WCs are not equipped to deal with complex TRANSFORMATIONAL problems, as well as within-system ones. The ordinary citizens can think outside the box about things they have personal experience, but they may well not have the specialized or systemic understandings needed to make appropriate recommendations (e.g., few members of a WC would be aware of the problem of methane in global warming or the evidence for planned detonation of the World Trade Center; and even the Rogue Valley Wisdom Council found they didn't know enough about the issue they had decided on -- funding for education -- to make specific recommendations).

Once the members of a WC name transformational priorities, the complexities of how to undertake those priorities need to be worked out through a broader conversation (per WC theory) -- particularly conversation between experts (who, I wish to remind us, are not all within-system thinkers) and We the People. Those conversations can have many forms, two powerful versions of which are CDCs and Dynamaically Facilitated sessions.

Rather than picking and choosing methods, you might think of how many creative ways we might integrate such powerful forms, such as having several parallel independent DF'd sessions (with citizens and experts) come up with (probably) diverse solutions, which would then be turned over to a CDC for deliberation. Or having alternative experts testify to CDCs why the options currently on the table in public debate are ultimately inadequate and arrange for the CDC to have another round of expert testimony from more out of the box thinkers. Etc.

The current lack of such experiments is why I think we are at the Kittyhawk stage of development in citizen process. We still are defaulting into fixed ideas and approaches instead of facing the true complexity of the situation we face and actively seeking approaches to it (and through it) through integrating and tweaking the many resources we have available to us, as well as well-conceived original experiments (like some of your earlier proposals were adventuring into).

Of course such radical exploration requires a level of dedicated grassroots effort and/or funding that may be difficult to muster at this stage. That's why I believe that the best current approach is WC processes in many cities (to generate a sense of We the People broadly enough that it catches fire), combined with CDCs where there is real official commitment to follow the public's lead (as there has been in Western Australia, for example), and more mild/cheaper forms of citizen deliberation (such as national issues forums, world cafe, or study circles) where there is lighter but real interest from public officials. With such a combination, the field of citizen process can mature into increasing support for increasingly radical transformational/evolutionary approaches.

Coheartedly,

Tom