Types of Civic Dialogue and Open Inquiry

21st Century Town Hall
AmericaSpeaks organizes large-scale forums engaging thousands of citizens — both face-to-face and through telecommunications links — integrated with laptop-computer and keypad-polling technologies — to deliberate on public issues and provide input to shape government policies. Decision-makers are often included as regular participants in these day-long deliberations. See www.americaspeaks.org
Appreciative Inquiry
Instead of seeking to solve problems, we can inquire into “the best of the past and present” in our organizations and communities – and then share what we find in ways that “ignite the collective imagination of what might be.” See www.appreciative-inquiry.org

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)
Communities can grow stronger by exploring and organizing all the gifts that citizens and associations (formal and informal) can bring to their community life, rather than by treating people as problems and clients. ABCD gathers data about this and makes the connections.
See www.co-intelligence.org/P-assetbasedcommdev.html

Canada's Maclean's experiment
"The People's Verdict". A dozen ordinary Canadians selected for their differences and meeting in the media spotlight for three days with one of the world’s top negotiation specialists, came up with a common vision for the future of their country. This one-time event, organized in 1991 by Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, presages the potential for Citizen Deliberative Councils at the national level. See www.co-intelligence.org/S-Canadaadvrsariesdream.html

Civic Journalism attempts to engage people in public life by finding out what they are concerned about, providing them with balanced information about the issues involved, getting them talking about those issues, and reflecting what they say back to the larger community in broadcast, print and online media. See www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/speeches/index.html

Community Quality of Life Indicators
Communities around the world have developed local statistics to measure their collective well-being, providing them with feedback about how they’re doing. See www.co-intelligence.org/P-qualtylifeindicators.html

Commons Cafes
Ten people are selected from four very diverse groups (e.g., an inner city church and a golf club) and convened such that one person from each group is at each of 10 four-person tables. Each table has cards with questions about one’s life, which the participants answer, sharing their lives with each other. Designed to humanize the other, across boundaries. See www.commonway.org

Community Vision Programs - See Scenario and Visioning Work, below.

Consensus Conferences
Citizen Deliberative Councils that are much like Citizens Juries except (a) panelists participate more in selecting experts to testify before them, (b) testimony is taken in a public forum and (c) a panel’s final product is a consensus statement. Currently the only form of Citizen Deliberative Council institutionalized as a part of government – in Denmark, where it was pioneered to advise Parliament on controversial technical issues. See www.co-intelligence.org/P-DanishTechPanels.html

Consensus Councils bring together the full diversity of stakeholders around a contentious issue to agree on recommendations to policy makers. These have existed for several years in Montana and North Dakota, but a United States Consensus Council has recently been established. See www.agree.org/projects

Consensus Process
A broad category of processes that endeavor to weave the actual diversity of the participants into understanding and solutions that make sense for all those involved. See www.co-intelligence.org/P-consensus.html

Conversation Cafes
Small lightly facilitated gatherings held regularly in a specific public place, usually an actual cafe, and open to the public. They usually start and end with a go-around much like a Listening Circle, with the body of the conversation being open dialogue. Normally convened around a topic. Often a city or town will have many conversation cafes people can attend. See www.conversationcafe.org

 Types Continued