Major conferences are often staid events, with set speeches and formal presentations of papers. Several major conferences on water issues recently broke out of the mold and used interactive techniques designed to increase involvement and gather ideas from all participants. Two of the conferences were national water policy dialogues sponsored by the American Water Resources Association. Another conference was a dialogue between water ministers and conference participants held as part of World Water Forum 3 in Kyoto, Japan. The fourth was a 2009 conference of representatives from all the countries of the Americas (north, central, and south) held in Iguassu Falls, Brazil. The purpose of this forum was to develop a unified statement in preparation for the World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey.

Jerome Delli Priscoli, Editor of Water Policy and a Senior Policy Analyst with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, facilitated the events, with co-facilitation from Jim Creighton. Larry Aggens, of INVOLVE, also co-facilitated the Kyoto event

The American Water Resources Association (AWRA) conducted its first national dialogue on water issues in Washington D.C. in 2002. The event was sponsored by 10 federal agencies and 24 non-governmental organizations. More than 267 people in the water field participated in the event. The second dialogue was held in Tucson, Arizona, during February 2005.

AWRA wanted to have a real dialogue between the participants, many of whom were extremely knowledgeable about water issues in their own areas. Delli Priscoli and Creighton conducted several forums in which they posed key questions that were then discussed by participants at small tables. Following these roundtable discussions there were plenary sessions during which representatives from the small tables reported their conclusions. All the recommendations from the small groups were written on flip charts, and then posted on the walls. Participants expressed their priorities by voting using colored dots. While this meeting format has been used successfully with small groups in the past, making it work with nearly 300 participants posed a greater facilitation and logistics challenge.

The Kyoto conference provided even more of a challenge. In a conference with 10,000 people, how do you provide an opportunity for regular conference participants to communicate directly with the water ministers of more than 150 countries? The Secretariat of World Water Forum 3 invited Delli Priscoli, Creighton, and Aggens to conduct a forum that would provide for interaction between the approximately 150 water ministers/senior officials who agreed to participate, 150 people who made presentations during the conference, and an additional 250 participants selected by lottery.

The dialogue was conducted in two 1-1/2 hour sessions, each with 250-300 participants. The first session focused on the critical factors in addressing the linkage between water and poverty. The second session focused on the most important actions that needed to be taken as a follow-up to World Water Forum 3.

The meeting format that was used was very similar to that in the AWRA session, with the added complication that the participants spoke numerous languages. The session was conducted in English, but with simultaneous translation (using headphones) in Japanese, French and Spanish. A team of translators was available so that if translation was needed during small group discussions, translators could be rushed to the tables. After the discussions around the tables, the brief reports back to the larger group were made in all four languages, with simultaneous translation.

Delli Priscoli facilitated the session, while Jim Creighton supervised a team that captured the reports from the smaller groups on giant screens that could be seen by everybody in the audience - in four languages.

In another room, Larry Aggens headed a team that posted all the items identified in the large group sessions onto wall dividers, so that participants could vote their preferences using colored dots. Immediately following each session, participants were encouraged to go to the voting room to participate in this form of "dot democracy."

The results from the two sessions, including the major conclusions from the voting with the colored dots, were quickly summarized and included in a speech by former Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto to a ministerial-level meeting developing a set of conclusions for the conference. Mr. Hashimoto was himself an enthusiastic participant during the dialogue. The Japanese hosts for World Water Forum 3 report that they considered the Ministerial Dialogue one of the high points of the conference.