Origin

The idea for this project grew out of friendly conversations over many years, starting at least with the 2008 NCDD conference in Austin, TX.

Whether you call this work dialogue and deliberation, community engagement or public participation -- a lot of amazing people are doing important and truly inspiring work each and every day: helping communities resolve disputes peacefully, leading groups in solving their problems through collaboration, involving the public in decision making etc.

However, in the grand scheme of things, this participatory approach to running our society still is the exception rather than the norm. And sadly so.

So one question kept coming up time and again:

If this thing that we do is so great, how come more people aren’t doing it?

That's right. Why isn't everybody doing this?

One realization is that most people simply still don't know about what's possible, what better tools they have available to govern and to be governed, to engage their communities and to be engaged.

This project aims to change that. By creating a mass media entertainment format that aligns with the media consumption habits of regular people, we will expose a broader public to the magic of participatory democracy.

Project milestones

• February 7, 2013: NCDD Catalyst Award winners announced
• March 3, 2013: Real Dialogues website and social media channels launched
• July 2013: show concept finalized
• Recruit participants (Q4/2013)
• Run production hangouts (Q4/2013)
• Produce final product (Q4/2013)

Please follow our blog for regular updates.

We're going to Hollywood, baby!