World Cafe Community

Balance Lost

We were kindly given permission to post the following piece by author Tom Beech.

The idea of “a more perfect union,” in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States has has always rested on the principle of balance…balance of power among the three branches of the Federal Government, between the Federal Government and the States, between freedom, individual rights, interdependence and mutual responsibility. 

Of late, it seems that we’ve lost sight of the importance of balance and in recent days, the proposed law passed by the Arizona State Legislature (mercifully vetoed by that State’s Governor) was at least for me, a stunning example of this. In the last few years our attention has been focused on the importance of “religious freedom,” the “right to bear arms,” the “rights of natural born citizens vs. those of immigrants,” the “rights of free enterprise.” 

What has been lost in the furious debate about these freedoms, one of the founding tenants of our democracy, is that one person’s freedom cannot be expressed at the expense of another person.  And we have developed amendments to the Constitution and a body of laws and regulations to safeguard this balance…balancing my freedom with yours. We have looked to government at the national, state and local levels to provide these safeguards.

Interviewed in Collaborative Services

Amy Lenzo was interviewed by the folks at Collaborative Services about World Café - what makes us unique, how the seven design principles work, why the World Café approach resonates across such a wide diversity of cultures, and what we can all do to become better communicators.

Read the interview!

Questions Anyone?

The link to this very cool comic about questions and answers, A Day at the Park, came from our Art of Hosting friend, Nathan Daniel Heller. It was created by artist Kostas Kiriakakis and shared via Comics That Say Something. Enjoy.

Comments from 2013 Hosting Fundamentals Courses

Here's what graduates of the 2013 course are saying about the World Cafe Hosting Fundamentals course at Fielding:

"I am a French facilitator based in Paris.  As I was about to start my own little company, I took Amy and Bo's class between February and April of 2013.  At the end of April, a facilitator that had trained me before called me up and asked "Is your World Café training over yet?"  She had a major client who was ready for a series of World Cafés with 100+ people each, the dates were changed and it turned out that she wouldn't be available.  Because I had been trained by Amy and Bo, I was the person my trainer chose to call, which provided me with my very first paid assignment as a freelance facilitator!  I teamed up with a consultant and with a fantastic graphic facilitator and I hosted several sessions for that client.  Our sponsor couldn't believe the level of energy that was in the room!  At the end of the first World Café, a participant came to me and said "I can see it now: I'm not alone"!

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"I'm loving this programme, and find it really helpful in getting me to think more about what I'm doing. I can't remember anything I've done in years that has been so practical and 'right on'. Thank you!"

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It was such a powerful session, just like the whole course. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be part of this class and I think it helped me keep centered and positive in a very challenging time in my work life.

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Conversational-Centered Leadership

This from our good friends at the Daily Good, a wonderful daily pep-talk post sent out by what was Charity Focus, and is now ServiceSpace:

Talking It Out: The New Conversation-centered Leadership
by Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz

Every year, hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the business world, eager to climb the corporate ladder. Their progress on the early rungs of that journey will often be determined by qualities like hard work, determination, knowledge and technical proficiency. But business consultants Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz argue that those same qualities prove less helpful at higher rungs on the ladder, and may even be one's downfall if they are not balanced by a very different set of leadership qualities. They sum up the thesis of their new book, Leadership Conversations: Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, like this: "As you move into upper leadership levels, your technical skills -- what you know -- become less important. What counts is whom you know and, perhaps more important, who knows and trusts you."

The importance of building strong working relationships within an organization may seem self-evident. But Berson and Stieglitz go well beyond a call to establish and maintain open lines of communication. The kind of conversations they are advocating for are not simply talk for talk's sake. Rather, they are the heart and soul of any thriving organization's culture: a strategic tool incorporating very specific techniques toward very specific ends.

Read more!

Learning From Each Other: 10 Tips for Maximizing Hosting World Café: The Fundamentals

10 Key Tips, gleaned from wisdom generated during the Hosting World Café: The Fundamentals courses at Fielding:

1) Complete the Reading Before the Course Starts
This is probably the most valuable advice we heard, and the one most often repeated. The course is fast-paced and once it starts you'll want to immerse yourself fully in the assignments and peer conversation. Having done the required pre-reading will give you confidence, valuable knowledge, & a solid basis for fruitful participation.

2) Post Your Weekly Assignments Early in the Week
You'll be doing the bulk of your coursework in rotating World Cafe "tables"; each week you'll join a new table and get a new assignment. Each assignment has two parts: 1) responding to a question, and 2) building on each other's responses.

This is a team process, so by posting your response right away on Monday you give not only yourself but your whole table the best chance of receiving maximum benefit from the week's knowledge-building process.

3) Devote Regular Times to Your Coursework
This course has a regular rhythm and finding your own beat within it will help you keep up and get the most from the assignments and your World Cafe conversations. You'll find your own pace, but most participants find that devoting an hour or so, at least two or three times a week, is a good rhythm.

4) Fill in Your Profile & Read Each Other's
One of the challenges of working online is getting to know your fellow participants without being able to see each other or get visual cues. One of the simplest and most useful ways to learn about each other is by utilizing participant profiles.

Upload a photo of yourself and share personal details in your profile that will give others an idea of who you are beyond your role or position. Give links to websites that will reveal more about you if you have them. When you join a new table, start out by reading the profiles of the people you are with. Refer back to people's profile often to get perspective on who you are working with and gain insight into their thinking.

5) Participate, Participate, Participate
Given the largely peer-learning format of this course, the key to receiving the most value and best quality of learning from it is, quite simply, participation. If ever there was a case to prove the old maxim "you get out what you put in", this is it. What's most interesting here is that in this course, as in life, you're not in it alone. The quality of your participation automatically raises the bar for everyone else, as theirs does for you. Your active contribution can help stimulate a culture of learning and collaboration that yields exceptional results for everyone, not only during the course but also extending far beyond it. 

6) Attend the Optional Study Groups
One of the most popular improvements we've made to this course over time has been to extend opportunities for personal engagement through additioal optional "real time" sessions. These synchronous sessions are highlights for many participants and they are highly recommended. Use this time to learn from senior World Cafe hosts who will join us for occasional session, engage each other and utilize "real time" conversation to understand your weekly assignments, and get support for anything you need help with.

7) Frequent the Watercooler
While the ongoing discourse of the curriculum will be happening at the Café tables, we also have a "watercolor" or forum where informal or over-arching conversation can take place. Many participants in the course have said they wished they would have made more use of it, and asked that we put more focus on it when offering new courses. This is also the place where you can ask general questions of the group or request help from the presenters, as well as explore other topics you find valuable.

8) Take Advantage of the Senior World Cafe Hosts Presenting Your Course
This is a rare opportunity to be mentored by Bo Gyllenpalm, one of the early European contributors in the development of the World Cafe process and a pioneer in applying the World Café principles and method in an asynchronous environment. Bo was on the committee for Juanita Brown's dissertation (which is one of the core reading texts for this course) and an extraordinary resource. We don't know long Bo will be a presenter, so work with him while you can.

Bo's co-presenter Amy Lenzo pioneered the World Café process in a synchronous online environment, and has been a key member of the World Cafe Community Foundation since 2005, guiding the development of the World Café Signature Learning Programs since its launch. Working with her offers excellent opportunities for deepening your grasp of this work, understanding the new modalities for presenting it, and engaging the larger world of World Cafe practitioners.

9) Come Prepared for an Adventure
Although it is offered through an accredited graduate university and can be quite academically rigorous, this course is perhaps a little different than classes you may have encountered in the past. It calls for opening your mind to new possibilities and suspending reliance on old beliefs and assumptions that may be limiting you. It asks you to embrace the idea that the wisdom you seek may be standing right before you in the hearts & minds of people who were strangers before the course started. Embrace this spirit of adventure to really receive the treasure waiting for you on the journey.

10)  Claim your Credits
The course offers 6 CEUs (continuing education units) and 19 CCEUs (coaching continuing education units), which you can claim with Fielding's help to support your ongoing professional requirements and/or extend your academic or professional credentials.

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."

 

New Features for the World Cafe Online Community

Hi there,

I'd like to introduce a new tab to you on our Online Community, it's called Features. Under it you'll find four tools that were already there but at different places (and i updated the Tag Clouds!) and you'll see two new tools that I just finished programming! As some of you know I am keen on experimenting with ways to access, navigate and comprehend "virtual/face2face-hybrid-organisms/entities" like the World Café Online Community. These two represent my latest manifestions in that inquiry:

1) The Sitemap Graph is my best current attempt on visualizing the Online Community as a whole; still not the content, but at least the complete content-structure in the form of a graph! Once i was into graphs i also made a membergraph and an animation of the sitemap-development since 2009. Let me know what you think of it. 

2) The Nearness Radar allows you to filter out those members, amongst all 4000 (almost), that are within a certain radius of your location. That is finally air-distance based, yes > transcending national borders for search.

Please be assured that these two tools only use the information that is publicly accessible (without login) on the Online Community anyway.

... And let me use this opportunity to share another tool-idea with you. It would also only use publicly accessible data, but work with it in a way that causes issues for some people and I want to be sensitive to that.

My thinking is the following; 4000 members... that gives almost 8million different possible groups of 2! And seriously, not the best host in the world could not make sure that all of those 8million, who could benefit from being connected, are actually getting a chance to connect to each other. In my opinion, that's where the power of computation comes in.

So, concretely I am thinking about an algorithm that suggests you to visit other profiles based on the use of words you both share in your profile/posts/comments, based on the membership in groups you share, based on your physical location or even based on your resonant (or particulary dissonant?) star-signs. Basically a match-making tool. The same concept that dating-sites are using and the same concept that Facebook uses massively (but secretly). How about having that same here; but out in the open, transparently, honest and with professional intentions? Everyone of course would have to be able to choose not to be displayed in any matching-results.

And here's where I am keen on hearing your thoughts; how would you feel about such a tool? Under which circumstances would you find it useful? Should people be given an opt-in chance or an opt-out chance upfront? My ideal image of how this would play out, is that people will polish their own profile-information in order to appear in more meaningful search-queries and a few hundred new meaningful connections will be made every year. My worst-case scenario would be that people will find it intruding and actually reduce their profile-information or leave the Community altogether. What do you think?

Warmly,

Benjamin Aaron Degenhart
Global Communications Team of the World Café Foundation

Contribution/s from Japan

We recently received a most welcome and moving letter from Mr Tomoyuki Tsunoda and the Art of Hosting/World Café community in Japan. It contained a check, and this note:

"Art of Hosting in Japan held a Charity Dialogue event on January 18th, 2012, in Tokyo. We called for donations to the World Café Community Foundation to say "thanks" because the World Café process is easy to use and provides a lot of fun that is needed now to recover our communities against the damage that has been done by the Tsunamis.

We Japanese need a lot of conversation, a lot of dialogue, to rebuild our communities and everyday life. The World Café process helps us hold such conversations.

So we say, Thank you World Café!"

To know that our friends in Japan are thinking of us and wanting to support and acknowledge the Foundation even with all they have to deal with there at home, means everything to us. These are true friends, and we are so grateful for their many contributions to the World Café, financial and otherwise. Our hearts remain with them as they go through the joyful and painful work of rebuilding their homes, communities, lives, and country after the multiple disasters of last year.

The letter was signed by:

Kazuaki Katori
Tamio Nakono
Hidetake Enomoto
Chizue Takeuchi
Rie Kuroi
Syuu Uraya
Tomoyuki Tsunoda
Mami Yoda
Nao Ashida
Misuzu Ninomiya
Yoshihiko Suko
Emiko Taguchi
Kaku Suzuki
Izumi Takii
Kazumi Yagi
Emi Owada
Yoko Itagaki
Kazue Takashige
Naoki Ishidoya
Ryota Yamauchi
Mamoru Oosone
Masaru Kojima
Kouya Nakaoka
Kouhei Noda
Tsuyoshi Kurosawa
Hiroyuki Matsumoto
Takashi Nisio
Toshiko Iwashima
Ayako Satou
Daiki Hayashi
Akikazu Hayashi
Hiroshi Okuyama
Kentarou Fukui
Syouko Matsumoto
Yuka Kamoshida
Yuuko Takahashi
Yoshiko Fukase
Kayo Fujiwara
Misato Matsubara
Takuya Murakami
Masaaki Mezaki
Hiroshi Ooki
Hiroko Nakajima
Miyako Sakatsume
Masaya Furuse
Ryoutarou Hayashi
Bob Stilger

Announcing Level Two

We are pleased to announce that we are now accepting registrations for Hosting World Cafés: The Fundamentals. Level Two of The World Café Signature Learning Program series, this educational event is collaboratively offered by The World Cafe and Fielding Graduate University and co-presented by Fielding Faculty member Bo Gyllenpalm and Amy Lenzo of the World Café Community Foundation. 

The course will be a robust 4.5 week process delivered online through Fielding's distance learning technology and 2 2-hour synchronous events on Sunday May 6th and Sunday June 3rd using MaestroConference. Graduates will receive 6 CEUs.
Download a flyer for the course here.

See the Fielding web page for more details - including the complete course schedule - and registration. More information on the Signature Learning Programs is available on the World Café website.

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We are very excited about this partnership with Fielding. There been a close association between the two organizations for a long time, but this projects brings us into new territory. We welcome the opportunity it opens for the entire World Cafe community - to secure continuing educational and professional accreditation for World Café work, research, and learning programs, and to benefit from the experience and academic excellence that working with Fielding brings.

In addition, this course is a rare opportunity to work with two of the leading pioneers who have brought the World Cafe processes and principles into the online environment (see their articles on this subject in World Café Publications). Bo Gyllenpalm pioneered the use of World Café in an asynchronous online environment starting with the Masters course Organizational Development Concepts and Methods he presented at Fielding back in 2000, and Amy Lenzo has been following his lead and evolving "real time", or synchronous, World Cafés online since 2008 - see the stories on StoryNet.

Here's a statement from Bo:

I am proud and excited about the cooperation between the World Café Community Foundation and Fielding Graduate University. I have been working on this for the last 5 years and my vision is for Fielding to be the academic home for the World Café like Case Western Reserve University is the home of Appreciative Inquiry.

The World Café has been used a lot at Fielding after Juanita Brown presented her dissertation at Fielding, ”The World Café; Living Knowledge through Conversations that Matter”. Having been on her dissertation committee and working with her for more than 17 years it is my pleasure to present an academic online World Café course at Fielding awarding 6 CEU credits.

This 4.5 week online World Café Signature Learning Level 2 course provides a fundamental understanding of the World Café theory and method, applying the World Café principles to bring forth the creative power of conversations and engage questions that matter. Participants will collaboratively develop the capacity to use the World Café design principles in their own lives and work, and gain a basic understanding of the World Café hosting practices.

Bo Gyllenpalm, PhD
Fielding Adjunct Faculty and Trustee