World Cafe Community

World Café Services: An Update from Deborah Goldblatt

With the launch of our new website on June 1^st, World Café Services moved into high gear with a flurry of inquiries from all directions!

During the month of June and July, I enjoyed many conversations with people from a variety of public and private sectors:  education, energy, forestry, sustainability, entrepreneurship, immigration, climate change and health.  

What is so encouraging for me about World Café Services is being on the frontlines of the World Café world hearing about the diverse communities and businesses who are curious about The World Café – not just as a method or process but as a practice and way of being in all our communications - and are wanting or are already implementing an approach of “learning together through inquiry” in life and work today.

World Café Services, through our professional network, is serving community and business clients everywhere– whether that’s by having a half hour conversation with myself and others looking at the possibilities of convening very small or very large groups in a new way or exploring ways to renew or deepen the conversations they’ve been hosting internally within their organizations.

One of my favorite stories from this month’s World Café Services work is helping an organizing team for a conference in Arusha, Tanzania to find some guidance and support to co-create their World Café design.

Community for the 21st Century

We finally have the story of weDialogue's first session of the "Conversations for the 21st Century" series up in StoryNet! Here's an added enhancement you will only see here: an audio recording of the round table of conversation starters with Peter Block, Sarah Whiteley and Maria Scordialos, and Nancy White:

Just to get you to want to see more, here's a sneak peak of Susan Kelly's graphic recording of the conversation starters (click to see it full size):

"Groups" in TWC Online Community

One of the most wonderful opportunities in the new World Cafe online community space is the capacity we have to gather together in Groups and explore the precise elements of the World Cafe that we're passionate about and/or connect with others in your geographic location. It's not surprising that an international network like ours with so much to talk about have really maximized this opportunity.

After two months of being "live", there are already 23 groups, in 6 languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, and Indonesian. I will tell you a little about just two or three of them here, but I can't possibly do justice to the many dynamic groups that have formed and I invite you to explore them for yourself. If you don't find the group you are looking for, talk to me about how to host it yourself.

One of the very first groups to form in this community was Cafe Latino, hosted by Maria de los Angeles as a place to welcome the very special people who host World Cafes in Latin America. All in Spanish, it's extremely active, seeming almost to overflow with the exuberance and warmth of those who have often been described as the "heart" of the World Cafe.

Another group started more recently by Christine Whitney Sanchez is on Methods for Strategic Collaboration. The conversation here is focused and stimulating, going to the heart of what's core to the work we do, no matter what form we use.

For those of us fascinated by graphic recording, there is the vibrant Art of Harvesting group, where a "knowing" beyond words is nevertheless conveyed through conversations about deep listening and reflection.

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If you have not yet joined us in the new online community, we invite you to do it now! Go to www.theworldcafecommunity.org and sign up today.

Crayons as Social Media

Blogger Liz Strauss wrote a great post yesterday - she was talking about  that glass-full of crayons and the butcher block paper on the table in your local restaurant, and how the images we create together often serve as a catalyst for conversation. She was asking if crayons qualify as low tech social media. :-)

So of course I had to leave a comment and tell her about the World Café and our tablecloth doodling!

Latin Palomilla 2008 SlideShow

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Extraordinary World Café at Taiwan SoL Conference

World Café steward Ulric Rudebeck was the team leader for the hosts of a four day conference sponsored by the Taiwan Society for Organizational Learning in November 2007.

Ulric and his team members Ken Homer, Andri Lehn, Stephen Meng, Samantha Tan and Morel Foreman worked with SoL coordinators to create an extraordinary experience for everyone gathered there.

This is their story, beautifully written and illustrated by master graphic facilitators, and an Executive Summary of this special event:

Download tsol_world_cafe_reflections.pdf
Download tsol_cafe_executive_summary.pdf

The Wisdom in is the Room