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some social issue or concern and have gathered with a shared purpose and topic motivating the

rationale for convening. Larger meetings will usually breakout into timed roundtable dialogues.

Within the context of this research, I have explored the types of Community Conversations

that convene examining everything one can distill from their purposes, reasoning flaws to quality

of engagement to the meaning and enjoyment of dialogue. I explored how this type of gathering

works to learn how it’s used for civic and participatory practices. My aim was to experience public

engagement -while general in context there is a sense that it belongs to the contemporary times we

live in and I sought out to discover how the dynamics of group dialogue forge community and

bring benefit to society. Specifically, my research proposal said I would investigate how

participants and facilitators engage in collective deliberative dialogue processes where I will have

either observed the process from the sidelines or as a participant actively engaged in the dialogue.

I also interviewed many participants and facilitators about their experiences after those sessions.

In considering the dynamics of Community Conversations, deliberative dialogue in general

is thought of as having the following characteristics: it usually addresses issues of local or national

concern, invitation is usually open to all, all can talk and access is unrestricted, it may lead to some

form of action, generally public action, by the participants. Regardless of the size of the gathering,

when individuals assemble to engage in dialogue, in many ways it becomes a community unto

itself. The interaction of group members in discourse is a collective process of engagement that

has the possibility to transform individual thought into collective conscious (Yankelovich, 1991).

Community Conversations at their essence are civic dialogue engagements that are

intentional and reflect deliberative democracy in action but those that I have studied seem far less

concerned with choice-making and consensus of their structure, yet they function and serve to

bring together groups of people with little or no formal affiliation to discuss issues of local

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