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!
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:
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!
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
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.
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...
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?
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!
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.
As always, when people get to know each other and the conference is going to end, conversations at the breakfast table take some longer... Today will be a day with a lot of different things and topics.
And now we start with a little meditation...
After the break this afternoon, the facilitation team shared with us the model that is behind all the questions that we got to speak about so far. It is the drawing of a spiral. Starting with The Landscape of Innovation; going to Letting Go, over Letting In; and now we are in the Transformation/Dreaming.
Right now the collective harvest just started. This time the harvesters, the graphic recorders are in a dialogue with the group as a whole. They write words, they use colour, they talk with the group, all happening together! It is becoming really FUN! One of them is in conversation all the time, while drawing... I can do this blogging, I can write words in a creative way on a piece of paper, but this is a different kind of art. Beautiful!
When you are a harvester the first thing you need to learn is to be able to hold frustration! More and more we learn that if we want to harvest these big events for the 'outside world' - in real time - we need a harvesting team next to the facilitation and organisation team. My frustration now is that I lost the posting that I made this morning... too bad for you readers!
Holger Nauheimer, who was here on the first day sent us the link of two postings of him. The first one is on this initiative as a whole, the next one is about the dialogue he participated in on Leadership and Change. It is really worthwhile reading, because he gives a good background of the initiative and he covers ground that we did not over here.
We just found out that other people are also blogging about this event. Carl Auer Verlag, the publisher who translated the book on World Café have just started a blog too and they wrote already a lot! For English readers, it is in German!
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