coevolution

Unique Opportunity: Discover the Roots of the World Cafe!

On August 3-8 in Boston I am planning to attend a powerful teaching seminar with Dr. Humberto Maturana and his colleague Prof. Ximena Davila, two pioneering Chilean cultural biologists focused on the deeper process of co-evolution and renewal in human systems. They will help us see how we, as human beings with the unique capacity for language,  reflective consciousness, and meaning making through the networks of conversation in which we participate have evolved today's world.....and what our possibilities might be for consciously co-evolving our futures together in more life-affirming ways.

Maturana's work has had a profound influence on the deeper intention of the World Cafe as an approach through which people can experience these living networks of conversation and their potential for co-evolving the futures we want rather than being forced to live with the futures we get.  I encourage any of you who want to learn the scientific underpinnings of the World Cafe to join me in this powerful joint inquiry.

For more information and how to register.

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.

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?

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...

From the Mouth of a Child

Now here's a conversation whose time has come!

Dresden

Attending World Café Europe's recent gathering in Dresden was a profound experience for me and somewhat like a 'living bardo' that re-lived the cycle of years since February 1945 until May 2007:  from the experience of dreams that brought back what seemed like the endless sound of bombers, day and night, leaving England to destroy the Nazi war machine in Europe.

Eden is a Conversation

Barry Lopez talks of Eden as a Conversation. What a wonderful metaphor. Note to self 1: Have co-evolutionary conversations with sunlight, birds and flowers more often. Note to self 2: Remember that giving and receiving care and attention is co-evolutionary conversing.

The Day I "Got It"

My original awareness of conversation as a fundamental and generative force  in our collective lives came from a source and a setting that I could never have anticipated. It was the innocent curiosity of two corporate leaders... 

The year was 1993 and World Café had not yet appeared in our lives. I was sitting in the living room of our home in Mill Valley, California, with John Browning and Frank Gonzalez, leaders of a regional Sales organization within a major U.S. corporation. They wanted to build their organization as a community. How did you do it in the farm workers’ movement, they asked? What really is at the heart of community development, anyway?

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?