Quick-Start Guide to a Policy Roundtable Remix
Traditional policy roundtables too often fall into the trap of exacerbating policy inequities. This guide will help you remix your policy roundtable to center, value, and elevate the perspectives of people with lived experience alongside (and sometimes above) traditional expert voices.
What is a traditional policy roundtable?
In a traditional policy roundtable, a set of experts are invited to participate in dialogue about a specific policy dilemma. The goal is to emerge with a set of key insights for future policy decisions that result from a spirited back-and-forth among the experts present.
What is often missing from policy roundtables? Why the need to “remix” the experience?
Far too often, the people invited to participate in policy roundtables represent a narrow slice of elite academic researchers, policymakers and their staff, and individuals with specific experiences or academic credentials. Because roundtables are often insular convenings, where the participants already know each other through their published work or prior relationships, the dynamics can be counterproductive, reinforcing traditional approaches rather than leading to creative thinking and diverse new ideas.
A policy roundtable remix is designed to upend these traditional approaches with the goal of centering, valuing, and elevating the perspectives of lived-experience experts alongside (and sometimes above) traditional expert voices. Bringing these voices into the center of the conversation produces better-informed, more-relevant policy conversations and conclusions.
Why listen to us?
Next100 was founded with the goal of changing the face and future of policy by putting those most impacted by policy decisions in the driver’s seat of policy change. In 2024, Next100 held a policy roundtable remix in Portland, Oregon, gleaning lessons on how to do this work well.
The sevens lessons learned during this policy roundtable remix were:
- Connect with community: authentic leadership matters.
- Put in the time and effort to get to know participants and build trust.
- Go to where the people are (and pay attention to transportation, and accessibility).
- Compensate lived-experience experts thoughtfully.
- Get creative in building community, trust, and fun!
- Have fun and be yourself!
- Don’t rest on your laurels: a roundtable remix is the start of the work, but not the end of it.
This resource turns those lessons into actionable checklists for anyone hoping to try their own policy roundtable remix.
