This conversation is with Rhiann McLean (in Scotland) and Max Hardy (in Australia).  Both are dedicated to amplifying the voices of people with disability—through research and public deliberations.” Links: Research Voices Citizens’ Jury Video of the Research Voices Citizens’ Jury Report from Research Voices Citizens’ Jury NDIS Citizens’ Jury Video of NDIS Citizens’ Jury Rhiann...Continue reading

Kara Dillard is an Assistant Professor at James Madison University in the US. She is also the operations specialist for Common Ground for Action (CGA), an online variant of the National Issues Forum (NIF). In this episode, Kara explains this short-form process, as well as its strengths and challenges. As a moderator training specialist for...Continue reading

Dr Kath Fisher is an extremely experienced professional facilitator. She is also an academic at Southern Cross University (Lismore, Australia). In this episode, Kath shares some of her journey and offers a number of useful techniques that she uses routinely in public deliberations. Resources: A summary of the report produced from the CSIRO project A...Continue reading

Abbie Jeffs has a background in urban planning and public policy but was an excellent facilitator in a successful consultancy, Straight-Talk, for many years. She’s now working for a public sector organisation—a loss for the field of public deliberation—although Abbie remains a strong advocate. She has much wisdom to impart in this episode and several...Continue reading

Lucy Cole-Edelstein has over 30 years’ experience as an engagement practitioner, as a facilitator and process designer. She established and ran a successful consultancy, Straight-Talk, for some of those years and later sold her company to RPS with whom she now works. In this episode, Lucy shares several activities that build the group’s skill set...Continue reading

Jason Diceman is an experienced facilitator based in Toronto, Canada. He created a very useful tool, Feedback Frames (previously in the form of Idea Rating Sheets and, earlier, Dotmocracy templates). His latest invention enables score-voting on participant-generated ideas, rather than a crude survey or voting tool.  It’s being used throughout the world and deserves attention...Continue reading

This is a conversation with Nicole Hunter, Keith Greaves and Kimbra White, the founders of MosaicLab.  It covers what happens in the room with a face-to-face long-form deliberation when MosaicLab facilitators are at work. This episode contains an enormous amount of practical advice: the physical space, co-facilitation, templates, report writing, managing data and conflict, as...Continue reading

Rosa Zubizarreta is an American group facilitation practitioner and theorist and the founder of DiaPraxis. This episode is a companion piece with a previous episode that featured Jim Rough, the original designer of Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Councils. In the conversation with Rosa, the focus is on relational facilitation: attending to the emotional work of...Continue reading

In a California sawmill in the early 1980s, Jim Rough developed “Dynamic Facilitation”. This “group process” has now been taught in seminars all over the world and forms the basis for the “Wisdom Council Process”, a new way to spark collective wisdom in large systems of people. Wisdom Councils have been used in multiple countries...Continue reading