World Cafe Community

Sense-Making and Harvesting World Cafe

Canadian mate Chris Corrigan has been doing some absolutely brilliant thinking about harvesting, and publishing much of it on his blog, "Parking Lot".

His latest "Sense-making in a World Cafe" outlines a proposal for a World Cafe designed to harvest complexity. In it, Chris details a complex but very effective process that offers valuable clues for how to frame and manifest participant-driven evaluations/harvests.

A quick search for "harvesting" on Chris' blog will yield rich results of for all World Café hosts and other participatory practitioners. Start with his seminal piece on Harvesting as a verb and you'll never look back!

Gems from the last Fielding World Café Learning Program

Here are some comments excerpted (without attribution) from Capstone Papers written by participants in the Hosting World Café: The Fundamentals course with Fielding Graduate University last Spring. They are answering the question "Describe what you have learned in this course":

"This course has taught me many nuances of working with diverse perspectives and combining many styles of communication. It has deepened my appreciation of the art of finding the best question for the issue. To test the questions for latent assumptions. To make sure the question will reach for the sharing of people’s stories and experience rather than ask for a binary answer or statement of dogma."

 

"A deeper level of responsibility showed up in relation to my role as a table member. To be active and to be present matters to the quality of the conversation and to the overall well-being of the group.  And deeper still is the responsibility that I am carrying away- to invite and engage dialogue around conversations that matter..to do with what I've learned something productive and positive and powerful enough that spirits are called together."

 

"What's fascinating is that a simple process based on principles can generate such deep connections. And of course the fact that while the actual experience for the participants could last only for a few hours, the rigor that is required in setting the context, diversity of the group to ensure inclusiveness and the laser sharp questions that get people to pause and share from deep within. What I absolutely love about the process is how quickly it helps people drop closely guarded 'positions' to genuinely connect and evolve something that's larger than the sum of the parts."

 

Chris Chopyak on Miracles

Chris brings us into day six of our Harvest Fund Drive with this inspiring message:

"Miracles happen EVERY Day!  Our abilities to see these miracles are limited by the distractions we experience everyday.  How do we find, uncover, and illuminate these miracles that we seek?  Through conversations that matter.  Your support of the World Cafe Community Foundation ensures that these important conversations can be framed and supported through principles, hosting and design that is proven, that is of the highest quality and that delivers the "miracle" you are looking for.

Please support the amazing and important work of the Foundation."

~ Chris Chopyak, World Café Community Foundation board member, and co-founder of Alchemy: The Art of Transforming Business

Our immediate goal is to raise $25,000.00 by November 4, 2011.

Thank you to all of you who have already joined us in making this Harvest Fund Drive a great success. Please make your valuable contribution to the World Café Community Foundation now.

Help catalyze the most critical conversations of our time!

TWC Communications Survey Results

Forty eight people - from Taiwan, India, the US, Canada, Columbia, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Nicaragua, Malaysia & Romania - responded to the survey we posted in the last issue of TableTalk about how you feel about our online communications. We learned some really interesting things.

65% of us are between 45-65 years of age, with 30% under 45 and 5% over 65.

The Hosting Guides & description of the Seven Design Principles are the most-used areas of the World Cafe website.

Not surprisingly, conversation was the most popular activity in the online community space, but it was close & there was a pretty good range of interest for all the interaction choices:

Click the image to see it full-sized

The most requested improvement to the World Cafe online community was some way to experience a World Cafe, whether face to face or virtually. We can't really do anything about hosting a regular World Cafe in your area (although we will certainly support you if you would like to do so), but please stay tuned for our response to this request in coming announcements.

"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.

Latin Palomilla Abril, 2008 (en Espangole)

Cultura del Diálogo, Evolución, Fuego y Conciencia

Una fotografía de la experiencia de la palomilla latina en abril del 2008
Fernanda Ibarra

Howard Bloom dice 'No hay nada, absolutamente nada individual acerca del universo' y al decirlo evoca nuestra esencia social, la forma en la cual nos estrechamos de lo individual a lo colectivo desde los protones que en su anhelo por un electrón formaron un círculo que produjo algo jamás imaginado; el átomo. Llevamos 14 mil millones de años de sorpresas, mucho a pasado desde el átomo, los procesos vivos continuaron su trayectoria, la evolución continuó descubriendo como organizar grupos cooperativos cada vez más complejos. Todos podemos reconocer lo que significa capacidad de experiencia, sensación y estimulación del ambiente, correspondencia, atracción y repulsión que son cualidades esenciales que propician la organización, la cooperación entre las unidades mas simples (quarks, moléculas) hasta las mas complejas (los seres humanos) que conforman nuestro universo. Su manifestación en los seres humanos fue movernos de clanes a tribus a pueblos a naciones-estado y de ahí hacia la posibilidad de expansión a una escala global ¿o será universal?

Audio Files

CARLOS MOTA
Co-Fundador de Worldcafé e impulsor/catalizador de Worldcafé México
Nos comparte su experiencia y aprendizaje del evento de la palomilla latina. Habla de los momento difíciles donde entramos colectivamente en el fuego.

PAT MUNRO
Fundadora del Worldcafé Europa
Pat nos habla sobre el atractor para participar en el evento de la palomilla mexicana. Pat nos comparte su experiencia y las similitudes con la fundación del Worldcafé en Europa

JUANITA BROWN
Fundadora Worldcafé
Juanita responde a la pregunta de ¿Cuál es la contribución única de Latinoamerica al WorldCafé mundial? y expande con sus observaciones del rol de los jóvenes latinamericanos como soporte para el Worldcafé como movimiento global.

CARLOS MORAN
Miembro de la Academia mexicana de ingenieria y miembro de Worldcafé México
Nos habla de la importancia de la cultura de diálogo en México y del proyecto de apoyo para el Sistema Educativo.

GUADALUPE MARTINEZ
Universidad de Monterrey, postgrado de negocios y miembro de Worldcafé México
Nos habla de la importancia de la cultura de diálogo y del proyecto para el congreso 28 de la Universidad de Monterrey con tema 'Inteligencia colectiva transcultural, el reto del liderazgo'

MARTIN H ESPINO
Consultor en competitividad
Nos habla de la importancia de la cultura del diálogo en México y del proyecto para influir en las cámaras de diputados.

EDUARDO ALFONSO
Miembro de la comunidad brasileña de Worldcafé
Nos habla de la importancia de la cultura del diálogo en Latinamerica y del proyecto de organizar un encuentro latino del Worldcafé en Brasil para ampliar la cultura de diálogo.

Latin Palomilla April, 2008 (in English)

Dialogue Culture, Evolution, Fire and Consciousness
A photograph of the experiencie of the latin palomilla, april 2008
by Fernanda Ibarra

Howard Bloom says 'There is nothing, absolutely nothing individual about the universe ' and as he says so he evokes our social essence, the form in which we stretch from the individual to the collective. From the protons which in their desire for an electron formed a circle that produced something never imagined; the atom. We have 14 billion years of surprises, much has happened since the atom, living processes continued their journey, evolution continued to discover how to organize cooperative groups every time more complex. We can all recognize what it means to have the capacity for experience, sensing, environment stimulation, correspondence, attraction and repulsion which are essential qualities which contribute to the organization, to the cooperation in between simple unities (quarks and molecules) up to the most complex (human beings) that conform our universe. Its manifestation in society was our capacity to move from the clan to tribes to villages to nation-states and from there to the possibility of expansion in a global scale, or is it universal?

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 Gift of Harvesting

The essence of the World Café work is in the evocation of collective intelligence for the good of the whole - be it the ‘whole’ of each individual café, the World Café global network, or the larger communities of which we are all a part.

One very important way to contribute back to this ‘whole’ is to share the story of your own experience. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like much, but it is one of the most valuable contributions you can make.

When we read the cumulative stories of these conversations we begin to notice the patterns and ‘themes’ that are living in this community of networks. This helps us understand what these themes are telling us in relation to the ‘great narrative’ of our times and gives us an opportunity to make meaning together.

I wrote this brief overview in response to a new, next-generation host who'd asked for a little more information about harvesting before addressing her first big café, and in writing it I realized more fully just how valuable harvesting is - for all of us.