The Convergence of Engagement, Journalism, and Digital Tools
04/29/2013By Elana Goldstein
During our work with the Face the Facts initiative, we had the opportunity to experiment with some of our traditional town meeting tools in online and TV broadcasts. As we were doing this work, we noticed that many public affairs programs (either on TV or online) weren’t utilizing all of the available tools to make programs as interactive and engaging as possible.
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U.S. Open Government National Action Plan: Evaluating Round One and Looking Forward
04/25/2013By Daniel Clark
Two evaluations of the U.S. Open Government Partnership National Action Plan were released in March. The White House released its self-assessment report, and OpenTheGovernment.org released a report produced by a coalition of over 30 civil society organizations.
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Reflecting on the Facts
04/23/2013By Elana Goldstein
Over the past nine months we have been working with the Center for Media Innovation at George Washington University on a project called Face the Facts. The initiative aimed to bring more civil and fact based discussion into our national political dialogue.
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Lessons for online crowdsourcing from a Flint, Michigan town meeting
04/11/2013By Daniel Clark
On March 13, AmericaSpeaks produced a large visioning and goals workshop for the city of Flint, Michigan, which was part of their first comprehensive planning effort in 50 years. This was one of our larger 21st Century Town Meetings of the past year.
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Freedom to Tweet: Grading Social Media Policies in the Federal Government
03/18/2013By Michael Halpern
Program Manager, Center for Science and Democracy
Social media can transform debates, inform discussions and, as we saw with the Arab spring, help spread democracy. And information and science have a key role to play in democracy (hence the new Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists).
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Designing a 21st Century Summit in Less than 24 Hours
02/28/2013By Steve Brigham
We had a fascinating experience last week that challenged us in the use of our model. We were invited in by the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at George Washington University to facilitate the majority of the 3rd day of a 4 day leadership capstone that they were conducting for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (part of U.S. Department of Agriculture).
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In Search of Real American Beliefs, Filmmaker and Mother Travels the U.S. Untangling Divisive Politics
02/26/2013By Talking Eyes Media
Democracy is founded on robust dialogue, but somewhere along the line, politics replaced sex as the one thing in America we don’t discuss in mixed company even amongst friends and family. Increasingly, political pundits dictate the tenor of our national conversation and we have allowed divisive catch phrases to supplant genuine dialogue. One filmmaker–a mother of two teenagers– is traveling across the United States with a star-spangled table asking people to sit down with her and share their political beliefs.
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Fix the Debt Finds Common Ground
02/11/2013By Tom Campbell
On February 6th 2013, AmericaSpeaks facilitated a half day session for the Fix the Debt Campaign, bringing together a diverse group of nearly 100 leaders from 80 organizations in an open dialogue around the national debt. Convened in Washington, DC and aptly named the Common Ground Summit, the work was to find areas of agreement on the tough questions about the obstacles, ramifications, and principles that should frame this broad-based campaign.
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Forging A Citywide Policy on Bullying
02/01/2013By Steve Brigham
Bullying has been a chronic problem for many school-aged kids across the country for decades, but has never been well addressed. In fact, it is an issue that has been largely ignored until recently. The issue received a significant boost in 2012 with the release of the documentary film, Bully, about students who face bullying on a daily basis in U.S. schools.
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Report: D.C. Considers Road Pricing to Relieve Congestion
01/24/2013By Steve Brigham
The National Capitol Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) released its report this week from an innovative study they carried out on road use and congestion pricing in 2011 and 2012. AmericaSpeaks guided the design and implementation of five deliberative forums that served as the primary research instrument for the study.
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