict-resolving, skill developing, prejudice reducing, consciousness-raising, and more! The various models and methods that are used in our field often emphasize, strive for and obtain different outcomes. This resource shares some great quotes from over a dozen leaders in the D&D community about what “dialogue” means to them.
Also see our list of leaders’ definitions of deliberation.
How do people in the field describe dialogue?‘Dialogue is shared exploration towards greater understanding, connection, or possibility.’
– Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, www.co-intelligence.org
‘Dialogue means we sit and talk with each other, especially those with whom we may think we have the greatest differences. However, talking together all too often means debating, discussing with a view to convincing the other, arguing for our point of view, examining pro’s and con’s. In dialogue, the intention is not to advocate but to inquire; not to argue but to explore; not to convince but to discover.’
– Louise Diamond, Ph.D., The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, www.imtd.org
‘Dialogue is about what we value and how we define it. It is about discovering what our true values are, about looking beyond the superficial and automatic answers to our questions. Dialogue is about expanding our capacity for attention, awareness and learning with and from each other. It is about exploring the frontiers of what it means to be human, in relationship to each other and our world.’
– Glenna Gerard, The Dialogue Group
‘A dialogue is a forum that draws participants from as many parts of the community as possible to exchange information face-to-face, share personal stories and experiences, honestly express perspectives, clarify viewpoints, and develop solutions to community concerns.’
–PresidentClinton’s InitiativeonRace,1998, http://clinton2.nara.gov/Initiatives/OneAmerica/america.html
‘Dialogue derives from the Greek word, dialogos. Logos can be explained as ‘meaning of the word’ and dia means ‘through.’ ‘Dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. It is a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us, in the whole group, out of which may emerge some new form of understanding or shared meaning.’
– David Bohm, On Dialogue
‘Dialogue is a process of genuine interaction through which human beings listen to each other deeply enough to be changed by what they learn. Each makes a serious effort to take others’ concerns into her or his own picture, even when disagreement persists. No participant gives up her or his identity, but each recognizes enough of the other’s valid human claims that he or she will act differently toward the other.’
– Harold Saunders, A Public Peace Process, www.sustaineddialogue.org/researchpublications.htm
‘The goal [of dialogue] is to deepen understanding and judgment, and to think about ways to make a difference on a community issue you care about. This can occur in a safe, focused discussion when people exchange views freely and consider a variety of views. The process – democratic discussion among equals – is as important as the content.’
– Everyday Democracy, Toward a More Perfect Union, www.everyday-democracy.org
‘The purpose [of dialogue] is to explore alternate viewpoints, to foster respect and understanding, and to help gain greater skill both communicating and working more effectively across social and ethnic boundaries.’
– Ethnic Dialogues, University of Kentucky Student Center
‘Dialogue is about bringing together many voices, many stories, many perspectives, many experiences with a goal to increase understanding about others and ourselves. It is a safe and honest facilitated discussion aimed at providing an opportunity to tell your story, listen to others and build understanding.’
– Jen Murphy, George Mason University’s UDRP Dialogue Project
‘Dialogue is a foundational communication process leading directly to personal and organizational transformation. It assists in creating environments of high trust and openness, with reflective and generative capacities. One might think of dialogue as a revolutionary approach in the development of the following organizational disciplines: continuous learning, diversity, conflict exploration, decision making and problem solving, leadership, self-managing teams, organizational planning and alignment, and culture change.’
– Linda Ellinor, The Dialogue Group
‘When I thought about Dialogue in this larger sense, I had the image of the open central courtyard in an old fashioned, Latin American home…you could enter the central courtyard by going around and through any of the multiple arched entryways that surrounded this open, flower-filled space in the middle of the house…For me, Dialogue is like entering this central courtyard in the spacious home of our common human experience. There are many doorways to this central courtyard, just as there are many points of entry to the experience of Dialogue. Indigenous councils, salons, study circles, women’s circles, farm worker house meetings, wisdom circles, non-traditional diplomatic efforts and other conversational modalities from many cultures and historical periods had both contributed to and drawn from the generative space that we were calling Dialogue.’
– Juanita Brown, The World Café, www.theworldcafe.com
‘Dialogue is a process which enables people from all walks of life to talk deeply and personally about some of the major issues and realities that divide them. Dialogues are powerful, transformational experiences that often lead to both personal and collaborative action. Dialogue is often deliberative, involving the weighing of various options and the consideration of different viewpoints for the purpose of reaching agreement on action steps or policy decisions.’
– Sandy Heierbacher, The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, www.ncdd.org
‘Most people don’t know how to talk together as effectively as they need to. But we can learn to recognize the dynamics of conversations. We can create ‘containers’: fields for deeper communication. We can anticipate breakdowns and recognize them as the natural result of brewing relationships. We can draw to the surface undiscussable dangerous issues without inciting people to anger, inviting them instead to talk about dangerous subjects from an atmosphere of mutual interest. Once we know how to do all these things, and more, we can lead people into a space where they are truly thinking together, and where that in turn leads to dramatic new levels of alignment and capability.’
– DIA-logos International

Living Room Conversations published the conversation guide, Guns and Responsibility, in October 2017. The guide gives pointers on how to hold living room conversations in order to develop a deeper understanding between participants around gun beliefs, gun safety, and responsible gun ownership. You can read the guide below, find a downloadable PDF here, or the original on Living Room Conversation’s site here.

From the guide…

Overview
In Living Room Conversations, a small group of people (e.g. 4-7) people come together to get to know one another in a more meaningful way. Guided by a simple and sociable format, participants practice being open and curious about all perspectives, with a focus on learning from one another, rather than trying to debate the topic at hand.

Story Artist Mary Alice Arthur and graphic facilitator Viola Clark collaborated in 2016 to create the first in their Zine series – a POCKET GUIDE TO HOSTING. One side features the Art of Hosting practices, the other side features the AoH methods.  Here is a little snapshot of a couple of pages of the zine. (A zine is a self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via photocopier.)

Art of Hosting will be using the Zine in the upcoming trainings in Innsbruck, Austria and Denmark.

Next in the series will be Harvesting.

Mary Alice advises: “It is set up as an A4 (if you are not on the A4 system, shrink to fit the space) — follow the instructions for folding (and unleash your inner creative geek!).”

Resource Link: AoH Hosting Zine

The 42-page article, Affinity Groups, Enclave Deliberation, and Equity (2016), was written by Carolyne Abdullah, Christopher Karpowitz, and Chad Raphael, and published in the Journal of Deliberative Democracy: Vol. 12: Iss. 2. The article provides evidence for the practice of holding enclaves for marginalized groups within dialogue and deliberation processes, as part of a larger conversation. They have found that by creating space within affinity groups for enclaves to dialogue; processes are more inclusive, participatory, and democratic. The authors show several ways in which enclave groups can be used in democratic processes and implemented within government practice.

Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

​From the article…