Brad Rourke’s Blog
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Important Online Conference: Including The Excluded
I wanted to share with you some important work that my friend, Beth Offenbacker, is up to. Beth leads a firm called Public Decisions, which is breaking fascinating ground as one of the premier online real-time training, conferences, and stakeholder engagement. Many of her conferences take place in Second Life, which — more than just…
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About Wicked Problems
Yesterday I gave a presentation introducing a new discussion guide designed to help people deliberate over the issue of childhood drinking. I am happy to say the event went very well and there were a lot of people in attendance (more than 125, by my count). I opened the talk with a discussion of wicked…
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New Discussion Guide: Conversations On Underage Drinking In Communities
Today I am giving a presentation at the release of a new community discussion guide that I am excited about. It is a collaboration between the National Issues Forums and The Leadership Foundation To Keep Children Alcohol Free, which is an organization made up of spouses of governors and former governors. The discussion guide is…
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How Social Media May Affect Civic Life
Next week I will be talking to a group of civic participation experts about social media and how it may (or may not be) affecting democracy, dialog, and deliberation. I began to put my thoughts together in a series of bullet points and it rapidly became an outline for a longer paper. I thought I…
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Myers-Briggs In The Nonprofit Workplace: How To Lead With J's And P's
When they discover Myers-Briggs personality types, many people are transfixed by the dichotomy between “extraverts” and “introverts.” This may be because this is the easiest and most in-you-face concept. That was my own experience, when I first learned that I am an ENTP personality type. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has four factors, each of which…
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LaHood's Dilemma And The Difficulties Of Evaluation
Yesterday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in response to a question at a congressional hearing, suggested that Toyota owners ought to avoid driving their cars. Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”…
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Keeping Track Of The Other Unemployed
My latest article on my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live: Keeping Track Of The Other Unemployed Yesterday, the government released data by metropolitan region on unemployment. That got me thinking about one of my pet peeves with unemployment data. That number that gets reported? It dramatically understates the…
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Education Lifting Girls Out Of Slavery
Some readers know how deeply I care and am energized by the modern Abolitionist movement across the world. There are more slaves now than there ever were at any time in human history. Human trafficking is tied with arms dealing for the second-most lucrative illicit business (after drugs). It is a $32 billion industry worldwide.…
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Obama Administration Falls Short In Civic Participation
My latest article on my blog at the Washington Times Communities, Public Square Today, is now live: Obama Administration Falls Short On Civic Participation On the morning of President Obama’s first State of the Union address, I published a rather dispirited prediction for the talk. One commenter asked me: I am very downhearted at how…
Brad Rourke 