Other Cool Methods/Approaches/Ideas relevant to the 'Future of Democracy'
a participant-initiated session at NCDD 2014
This file includes (in order for each speaker):
- Raw flip chart notes taken by Rosa Zubizarreta
- Notes taken by Laurie Richardson
- A pretty-much-verbatim transcript by Cynthia Kurtz
(This is the unsorted, full-text version for the "data hounds" :-) There is also a "short form", a synthesized summary version available at .)
1) Tom Atlee: Public Wisdom & McCleans' 1991 "The People's Verdict"
Public Wisdom as the unified voice of the public at large - not just to inform, but also to generate a coherent voice. Using dissonance creatively. Maclean's as an example of vicarious participation. See more at co-intelligence.org
It is possible to have unified voice of public at large. Using dissonance creatively. To address major crises. This is an inquiry. 12 people were picked to engage – and they came up with a vision. Crafted vicarious participation. Go to Co-Intelligence.org website. Facilitator was Roger Fisher.
The idea is that it is possible to have a unified voice of the public at large. We have taken small groups, twelve to 200 people, and used the techniques we have to create magic and wisdom in those groups. That's the whole subject. We present that to decision makers -- either the official politicians or the public at large -- or just engage the public at large. It uplifts the conversation. There is a potential, a “we the people” voice that we can have. Not just to inform but to generate coherent voices without suppressing dissonance and disturbance in the process. Public wisdom is a high standard. My current definition is "taking into account what needs to be taken into account for long term broad benefit." This is not the wisdom of crowds. This is taking major crises into effect.
What is public wisdom? This is a 1991 Maclean's magazine issue. They picked 12 people who represented the diversity of Canada. There are 40 pages of coverage. There are bios of all of the people. The public is reading these bios and picking people they agree with or disagree with. This section is about a “weekend of candor,” a blow by blow account of what was going on. People were crossing their arms at the beginning, and at the end they were hugging each other. Former enemies. This was their vision that they came up with. This took place over one weekend. It has their signatures at at the bottom. That's crafted vicarious participation. There was also an hourlong documentary that took the public visually through this conversation. This is a model for scaling up. I want to stress this basic design. This is thinking in terms of vicarious participation. If you look on co-intelligence.org you can search for Maclean's. I also have interviews with the editors and a facilitator. The full magazine is there.
2) Cynthia Kurtz: Participatory Narrative Inquiry workingwithstories.org
Societal sense-making through narrative play. Maclean's as a pageant. PNY as blend of narrative inquiry and participatory action research.
We talk about things as a society thru narrative pageant. People used to play with the stories of the Gods. Now we have celebrities. But we can instead use other stories. Her book is “Working with Stories,” Cynthia Kurtz. Influenced by narrative inquiry (understanding stories) and pairing with participatory inquiry. Storytelling is an ancient device for understanding, negotiating. This is socially learned at an early age. Even without facilitation, this is a natural way of doing what we are talking about. In the bags, there is a paper for this.
(I have no notes on this one! But come to workingwithstories.org to learn more ;)
3) Nancy Glock-Grueneich: Embedding Dialogue and Deliberation Attitudes and Skills Across the Higher-Ed Curriculum
"What's a nice species like us, doing in a place like this? Importance of sharing stories of humanity's success in addressing difficult problems. Current academic system rations success. Instead, we need to be eliciting and enabling our higher purpose, in community.Has been teaching ESL, and embedding D&D into it. Need to embed D&D in all professions, so that higher ed can promote human survival.
The way higher education frames stories of human experience tend to be problem oriented. Lots about what is wrong. Need to reframe. Begin a course with stories of success in addressing most difficult problems. This will enable hope and help create a higher purpose. The current system seeks to ration success (i.e. success is doing better than others). She would define success as eliciting and enabling higher purpose – helping to create the world we want. D/D skills can be embedded even into teaching language. At the graduate level, professions are shaped. What language is used, etc. D/D should be taught, valued, accredited.
The way higher education frames the stories of human experience tends to be problem oriented. There is a lot of what's wrong. I like to say, what’s a nice species like us doing in a place like this? I wanted a way of reframing the stories. I tried this in courses. Mostly stories of success in addressing difficult problems. The purpose shifts to creating hope and higher purpose.
The current system has the function of rationing success, which is defined as doing better than others. It is logically impossible for education to succeed. It is not a matter of method; we know how to do it. There are dramatic examples of how readily we can create success. But we have defined success as impossible. I am talking about enabling a higher purpose in the community, a world in which we can bring out the best in each other. The current system has lots going for it. But resources can be realigned.
I have been working with undergraduates, infusing the attitudes and concepts of deliberative democracy in what they are doing. I have been teaching in China. English is taught to millions of people. We teach vocabulary skills. We can embed the communications skills we use in D&D in this work. In China there is lots of interest in "what is the moral life" and how do you do democracy -- meaning collaboratively, not fighting each other in the streets. They think they way we do it is fighting. Every profession has at its margins good ideas. In any profession that involves D&D skills, this should be part of what is taught, accredited, and evaluated. Professional associations should bring those things in. There are subtle things, like whether students and teachers communicate with their communities in dialogue.
4) Jane -- Advocating more use ofOpen Space Technology as tool for engagement
Jane – OST for conference. Using OST for this and for other conferences, to encourage more spontenaiety.
Using Open Space as tool for engagement pass – enable more spontaneous conversations
5) Young man -- Need for unified online engagement tools for use at national level.
Unified online engagement tools for use at national level. Need for unified tech. What does tech for world brain need to be? Open-ended from bottom up.
Online engagement is one way forward to enable a unified voice. We have ground level technologies (like OST) – need to enable entire planet to come up with singular thoughts. Online technology is a singular field – many are developing their own technologies. But if we could create a unified technology or a world brain – could go the route of creating a whole world. Has to incorporate all values that are important and be resonant with world it its current situation. Seeking collaboration to see what technology a world brain needs. What values need to be incorporated. How can it be accessible to all. How can it guide voices to single thoughts. Open ended from bottom up – all get to submit ideas, all get to vote on all ideas, and bring them to a top list of priorities.
I see online engagement technology as the one way for people all over to make a unified voice. There are lots of methods at the ground level. We need ways to help millions of voices to come up with singular thoughts. Online technology is an emerging field, but many people are coming up with their own ideas. If we compete, we will have too many competitions. If we don’t compete but cooperate, we can create a whole world and a way for everyone to express their thoughts as humans. Online technology
has to incorporate all values that are important, and it must resonate with the world as it is. Including capitalism. Money is not evil; it is just one value in the mix of everything else. Other values like love and respecting minorities and respecting women must mix in. This is a call for collaboration. What are the values that need to incorporated in online technology? How do we create something accessible to everyone? How do we guide all the voices in the world to single points?
[Can you give an example of a value being incorporated into online technology?] Current online technology is contradictory to current democracy. You can say yes or no, this person or that, but there is no sense of everyone being able to submit ideas to bring them all together. Small groups of people submit ideas, and other people vote on them. Instead, everyone should be able to submit ideas and vote on everyone's ideas. We need to bring those ideas to a top list of priorities the world needs to focus on.
6) Manju Bazzell -- Coordinated "splash" around transpartisan work:.
Manju – coordinated "splash" for Transpartisan work. Give her your card / contact her if interested.
Coordinating concerted effort to hit a region/district or state within a certain timeframe and make a splash to spark interest
7) Dave Biggs, MetroQuest -- Combining "high tech" and "high touch" D&D for maximum leverage
Some people working only F2F, others working only online. Need to leverage and combine High Tech/High Touch. Has worked with online groups of 5k to 15k, on priorities and issues. Current tech can't yet solve problems online. Working with APA to bridge online and offline. Solve issues F2F based on online prior prioritization, doing online feedback afterward.
Online can do some things but will never be able to achieve others. Need a marriage of online and face to face. They are engaging from 5-15K people in doing things which are relatively sophisticated – looking at alternatives, understanding tradeoffs, weighing in on them. This can create a picture of priorities/issues. But – online we can’t solve problems that require collective thinking – and not a sense that this can be developed. So this requires bridging of online and offline strategies. What if we were developing a future vision for a metro area. Let’s ask people what is important, what we need to improve. We can online gather massive opinions. And then show up at face to face dialogue where we will have the usual suspects who are not representative. But we can now give them the top 5 priorities to work on. Then, when they create scenarios, alternatives – and those can go back online. Get 15K to vote on those. He is looking for feedback on those ideas.
As an early proponent of online technology, in 17 years I have seen the maturity of online technology. We are successful at being able to do some things. We will never be able to do some other things. We need a marriage of what you can and can't do online. We engage in the range of 5 to 15,000 people doing things that are relatively sophisticated, looking at alternatives, understanding tradeoffs, weighing in. We can create a broad picture of what a demographic feels are the priorities and issues. We are not able to solve problems online. We can't take those priorities and create solutions. We are poor at solving problems that require collective thinking online. I don't think the solution is to find out what the new online solution is. We need to recognize that we can't do everything online.
I am working on a paper on bridging online and offline strategies to make the best use of each. My proposal is: consider a future vision for a metro area. The first task is to figure out people’s priorities. What do we need to solve? We can gather massive opinions online, then ask people to show up at a session. People will show up and try to get their priorities heard more loudly. But we take off the table their luxury of saying, just because I'm here I get an extra voice. We say, we've already heard from 15,000 people online. Your job is to work on a solution to these things. That's a roll-up-your-sleeves activity that only a group of people charged with that mission can solve. We can't do that online. Then, after they create solutions, we can go back online and say, we had people talk about these things. Then we can get 15,000 people to vote on which solutions they like. We can get broad buy-in online. We shouldn’t over-expect what we can do online. We need to leverage what people can do face to face. We need to create a seamless flow from situation to situation. We need to say, feed me with ideas. We need to collaborate on projects where the online component is meshed with skills in face to face meeting. I am doing projects that have impacts. I would love to work with you.
8) Steve Buckley -- Standard evaluation tools to judge what works and what doesn’t.
Works with Open Government metrics. People are leaving meetings unsatisfied. We need to survey them!!! Need to raise standards of practice. Open Government initiative seeks to be transparent, participatory, collaborative. Opportunity for our field: government has promised by end of 2014, to produce best practices and metrics for public participation.
Used to work for Federal Govt evaluating public participation / engagement – used to do that with Dept of Energy. Even though there was a checklist of how to run meeting (3 min at microphone) – but he saw people leaving unsatisfied. Leaving more angry after meeting than before. No real way to look at evaluating from the perspective of those attending. A survey of whether they felt this was successful. Standard measurement tools need to be developed. Need a critical mass of people interested in this. He has an e-mail group that is now in hibernation mode and it can come out of hibernation to raise the standards of practice to clarify and delineate. Obama signed an open govt memo his first day of office. But that was the high water mark – things petered out from there. But there is an opportunity– b/c they said by end 2014 they will come up with best practices and metrics for public participation. Unfortunately these are only social media people without other background on participation.
I used to work for the federal government evaluating public meetings, at the Department of Energy, for example. They are required by law to involve people in the process of evaluation. They want to know how to get the best bang for the buck. Even though we had a checklist of how to do a meeting - three minutes at the microphone - I was in the audience auditing, and I could see that people were leaving unsatisfied. They were more angry after the meeting than before. I could hear people muttering. At the after action review, people said, “That seemed to go well.” The proof is in pudding, but they have no way of tasting the pudding. People should have a way of saying whether they liked the meeting.
There is a group of people I am meeting with. We want to get a critical mass of people interested in this idea. An email group exists but is in hibernation. It seems the time is right for raising the standards of practice. This is linked to [the NCDD challenge of] delineating what we need to do to up our game. The only way to do that is to know how we are doing. If you don't know which way you are going, any direction will do.
This is timely because the first day in office, Obama signed an open government memo directing agencies to be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. The effort petered out after that. I knew that would happen. This is an opportunity for D&D because they have painted themselves into a corner. They said that by the end of 2014 we will come up with best practices and metrics for public participation. There are only 2 months left in 2014, and the people doing this have no background in public participation. They think social media is the answer, or a killer app that will do all of the listening for us.
9) Tom Murray – polarity management, integral theory, cognitive science, contemplative dialogue
Tom Murray: a) Polarity management; b) Integral theory (including developmental literature on perspective taking); c) cognitive science (skills-based approach to D&D – how do we support those skills through infrastructure of tools?); d) contemplative dialogue.
Polarity mapping – recommends looking up info online. Contemplative dialogue practices – welcomes input for article. Fleshing out skills we want to develop in D&D: see socialdeliberativeskills.com. How to design our tech to "gently support" the values we want, including mutual understanding and mutual regard. Working on NSF grant at UMASS, using adult development models. Includes perspective taking, Terry O'Fallen's work, text analysis.
Tom Murray –
●Polarity mapping and management methods – lots of web about that
●Contemplative dialogue process – insight dialogue, Bohm dialogue, etc. – looking for inputs for an article he is writing