coevolution

Welcome to the "World as Café"!

What enables conversation to be a co-evolutionary force in our lives, fostering healthy connection and catalyzing creativity and wisdom in our organizations, communities, and cultures?

New Frontiers in Participatory Knowledge Development

Fielding Graduate University’s Institute for Social Innovation Announces Groundbreaking Research Partnership with the World Café

By Thomas J. Hurley for the World Café Community Foundation

An exciting new partnership brings together Fielding Graduate University’s Institute for Social Innovation and the World Café Community Foundation to develop and disseminate the World Café as a methodology for participatory research and collective knowledge evolution, and to explore applications of the World Café in key areas such as change leadership, organizational development, and societal learning.

Be the Change

I get occasional mail from KarmaTube sharing inspirational videos, and this one was so good I wanted to share it with you here. The people are speaking a language I don't understand, but I love the 'conversation' that happens beyond words...

Conversation as a Radical Act

Juanita, along with a little help from GiGis (Girl Geeks) Nancy Margulies, Nancy White and Amy Lenzo, unrolled some of her recent thinking in a presentation called Conversation as a Radical Act last week at the 2007 Pegasus Systems Thinking Conference in Seattle.

The ideas focus on the nexus between issue-based content and the 'process arts' that can help us take the conversation about them to a new level, leading to action grounded in collective wisdom.

nano cafes

David Isaacs here..

just noticed this fantastic story about nano cafes that are being convened in Madison Wisconsin.

does anyone reading this blog like the idea of connecting with these nano cafe innovators?

what would be wonderful is if someone uncovered a way to introduce the principles and processes of the
World Cafe to them!!!

are you interested in making this networking connection... and suggesting to the nano cafe people that they are part of a global network at the World Café?

The Ultimate Source

I have some further thoughts to share on UR ("UR", by the way, refers to not only my initials but “the ultimate source or the start of everything” in Swedish, and as you may or may not know, is the city in the Bible from which Abraham originally came).

In fact it was probably in Africa, not in the Arabic part of the world, that humans first become humans. And guess what - there is evidence that this period, 100,000 to 10,000 years ago, was a period based on collaboration, peaceful conflict resolution and above all talk, talk, talk and more talk.

Swedish scientists have done extensive research on this and they found we first lived in small groups of 20 to 100 people who in any given week averaged 2.5 days for gathering and hunting and 4.5 days on talking. The conclusion they came to from this data was that the brain, the neurological system, and our hormonal systems have had 90,000 years of programming us for talk and collaboration, and only 10,000 years for competition and fighting.

Do you think this will have affected the constitution of the human being? Yes, I thought so! The World Café is a modern version of the oldest form of social construction humans know!!!

Tällberg

The Tällberg Forum is an open conversation that has been going on annually in Tällberg, Sweden for the last 25 years - gathering business leaders, politicians, artists, scientists, and leading thinkers around the world (including Juanita, David, and many others from our communities this year) to explore questions of great importance to us all.

Like the inspiring new public access to TED talks, they've done something really innovative this year. Every day they posted a new video from the previous day's session on their website, each illustrating one of the 9 crucial themes they used as 'Tracks' for 2007's "How on Earth can we live together?" Forum: Do we care? Can we share? What is sustainability? Can we stay healthy? Can we stay safe? Can we agree? Can we do as we do? Is one earth enough? Does only money count?

Reflections from Dresden

I've just returned from London after our first  planning meeting for the World Café Europe event in Bilbao next May, and I wanted to post some reflections from my experience in Dresden while they are still fresh in my mind...

Notes from Brasil

Juanita Brown reports directly from Brasil, on process activism and the power of conversation to change the world ...

Day One:
Carlos, Marcela and I all made it to Brazil safe and sound and we are ensconced in our hotel which is quite lovely and small...