A different approach to national dialogue-
The title of this post is the same title of a presentation I’ll be making on September 23, 2013, at the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) conference in Salt Lake City. Will you be there?
Tim Bonnemann and I will be summarizing our efforts since receiving our different 2012 Catalyst Awards from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). If you are reading this then you have a clue as to the efforts that has been going on behind the scenes by the many “working group” volunteers and advisors to this new site of the National Dialogue Network.
What’s different about the National Dialogue Network?
My shortest response to this question is simply that, “the NDN seeks to coordinate collaborative local conversations into mindful national dialogue.” There is a lot contained in that statement that I hope you’ll take a moment more to think about.
Our current “5-cycle process” creates “basic core materials” for a national audience on one important public issue per year — ideas for a more rapid response model are invited! Core materials include (at a minimum) a Conversation Guide and a special “Opinionnaire® Survey” that are provided to all participants (physically at their own expense or online without cost.) One important feature of our process allows any group to privately extend the core materials and the survey with additional content that is important to their audience. A showcase of this feature in action is the Conversation Collaborative’s online experiment from Ben Roberts (a member of our NDN working group.)
That’s all I have for now… but please give me your comments. Blogs can be lonely activities without a little feedback!