worldcafe_europe

Welcome to World Café Europe!

Welcome to the World Café Europe blog, which started as a way to harvest and share our collective experiences, thoughts, and insights from the first World Café Europe gathering, hosted in Dresden 3-5 May, 2007.

Since then, World Café Europe has continued to thrive and next year's World Café Europe Gathering has been announced for June 5-7th, 2008, in Bilbao, Spain. Find more information about the gathering or register right away.

One of the primary design principles of the World Café is to welcome and encourage a diversity of perspectives, so please help make this space a true café expression by adding your voice to the conversation (in whatever language you choose) through the 'comments' link below. Your contribution is very much appreciated.

Planning Team invites you personally to come to Bilbao in June 2008

See the World Café  in a New Light

You still have the opportunity to join three days of eye-opening World Café conversations during the 2^nd World Café European Gathering from June 5-7, 2008 in Bilbao, Spain!

These World Café conversations will be unlike any you have ever experienced.

Juanita Brown, one of the founders of the World Café, considers World Café Europe’s engagement with an entire city such as Bilbao a significant step in the on-going development of the World Café. 

Both small and large scale World Cafés will inspire you through their creative  approaches to the design and hosting of conversations that matter in all sectors of today’s society.

We would like to extend a very personal invitation to you:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+World+Cafe+Europe&search_type=

Take advantage of this unique opportunity to join the dialogue in a city full of world class architecture and Latin joie-de-vivre.

The Planning Team for the 2^nd World Café European Gathering-Bilbao 2008 would be delighted if you would  come and join us.

¡Bienvenidos a Bilbao!

Curious?

Registering and reserving a room is only a click away:

www.theworldcafe-europe.net

Have a question?  

Tel. ++49-89-74 75 39 87

questions@theworldcafe-europe.net                                                                                                                                                                              

World Café Europe Dresden Video #1

Video footage from the 2007 World Café Europe in  Dresden has been made into a series of eight beautiful videos, story-boarded & designed by Ulrich Soeder. Here is the first one:

Go to YouTube and see the other eight! Embed them in your websites and blogs! Let's help these videos go viral and get the word out about Bilbao!

Share Your Thoughts

As you read this, the process of renewal is occurring in the communities, cities, businesses and organizations where we work and live, all over the world.

As part of our preparation for the 2nd World Café European Gathering in Bilbao, we would like to share our thoughts on the subject of renewal, and invite you to share your own ideas with us (please just use the 'comments' feature below, and tell us what you think):

What role does renewal play in addressing the challenges of the world today?

World Café comes to SNCF

Pierre Goirand wrote the other day with a wonderful story about walking into a client's office in the SNCF where he was totally surprised to see this poster of World Café principles on the wall (artwork by Lydia Djellouli)!

Apparently Sylvie Caruso (who was at the Dresden World Café last year with Pierre) and some of the staff at SNCF had been inspired by his example and taken the initiative to host a World Café on their own!

I love the way this work ripples out naturally, in ways we can't even imagine.

Weihnachtskarte 2007

Apologies for my lateness - this came in from Ulrich Soeder at Integral Development on the 18th, but I didn't see it until now!

Download weihnachtskarte_2007e.pdf

Announcing World Café Europe in Bilbao 2008

¡ HOLA !

The initial planning for the 2nd World Cafe European Gathering which will be held in Bilbao, Spain from June 5 – 7 2008 has begun.

World Café Europe would like to invite you to join our emerging Planning Team for next year’s Gathering. There are a number of opportunities for anyone to support the planning process - either “Up-Front” or “Behind-the-Scenes”:

•    Participate in the design and hosting of the 1 ½ day large scale World Café conversation. The first Team Meeting for the design of this World Café will take place in Madrid, Spain from November 9 – 11, 2007.  A limited number of spaces are available. Please contact World Café Europe if you would like to join this team.

•    Support the design and hosting of a local World Café with citizens of Bilbao as a Spanish-language host or as an experienced World Café English-language coach.  An on-site Planning Meeting for the local World Cafés will be held in Bilbao, Spain from January 17 – 20, 2008. Please contact World Café Europe for more details.

•    Help World Café Europe to get the word out about the Bilbao Gathering to people who are interested in dialogue in your part of Europe (or the world).  We’ll send you a PDF of the initial announcement of the Bilbao Gathering to forward to your network upon request.

•    Share your enthusiasm about the World Café and collaborate with World Café Europe to explore sponsoring and funding opportunities for the Bilbao Gathering.  The Gathering in Dresden was documented in both a written and video form in order to share the power of meaningful conversation to potential funders of future Gatherings.

•    Volunteer to assist us on-site behind the scenes as we get every ready for the Bilbao Gathering next June.

Additional details of the Gathering will be forthcoming. World Café Europe would be delighted to have you join our team to make the Bilbao Gathering 2008 a great experience for all.

Please feel free to send us an e-mail at info@theworldcafe-europe.net with any questions, request and/or suggestions.

Warmest Greetings,

Patricia Munro
World Café Europe e.V.

Dresden Symposium on Rhythmik

Pat Munro sent this in for those who might be intrigued by what happened at the "Choreography of Communication" local World Café in Dresden ... a pdf flyer in German/English from our colleagues who are holding a Symposium on Rhythmik in Dresden this September...

Download faltblatt_rhythmikwerk.pdf (370.3K)

TIME for reflection

How do we create quality time for reflections that allows us to connect the ideas and thoughts that surround us?

Especially in the Net Age, where distraction comes with just one mouse click. (May be this is just my problem that I am easily distracted by new thoughts....)

Please give me input on this!

Honoring poem

The previous email exchange between Juanita, Phil, Anne and others inspired Toke to write this:

"Thank you Dresden, Columbus, Juanita, David, Ann, Pat, Jeff, Phil and all the rest of you hosting folks
as we in the world - slowly but surely - are beginning to remember ourselves in the world as cafe..."

Here is the poem Toke wrote:

Afterwards...

When Juanita returned home she sent an email out to some close friends... amazing connections showed...

Hi everone,
We've recently returned from Dresden, Germany where our European Cafe kindreds hosted an amazing gathering that attracted folks from more than 15 countries!  We were astounded (and you'll be happy to know that David and I did no organizing on this one--just blessing it!) at what ocurred there. Most exciting was the simultaneous hosting of eight local World Cafés throughout the greater Dresden area (on sustainable business, the arts, media, youth and education, etc.), which led key leaders in Dresden to begin envisioning Dresden as a "learning city" using conversational modalities like the World Café and others to engage citizens at all levels in conversations about the questions that matter most to them--- the "world as café" came alive in Germany!

Sprachen – Languages

Hallo an alle! Zwar ist Englisch die Sprache, auf die wir uns in internationalen Kontexten zur Verständigung geeinigt haben, aber wir können diesen Blog in allen Sprachen gestalten. So sind Beiträge auf Deutsch, en français, in italiano  and other languages willkommen. In Dresden haben wir uns morgens in annähernd 15 Sprachen begrüßt!  Lasst uns dieses Forum in den Sprachen gestalten, die uns zur Verfügung stehen. Auch das ist eine Möglichkeit, unsere unterschiedlichen Perspektiven und Beiträge zu würdigen. Wir können wir uns ja gegenseitig helfen, wenn Übersetzungen in eine andere Sprache erwünscht oder nützlich sind.

Hello all! English is the language that we agreed to use in international contexts, but let us put up this blog in the languages that we are used to speak and write. We had our good morning greetings in Dresden in 15 different languages! Contributions auf Deutsch, en français, in italiano and all the other languages are welcome. It is another way to honour our diversity. Maybe we can support each other with translations if it seems to be appropriate or useful.

Einen schönen Tag wünscht Euch ...

Have a good day!

Ulrich

Online echoes

In the last few weeks I contributed to a German weblog at Carl Auer Verlag about the World Café Gathering. In the next days I am going to translate my reflections into English and to post them here. Until now it was kind of having a monologue. Although there have been around 15.000 visits on that blog each week, there haven’t been any comments, and that was kind of frustrating, as the topic was on dialogue. No echoes. Maybe I was broadcasting on the wrong frequency for the systemic audience at Carl Auer, maybe it is just the way it is with blogging. Anyway I will give it another try here and see what happens.

When I was writing the reflections I realized that I have a very partial view of the gathering. As I was engaged in the different roles of being a host, I followed the dialogue on innovation only part-time as a participant. I was focused more on processes rather than on contents.

Risktakers and caretakers

Did you ever want to do something but the risk was too great? Do you dream of taking a risk in the future but wish there was some support around you? What if the support was there already and we just needed to find it among ourselves?

Echoes on the walls

Juanita said, "The whole exists in every part." I found meaning in this when looking at the different walls where we posted our personal reflections...

Without words...

Thank You!

In the last harvest of this glorious event, one woman stood up and shared her gratitude as a native English speaker for the generosity of this group in speaking English for the last two days. I was so glad she did because it was a feeling I had many times during this gathering, and from the heartfelt applause that came from other English-speakers I see I was not alone.

There were many other words of gratitude spoken, but I'll leave them to you to report...
What are you most grateful from this gathering? What touched or moved you?

Role of World Café in Europe?

The final question this morning is: What role can World Café play to invite innovation across Europe?

Can you imagine thousand of people - a great event - in traditional customs, in conversation and then we have a party!

Now I know that you are out there; we are a network!

Let's do a Beauty Café! the beauty that is already there, all around us... beauty in the next café in the next city...

There was much, much more; but these spoke to me!

And we are already invited to come to Bilbao in May 2008!

The World as Café

Right now Juanita started to tell about how the World Café was born in their living room. At that time, Finn Voldtofte was staying in their home for a gathering on Intellectual Capital. At lunch time, after they had sensed that something new was being born, Finn said: Hé, we have to understand what we are doing here!” The next day they used a tape recorder to record some of what was said.

More links

How important are the breaks!!!
We organised ourselves here on a table with all our laptops, postings these blogposts and some pictures. Teaching people about the new World Café website and how they can get onto the blog.

So here is another link from café participant Dirk Schütz, where are different comments and links to this gathering and the World Café as a whole. Check it out! German or English, as you like best.

Reflecting on past time

This morning was spent on commitement and action....made possible by deep reflection.

I started the day by realising that we were talking more about inviting relationships than innovations.

How can we provide a safe/risky environment where relationships can flourish and become supportive of creativity, development, of standing still and of unfolding our personal and collective potential?

What are your experiences of such environments and your own attitudes within them? Have you lead teams or organisations towards such environments?

Please share your thoughts.

Hanno