World Cafe Community

What's in a Name, or Label

A "Wiser Together" contribution from guest blogger Tom Beech:

A little while ago, I received an email that caught me up short.  It was from a young, 20’s-something, friend of mine.  He and I are working on a project together and he sent me a copy of a note he had written to another friend of his, a young guy he wanted me to meet.  In this email he said, “I’d like you to meet an elderly man I know.....”

OK. Well, first let’s get some facts on the table.  I’m 74 years old, in pretty good mental and physical health, retired from a long career but still active in my community. I can string several strands of thought together and keep track of most of them without losing my way or boring others. “Elderly,” is not a word I’d use to describe myself.

Saying Goodbye to California

A Letter from World Café co-founder, Juanita Brown:

As many of you know, David and I are in the process of moving our home and base of operations from the San Francisco Bay area to our family farm in the mountains of North Carolina, near Asheville, in order to be closer to my 90 year old mom and other family members, including David’s grandchildren on the Eastern coast of the United States.

Even though we are excited about this move and know without a doubt that it is the right thing for our lives, we are sad to be leaving our beloved home on Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco where much of the World Café book was written.

It was here that I first fully encountered the joys of the natural world.  To experience seals, herons and pelicans up close and bear witness to the ever changing light outside has been a never ending source of deep nourishment.  To walk along the rocky shore, truly “being home” inside myself for the first time in my life was a great gift which I shall always remember.

We are placing our Tomales Bay home for sale, with the hope and faith that some wonderful person, family or group will find this, as we have, a home of dreams and a place of retreat, reflection, and creative endeavors.  Our dear Amy Lenzo, Global Communications Director of the World Café has helped us create a flyer (Download BaylightVista_flyer) and website to share this unique opportunity—as Tomales Bay is a protected area of the coast where further development is restricted and homes of this nature, size, and incomparable location are few. We’d be grateful for your passing on this special offering to other kindred spirits you think might be interested (because it's for sale by owner until May, this is an especially timely opportunity).

And now we are starting on another great adventure—an adventure of partnering across generations with my mom and a group of younger leaders from the local community to deepen the legacy of the Millie’s Mountain for future generations. Ashley Cooper and I were interviewed by the Alia Institute for their Fieldnotes e-magazine accompanied by a little 2 minute video of what’s unfolding here made by Thomas Arthur of the EarthAnima Project. (Thank you Thomas!)

We welcome your thoughts and feedback and would love to hear of any experiences and learnings you are having in partnering across generations in your own organizations and communities.

And thanks again for sharing the news of our beautiful home for sale in Tomales Bay.

With warm wishes,

Juanita

What Juanita's Up To!

More from Juanita Brown, co-founder of the World Café, including some highlights from her recent email on behalf of the World Café Community Foundation's Harvest Fund Drive:

"I continue to be excited and delighted by the potential of this work at the leading edge of conversational leadership around the globe. I’m hopeful that with your support we’ll be able to expand our Wiser Together initiative which is empowering the collaboration of people across generations with the capacities to co-create communities and organizations that embody the wisdom of all generations. Here's an interview from our own personal efforts in this regard on our ¨family farm¨ in North Carolina in collaboration with next generation leaders.

I’m also very intrigued by the pioneering collaboration we’re exploring with the International Storytelling Center that is demonstrating the power of connecting individual and collective storytelling with catalytic conversations, community-building and committed action. We're collaborating with their Staging Change Institute on Nov 3-6, and would be delighted to see others of you there!

In addition, the World Café is joining with others in nurturing inter-generational gatherings of leaders across modalities of conversational work, helping to catalyze a global effort to bring many of the doorways to collective intelligence into the “jardîn central¨---the central garden—of our human experience—and to use these on behalf of movements for positive futures across the planet.

(Click the image to see it larger)

As David and I transition from our role as direct coordinators of our global work into the role of ambassadors for the ¨World as Café,¨ we are deeply grateful to Amy Lenzo, Deborah Goldblatt, Barbara Krohn and the core team who is continuing to nurture the life of the  World Café. We hope you, too, will continue to fuel this incredible movement with your time, your skills, your financial support, and your love.

With gratitude for all that you've helped to happen,

Juanita

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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.

You'll be helping to catalyze the most critical conversations of our time.

 

It Takes a Village to Raise a Village

Please contribute! We need your help now to keep the gift moving

A Message from Juanita Brown and David Isaacs

The World Cafe Community Foundation will be receiving a very welcome contribution of $25,000 dollars in the new year, which can be leveraged most fully if it can be matched by contributions from the global World Cafe community. 

World Cafe and MaestroMonth

What's easier than picking up the phone to connect and get people talking to each other?

Nothing, right?! Well, what if we could meet for a World Cafe on the phone - break out into small groups with touch of a button and then come back to the large group to share the highlights and harvest our conversations? What if we could experience the intimacy and collective excitement of a face-to-face World Cafe, on the phone?

Well, now we can!

Amy Lenzo, Christine Whitney Sanchez and Gabriel Shirley are hosting a special series featuring interactive events from Juanita Brown & Nicole Boyer, David Isaacs, Christina Whitney Sanchez, David Copperrider, Diana Whitney and Harrison Owen. This series, called Beyond Facilitation: Accessing Collective Wisdom, is one week of October's MaestroMonth, which launches MaestroConference, the company behind this revolutionary new phone-based interactive technology.

These 5 events, like all the events in MaestroMonth are FREE. Most of them start at 9am and go through to 11am. For more information about each event and/or to register, go to MaestroMonth.com, scroll down to the event you're interested in and then click the "Details" or "Register" button beneath each one. It's that simple.

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The full MaestroMonth schedule features an array of luminaries across several fields, including many of our close friends and colleagues. :

Business: T. Harv Eker, Michael Port, Robin Sharma, Lance Secretan, Chip Conley, Ray Blanchard, Jeff Hoffman, David Finkel, Lynne Twist, Mari Smith, DC Cordova, Cynthia Kersey, Charlotte & Laura Shelton, James Malinchak, Bettie Spruill, Rinaldo Brutoco
 
Health: Deepak Chopra, John Gray, Candace Pert, Olivia Newton John & John Easterling, Judith Orloff, Joan Borysenko, Norman Shealy, Eric Pearl, Len Saputo, Mary Shomon, Jennifer MacLean, Lee Gerdes, Mona Lisa Schulz
 
Personal Growth: Debbie & Arielle Ford, Dan Millman, John Assaraf, Hale Dwoskin, Vishen Lakhaini, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dave Ellis, Brian Johnson, Mike Robbins, Tripp Lanier & Jayson Gaddis, Zen DeBrucke, Amy Ahlers
 
Societal Change: Gregg Braden, Seane Corn, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston, Starhawk, Aqeela Sherrils, Azim Khamisa, Steve Bhaerman, Fred Johnson, David Cooperider, Anodea Judith, Lynne McMullen, Richard Rudd, Miki Kashtan, Stacey Lawson
 
Spirituality: Marianne Williamson, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Andrew Cohen, James Twyman, Genpo Roshi, Andrew Harvey, Carter Phipps, Lisa Schrader, Ron Alexander, Lauren Mackler, Paul Hoffman, Paul & Patty Richards, Ellen Debenport, Nicole Daedone, Stephen Dinan & Devaa Haley Mitchell
 
Special Track for Entrepreneurs: Sharon Drew Morgen, Morgana Rae, Ken Foster, Leesa Barnes, Garrett Sutton, Larry Ousley, James Burgin & John Ward, Steve Maxwell, Leslie Grossman, Brian Burt
 
Special Series for Change Leaders: Harrison Owen, Juanita Brown & Nicole Boyer, David Isaacs, Diana Whitney, Christine Whitney Sanchez

"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.

Hungarian World Café on YouTube

Here's a short film about a World Café in Hungary. It was made by two students from our Eastern European steward Agota Ruzsa's class - Pável Briggita and Tőzsér Adrienn, who then posted it on YouTube.

One of the things that's so amazing to me is how universal is this language we share - of connection and innovation and collective intelligence - and how easy it is to hear and read it wherever we are in the world.

Read more of this story in StoryNet.

Inter-generational World Cafés at NCDD 2008

photo by Mitchell Findley

This year the Youth Dialogue Project presented a series of inter-generational World Café sessions at the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation conference in Austin.

Project Director Deborah Goldblatt and World Cafe host and graphic recorder Mariah Howard collaborated on a tremendously informative story chronicling their experiences, during which they learned a number of important lessons that will be of interest to everyone who cares about inter-generational dialogue.

Read on for their story ...

Michael Jones, World Café and the Significance of Place

A few weeks ago my/our friend Michael Jones (yes, the brilliant pianist) shared a remarkable story of his innovative work integrating the arts and a sense of place into the unique World Cafés he hosts. I asked him to please write up his experiences so that others can learn from what he's doing, and this is what he sent:

Meetings Among the Many
A Dialogue on Community Wellbeing and The Significance of Place

"When every place looks the same- there is no such thing as place any longer."
James Howard Kunstler - Geography to Nowhere

Beginning the New Conversation 

Around the world a consensus is growing about the need for a more holistic and transparent way to measure societal progress, one that accounts for more than just the economic indicators such as GNP and takes into account the full range of concerns of the community

In the context of this global movement, in November 2008, leaders in health, culture, public administration, the aboriginal community, students and many others in the Simcoe Muskoka region north of Toronto, Canada met together at The Fern Resort for an historic occasion. Through the day they engaged in conversations as part of the pre-launch of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a new and transformational initiative founded by the Hon. Roy Romanow that will report on the wellbeing of all Canadians.

The introduction of music, art, time in nature, story-telling, seeded dialogue, small table conversations and personal reflection shifted the focus from strategic planning and priority setting to a more generative process that allowed time and space to come into the moment, to listen and to speak from the heart and to engage the questions that mattered most to their communities. In this respect the day offered a new and emergent model for what could be possible in future CIW - community partnerships and collaborations. 

New Horizons for World Café Resourcing

As the seasons shift we’re all experiencing the cycles of change and transition, and the winds of change are stirring within the World Café as well. While change can surface questions and unknowns, it can also open up opportunities for potential and possibility.

Given our exponential growth and other changes over the last year or two, the World Café Community Foundation has been focused on creating a healthy “resourcing eco-system” to financially sustain its work of supporting the global World Café as we continue to grow and evolve.

In the World Café tradition of evolving through friendship, our need for support in this area was met by two wonderful friends of the World Café who have stepped forward to help: Erica Peng and Nicole-Anne (“Nicole”) Boyer.

These two young women bring the joy and energy of inter-generational collaboration to the WCCF resourcing team, along with inspired new ideas and the wisdom of their extensive experience in a variety of key areas.

Erica met Tom and Juanita at the Shambhala Leadership Institute this past June, and right away they knew she would bring a great contribution to this work. Erica’s gifts to us are already apparent though her passion for deepening human connection and conversation, her talents in using the power of film to tell compelling stories, her can-do attitude and willingness to pitch in and lend a hand to what is most needed.

Nicole came to us through long-time World Café friend Napier Collyns, co-founder of GBN Global Business Network. As a GBN alumnae, Nicole is a foresight specialist and facilitator with a mission to catalyze “better futures” through dialogue. Nine years ago she fell in love with the World Café and has been using it ever since. After relocating to San Francisco from Paris, France, she felt it was time to give back to this community what she has gained in her practice. Nicole has a deep understanding of this kind of systemic and strategic undertaking and her experience is particularly appreciated as we approach foundations and individual donors with invitations to become resourcing partners.

Over the next few months the World Café Community Foundation resourcing team will be inviting you too to participate, and we’ll be sharing what’s happening in the resourcing process as it evolves. Current plans include an enhanced website, a series of short videos and other web 2.0 invitations for the general public, as well as addressing Foundations, key individuals and the World Café network as a whole.

We will be exploring ways to engage your thinking and participation in this important project and your ideas are very welcome. If you have initial thoughts to share, please contact Tom Hurley or Amy Lenzo.

Stay tuned for more!