Civic Issues Blog

Deliberation Reflection

On Friday, February 27th, I attended another deliberation called “The Problem: Dealing with Heroin in PA”. Since this was the day before our class’s deliberations, I specifically was looking to take notes on what to do and what not to do while hosting a deliberation to maximize everyone’s experience. I saw that they had both a pre-survey and a questionnaire. They also used the whiteboard to take notes which helped a lot during the summary portion. I noticed that there was some confusion in the beginning about which group was which and finding seating for everyone. I thought that it was often hard to hear people speaking, even the hosts. I also observed that it was the same few people speaking and contributing their ideas.

For our deliberation, I made sure I told our group all of the above. We added more to our questionnaire. We focused on seating even before most of our guests arrived. We spoke up and were also able to hear everyone else who spoke. I think that almost everyone who attended contributed to the deliberation. When it came time for me to summarize, I used the whiteboard notes to refresh and as a visual for the attendees to follow along. I’m really glad that I attended another deliberation before ours.