About GeoDeliberationThe term GeoDeliberation was first used by Cai and Yu (2009) where they provide the following definition: "GeoDeliberative Dialogue refers to a form of deliberative dialogues in the civic engagement settings that concerns geographical defined problems and involves the use of geographical information and related technologies." (p. 129)According to Antoni Moore and Igor Drecki in their book Geospatial Visualisation, a form of (geo)deliberation was introduced by Rinner and colleagues in 2008. Rinner et al. mentioned 'diliberation' used in a sense of argumentation as a goal of their work on argumentation maps. Cai and Yu emphasize cooperation and logical thinking aspects of public discourse. Cai and Yu (2009) have provided a linear, bottom-up 5 state process of geodeliberation:The Geodeliberation ProjectTGP_504801d8-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344TGP MembersDr. Guoray CaiDr. Guoray Cai is an Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University, with affiliate appointments in Geography as well as in Computer Science and Engineering. He is the founding director of the Spatial Information and Intelligence Laboratory, which is housed in the College of IST. He is also a member of GeoVISTA center and Center for Human-Computer Interaction. Dr. Cai conducts research in the areas of information retrieval, geographical information science, human-computer interaction and communication, and visual mediation of collaborative work. He has published papers in the international journals such as Proceedings of IEEE, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Transactions in GIS, Geoinformatics, Environment and Planning B, and international journal of NETWORKS. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, and ASPRS.Dr. John M. CarrollDr. John M. Carroll is a faculty member in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology and is the Edward M Frymoyer Chair Professor and the co-Director (with Professor Mary Beth Rosson) of the College of IST’s Laboratory for Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning. I am also the Director of Penn State’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction. He also has courtesy appointments as professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Instructional Systems, and Psychology. Until August 2003, he was a professor in Computer Science at Virginia Tech and was also Director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction, and had secondary appointments as professor of Teaching and Learning and Psychology. And prior to that, he was a scientist at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center (1976-1994), where he managed the legendary User Interface Institute.Dr. Jess KropczynskiDr. Jess Kropczynski is a faculty member in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State that started as a Postdoctoral Researcher working specifically with the GeoDeliberation Project in 2012. Prior to earning her PhD in Sociology from the University of Kentucky, she worked with local and state governments to assess communication and information needs of target audiences. Jess primary research interests are civic technology and community informatics and she currently offers a graduate methods course on Visualization and Advanced Analysis of Social Networks. Tian YeTian Ye is a PhD Candidate in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. He is the lead designer of the online tool used for the Community Issue Review.Meagan TuttleMeagan Tuttle moved to State College to begin working for the Borough’s Planning Department in January of 2012. Prior to moving to State College, she completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Urban and Regional Planning at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. She also worked on various planning projects with Ball State University’s Community-Based Projects office and with the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was an Adjunct Instructor for Ball State’s undergraduate Neighborhood Planning studio in the Fall of 2011. During her time with the Borough she has organized the current Neighborhood Plan and Downtown Master Plan efforts and frequently engages with neighborhood and community groups through these activities. She participates in many other community dialogues around topics such as town-gown relations, retention of young professionals, entrepreneurship and making State College more bicycle friendly.Courtney HaydenCourtney Hayden is the Communications & Special Projects Coordinator at Borough of State College. _50480354-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344To build a community’s capacity for collective action_504804b2-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344Deliberative DemocracyWhat is Involved in Effective GeoDeliberation? Geodeliberation is a subfield of deliberative democracy that concerns the engagement of local communities in addressing geographically complex problems through the use of geospatial information and online deliberation technologies. Geodeliberation is one of the most sophisticated types of democratic deliberation that occurs in real world applications, such as community planning for sustainability, coordinating watershed management, and undertaking long-term responses to crisis events. Local CommunitiesConversation QualityGeodeliberation seeks to move beyond such simple participation to emphasize the quality of conversation and the roles of more structured, thoughtful, and constructive communication in fostering the emergence of public judgment. Its goal is to build the community's capacity for collective action, through the marriage of deliberative dialogue (as a field of social theory and practice) with the power of geographical information science.Collective ActionNegotiationsEmploying effective GeoDeliberation techniques is essential for communities that wish to become more robust and more effective in successfully deliberating and negotiating. Groups must concentrate not only on interpersonal communications, but must also examine social and technical efforts and solutions.EffectivenessGeolocationDeliberative dialogues bring geospacial issues to the forefront, showing a greater understanding of best democratic practices and encouraging participation from all parties with an interest in the matters at hand. Researchers may use geographical information tools that capture, represent and store spatially-anchored annotations, but this information must be aggregated, analyzed and applied accordingly.MediationDeliberative dialogues can be specially be mediated, with sensitivity for global and spatial issues. Both social and technical efforts must be emphasized; and GeoDeliberative Annotation Technology (GeoDAT) provides the best means to achieve this goal. With GeoDAT, it is easy to aggregate collaborative, spatial and nesting annotations, so that annotations with a spatial context are not lost and are used in the most effective manner possible. To achieve successful GeoDeliberation, the process must be thorough and may take months to reach its ultimate conclusion. As the world is evolving to a more global way of thinking, it is not always enough to simply engage in good deliberation practices. There is a need for tools that allow users to think and express themselves spatially while deliberations are at hand. DeliberationValue of Deliberation -- The need to expand and deepen civic engagement is a central theme of democratic society, but the search for effective means to meet that need has been challenging in both theory and practice. Recently, the "deliberative democracy movement" has argued that true civic engagement can emerge from community-wide deliberative dialogues regarding collective action and change. Deliberative dialogues go beyond merely public talk to involve positive and constructive exchange of ideas, intention to listen and understand others, and the use of critical thinking and reasoned argumentation to develop public judgment and common ground. Difficult enough in small face-to-face settings, deliberative democracy is even harder to practice as communities strive for larger scale participation and address problems of increasing social, geographical, and temporal complexity. Current social computing technologies (wikis, web forums, instant messaging, and so on) enable unprecedented scales of participation, but tend to produce scattered, unsystematic, highly redundant, and therefore often not very usable outputs when applied to deliberation on complex and controversial problems.Civic EngagementProblemIntroduce a problem_50480584-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce3441_5048064c-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344IssuesExplore issues_5048071e-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce3442_504807dc-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344ObservationsContribute personal observations_504808e0-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce3443_5048098a-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344CommonalitiesEstablish common ground_50480a5c-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce3444_50480b24-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce344ActionsDevelop actions_50480c0a-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce3445_50480d18-e067-11e4-8c5e-fb10548ce3442015-04-11http://geodeliberation.webs.com/apps/faq/OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net