Neither I nor my partners have ever claimed to be mediators in a formal and legal sense, although we do routinely facilitate multi-party mediation for projects. We teach and coach this work as well as doing it, so professional development is always at the top of mind for us, and what we can do to help our students. I ran across an article recently on Mediate.com that resonated. Although it refers specifically to mediation, read it and replace the word mediate, with public participation practitioners.