Help us map innovations in public engagement in California!

For those of you who have held public engagement programs in California, here’s an opportunity to get your work in front of funders, public administrators, fellow civic innovators, and others…

NCDD is collaborating with the New America Foundation’s newly-launched California Civic Innovation Project (CCIP) to create a map of public engagement projects that have happened, are happening, or are being planned in California.

Please take a few minutes to complete the simple survey at http://tinyurl.com/7ocbc48 and let us know about your projects and your organization.  CCIP and NCDD will create an interactive Google map of California public engagement projects based on your responses.  Please enter your projects asap — but definitely by the June 24th deadline.

We’ll be publicizing the map widely — CCIP to its network of funders, public leaders, and others, and NCDD to its broad network of innovators in dialogue, deliberation, and public engagement.

The purposes of this project are:

1. To help people (including folks at the New America Foundation and local government officials) get a sense of the breadth and depth of public engagement projects that have been held throughout the state by YOU — civic innovators who engage Californians across divides on pressing issues, using a wide variety of approaches.
2. To help Californian civic innovators see what’s happening in your region and potentially make new connections.
3. To help NCDD learn what a simple mapping process like this could potentially provide movers-and-shakers in public engagement across the country.

This collaboration between CCIP and NCDD was inspired by a conference call NCDD hosted last month with CCIP director Alissa Black and a small segment of NCDD members who had done public engagement work in California.  As you can see from the notes and audio at www.ncdd.org/8245, Alissa was impressed with the breadth of public engagement projects happening throughout the state, and wanted to make these projects more visible — both to inform her own project and to help others working in the public realm and funder community to access this knowledge.

Here is a statement from Alissa about why she is excited about this project…

The CA Civic Innovation Project is committed to improving local governments’ use of innovate technology, policies, and practices to deepen community engagement. The work of NCDD member organizations is an astounding example of public engagement practices taking place throughout the state. By highlighting your projects, I will draw attention to your successes and encourage local governments to learn from your stories and incorporate these practices into their engagement projects.

Please participate by completing the survey today at http://tinyurl.com/7ocbc48.