The site (http://www.waterdiplomacy.org) solicits applications to a weeklong course held at Tufts University about water diplomacy through network management. Through a highly interactive hands-on program, water professionals and community leaders from around the world will learn to use (and teach) the theory, strategies, and techniques of water diplomacy.

Results: in the first three months, the site got 4,600 pageviews from 1,200 unique visitors in 95 countries. The site has already helped solicit over 60 applications for a course capped at 35 people.

The site features include:

• Online application and contact forms, with sortable databases exportable to Excel
• Social networking tie-ins to Facebook and Twitter
• Site traffic stats
• Custom logos and graphic design, and
• An email list sign-up.

In the near future, the site will allow admitted applicants to submit secure online payments. And after the course, the site will allow attendees to communicate with each other and the course presenters via a private online social network (or “walled garden”).

Other than a website, this project also includes:

• An ongoing collaborative design process that seeks continuous improvement through client and user feedback
• Creation and management of a branded Twitter account and Mail Chimp email campaign
• Graphic design of promotional materials to attract funding and sponsorship, and
• Extensive editorial suggestions to the text, informed by Adroit’s knowledge of the dispute resolution field and its langauges.

In terms of design, the client wanted a site with a clean (as opposed to busy) aesthetic and an international feel that eschewed the loaded banalities of many dispute resolution websites. Here you’ll find none of the usual images of attractive young white North American businessmen shaking hands at a conference table, Venn diagrams and other logos that romanticize consensus-building, and the like.

Perhaps the best example of Adroit’s influence in the graphic design can be seen from how we took the following idea, sketched by the client—

—and jointly redesigned it with Sarah Corey. Click below:

The paper was written for and presented at a three-day symposium about “Conflict Management in Culturally Complex, Uncertain, and Volatile Environments.” This conference was jointly hosted by the US Air Force Culture and Language Center (AFCLC) and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins. Other presenters included P. Terrence Hopmann, I. William Zartman, Michael Wheeler, Moty Cristal, and Kimberly Hudson. The paper is based on interviews Noah did with US soldiers before and after their recent tour in Afghanistan. It describes how any organization—military or not—can and should improve their negotiation capacity across their entire network. This extends the thesis (and contradicts some of the recommendations) of Built To Win, by Hallam Movius and Lawrence Susskind.

The Innovation in Technology and Environmental Conflict Resolution (ECR) Award, presented by the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, “is designed to promote and recognize cutting-edge applications of new technologies within collaborative environmental processes.” Adroit and CBI won the “Visioning Technologies” category for entries “that help stakeholders think creatively and conceptualize project options to support shared solutions to environmental conflict and challenges.”

As part of a long-term town-planning effort in Exeter, RI and Killingly, CT, Adroit helped CBI to interview stakeholders. From those recordings, Adroit stitched together narrated descriptions of what the residents valued about their towns that should be respected, protected, and enshrined in current plans to redevelop the towns” downtown areas. These sound files were made available online and played over the local radio. This represented the first known use of such Podcasts for the purpose of public engagement around collaborative town-planning processes.

To listen to the Podcasts and learn more about the project, click here.

The paper develops the original concept of “wiggle room” pertaining to the limits of self-control in distributive bargaining. It challenges some keystone concepts of negotiation analysis, including reservation values and the ZOPA (zone of potential agreement). It draws on research from psychology, behavioral economics, and the ADR field to explain why and how negotiators can be dragged passed their reservation values.

The last paper Susskind published was “Connecting Theory and Practice,” in Negotiation Journal.

With the addition of a videographer to our team, Adroit can now shoot new video or edit archival footage to create ADR videos for training, public engagement, group communication, or general thought leadership. Unlike other film teams, we know dispute resolution, so can make informed substantive suggestions and decisions during the planning, execution, and editing.