Deliberation is a form of structured, purposeful, and facilitated conversation that is widely used by membership organisations to meaningfully engage with their stakeholders. Think about every time we manage a board, a council, or special interest group meeting with the goal of effective decision-making and arrival at consensus. With the size, scope and geographical restrictions imposed on modern membership bodies engaging members in deliberations is close to impossible due to the high costs of physically bringing people together in the same place and at the same time, as well as contracting experienced facilitators. Moreover, available online systems are not built for deliberations. At best they are providing platforms for open conversations and, as such, they suffer from low engagement and high polarization.
The advent of AI Large Language Models – such as ChatGPT or Claude - that can contextualise human language is rapidly changing the landscape by enabling low cost, highly-effective support for online deliberations. It has now become possible for membership bodies to embrace and utilise this breakthrough technology with significant advantages in delivering more transparency, trust, and loyalty among members at significantly lower cost.
This seminar will look at a pilot deliberation performed by the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) using Voxiberate, an AI platform for community deliberations, that engaged members on their preferred way of structuring membership plans, inlcuding:
- What online deliberation is
- What the IWRA wanted to achieve
- The skills needed for setting up and facilitating deliberations online to tap into an association’s “hive mind”
- How the Voxiberate platform worked for their deliberations on "structuring membership"
- The results of the deliberation
- How else online deliberation could be used by associations
Agenda
12:00 - Introduction
12:05 - Presentation
12:35 - Questions & Answers
12:55 - Close
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Speaker
Theodore Spyrou
