Posts By Sandy Heierbacher

Peter Levine on Making Public Participation Legal

This post is shared from the blog of supporting NCDD member and professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Boston, Dr. Peter Levine. Peter shares a humorous take on the not-so-funny state of public meetings, and highlights the NCDD-supported Making Participation Legal report. For more info about this important intitiative and how it was created,Read… Read more »

Announcing the New Journal of Dialogue Studies

We were pleased to learn recently about the creation of the Journal of Dialogue Studies, a brand new academic publication dedicated to the theory and practice of dialogue. The JDS will be published by the Institute for Dialogue Studies, which is the academic platform of England’s Dialogue Society. For us non-academics, this journal presents aRead… Read more »

“Are We There Yet?” Residents of Central Arkansas use online game to create roadmap for the future.

This article first appeared on EngagingCities but we’d like to share it here with the NCDD community. How do you get citizens to give feedback about their ideas for the community, while also educating them on the inherent repercussions of their preferences? How do you involve the public in your 30-year plan, while instilling anRead… Read more »

Reminder about tomorrow’s NCDD Confab on Rockefeller’s GATHER

Don’t forget to register for tomorrow’s confab call! From 2:00 to 3:00 pm Eastern on November 20th, we’ll be talking with Rob Garris and Noah Rimland Flower about the Rockefeller Foundation’s new publication GATHER: The Art & Science of Effective Convening. The Rockefeller Foundation and Monitor Institute released GATHER earlier this year as a freeRead… Read more »

Birmingham Joins Mental Health Conversation with NIFI

In addition today’s exciting news about the Text, Talk, Act project, we are pleased to share more good news about the Creating Community Solutions effort. This post comes from our partners at the National Issues Forums Institute, sharing the recent announcement that they will be helping the city of Birmingham, AL engage its public inRead… Read more »

Reflections on Technology from Davenport

This post comes via the Gov 2.0 Watch blog, which is a project of our partners at the Davenport Institute. You can read the post below or find the original here. We think a lot about using technology to enhance democracy here at NCDD, and we wanted to share this post that reminds that technologyRead… Read more »

Civic Studies Field Continues to Grow

This post comes via Dr. Peter Levine, a civics scholar, philosopher, and NCDD supporting member. Peter recently announced on his blog that he will be helping convene a “civics studies mini-conference” this January in New Orleans as part of the Southern Political Science Association meeting. Civic studies is an emerging discipline that holds a greatRead… Read more »

Announcing the new Penn State Democracy Medal

Starting this year, Penn State University’s Democracy Institute will be awarding a Democracy Medal for exceptional innovations that advance the design and practice of democracy. The medal comes with a $5,000 award and tremendous publicity for the recipient, who will accept the medal and give a speech in the Fall of 2014. The medal celebratesRead… Read more »

Pledge to Help Foster Respectful Dialogue

As an organization, NCDD is not in the habit of supporting online petitions. But when Joan Blades, a supporting NCDD member and a co-founder of Living Room Conversations and MoveOn.org, reached out to us to support a petition she recently created, we immediately recognized its value for our work and knew that it was somethingRead… Read more »

Jacob Hess on Narrative and the Red-Blue Divide

We’re happy to share this post, which was submitted via our Submit-to-Blog Form by one of our sustaining NCDD members, Dr. Phil Neisser, on behalf of Jacob Hess, a supporting NCDD member. Both of these gentlemen are co-authors of the book You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You’re Still Wrong): Conversations between aRead… Read more »