At least four interactive aspects are critical to useful public discussion of IF’s Citizens Discussion Reports. 1. Facilitation is critical in public discussions of IF Citizens Staff Work Reports. There is nothing “magical” about IF facilitators. They are,...
What consequences might flow from a given policy possibility? It’s impossible to say for sure, but exploring this question is an important part of the IF discussion process. It helps the participants in an IF project to envision the policy ideas they’ve generated...
When IF project panels are beginning the transition to generating public policy ideas, I’ve found it helpful to have the panelists explore different metaphors for thinking about the policy area. Metaphors can capture a distinct vision of what the policy area, or...
A couple weeks ago, I facilitated a public discussion on Anticipating Genetic Technology with a group of individuals residing in the borough of Queens in New York City, and I wanted to comment on how different the process was from facilitating (and training student...
No, this is not a “how to” on furniture design. It is more in the spirit of how to cross-recruit for both IF project panel discussions and citizen discussions of IF reports (though much of this would work in deliberative discussion generally). My “bench” is that...
I’ve often wondered what an IF facilitator might do in a Sanctuary Project to encourage a discussion panel to generate some truly creative policy possibilities. There are times when a discussion panel might struggle with moving off the line. They might sketch out...
Election time is probably the time when people hear and talk about policy the most. So you may feel that you have already heard way too much about policy debates in recent months. And you may feel—just like me—completely disgusted with all the negative campaign...
One of the things I learned from being a collaborative partner in the application of IF process to a series of independent policy explorations of contentious subject matter is that it is difficult to broach conceptual possibilities when so many minds are already...
Near the end of the rock documentary The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights, the White Stripe’s frontman, Jack White, talks about the importance of obstacles and tensions for his creative process (here’s an unofficial clip; the video quality is not...
Ia Natsvlishvili was a participant in the 50-Hour Training Course in the IF Discussion Process that IF Fellows Mark Notturno and Ieva Notturno conducted in Washington DC last Spring for Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP) scholars. After successfully...