Many of my IF colleagues and affiliated facilitators have had the experience of lively discussions of Interactivity Foundation guidebooks that conclude with discussants asking “what’s next?”. These expressions of confusion, frustration, and agitation vary from...
Adolf Gundersen, Fellow and Trustee of the Interactivity Foundation (IF) has been nominated for election as a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters (WASAL) on the basis of his contributions to public conversation and deliberation. WASAL...
Dennis Boyer's Book Review : The Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future, Kettering Foundation Press, Dayton, Ohio, 2014 - By David Mathews One sizeable shelf in my office bookcase is devoted entirely to recent works...
IF will participate in and conduct a presentation/demonstration on public discussions of water policy at a Water Ethics Conference held by the D.B Reinhardt Institute for Ethics in Leadership, Viterbo University, La Crosse, WI, April 16-18, 2015. The conference is...
IF has long had a public participatory presence in Wisconsin, with three Fellows located there and a Wisconsin-based coordinator for an intense program of citizen discussion of IF guidebooks on policy possibilities. IF looks for occasions to partner with other...
It is often helpful in IF projects to start with an “agreement” with project panelists. The following is the framework I have been using: Project Ground Rules—The Interactivity Foundation (IF) has a discussion process of exploration and development that the project...
"I have started to consider whether the usefulness of IF reports could be enhanced by additional preparatory steps."
The National Dialogue Network (NDN) spent over a year planning and organizing the initial phases of a national dialogue on a topic of public concern, relying on practitioners within the public participatory sphere to assist and comment. Cooperating...
Interactivity Foundation discussions, both those within sanctuary projects that result in reports on policy concerns and those within the shorter public interactions that discuss those reports, rely on processes that work well within the frameworks they were...
A recent rich discussion series with representatives of faith-based groups and community organizations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin shed some possible light on the issues IF might face as it considers “partnerships” with other groups for purposes of discussion of...