World Cafe Community

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!

Death Cafés

Has anyone heard about, hosted, or been part of a Death Café?

They are impromptu cafes in homes or literally in cafes, where people gather to talk about their experiences, feelings, fears, ideas, etc. about death. I've been hearing about them a lot lately and am really intrigued ... given the power of the subject, I bet they can be quite amazing.

Here's an article about one held at the edge of Beachy Head - an infamous "suicide cliff" on the South Downs in East Sussex where I used to live. The article is by Claire Davies and was published in Aeon Magazine.

The Way the World Café Spreads

World Cafe Community Foundation Board President Tom Hurley leads off Week Two of our Harvest Fund Drive with this thoughtful post about the power of cross-pollination:

"I'm continually astonished by how the World Cafe spreads...

• As when it moves virally through a community, conversations in one place sparking dialogues in others. A World Café at the National Native American Economic Policy Summit inspired tribal leaders to take the process home and convene their own Cafés on key tribal concerns.


• As when there's a slow, steady uptake, word percolating through a company about a better way to address key business issues. Over the last year, we've hosted a series of World Cafés for Marathon Petroleum as one leader after another has called after hearing about how colleagues have used the process to engage collective intelligence and shape collaborative action in their teams.


• As when one World Café host seeds transformative conversations around the world, in new and sometimes surprising places. After a World Café training we did for Dr. Jessica Thompson and her Climate Change Education Partnership team at Colorado State University, she hosted Cafés in national parks around the United States and then with communities in Mongolia as well!

Help keep this gift moving. For over sixteen years, those stewarding the World Café have ensured that the core ideas and process are freely available, helping people change the conversation in order to change their world.

Now the World Café Community Foundation needs your help. Please make a donation to help ensure that "the gift continues to move" -- especially if you’ve ever used the World Café and found value in it for yourself, your organization, or your community.

I'm giving. I hope you do, too.
~ Tom Hurley

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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.

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.

 

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):

Our Friends in Japan

We at the World Cafe Community Foundation have been feeling the concern and empathy that the rest of the world feels for our brothers and sisters in Japan during this challenging time. Our prayers and thoughts have been with the entire nation as it goes through this difficult re-adjustment period, and especially with our many dear friends in the Japanese World Cafe community.

We got this beautiful letter from our friend and colleague Daisuke Kawaguchi that reveals the invincible charachter of his countrymen and women, even during this time of tragedy, and the courage and valor in his own heart. His words inspire me, as I know they will you:

As you know, Japan has been facing a severe tragedy of Tsunami.

Fortunately, my family and acquaintance were safe, however, we are spending a sad moment to recognize the fact that estimated 20,000 people have died.

Still, we see a good sign in this tough situation.

Although there are a lot of problems to solve, this experience has reminded us of the importance of social capital and the beautiful human dignity at the same time.

People are helping with each other more than ever here in Japan, and we are relearning the spirit of sharing and volunteering. (Some impressive twitters are on this site)

Foreign media surprisingly reported that there was almost no robbery even in this severe situation.

A lot of courageous people in a self-defense force rescued tens of thousands of people (Yesterday an 80-year-old woman and her grandchild were rescued from the rubble after 9 days!).

Lack of electricity in Tokyo has changed our life totally. We are saving the electricity as much as we can. There are no neon lights even in the downtown. Now I go back home from my office earlier than before, which enables me to spend more time with my family.

All of this might be opportunities to think about energy savings and what is important to us in global level.

In addition, we are encouraged by billions of prayers and support from all over the world every day. I just want to say thank you, thank you for letting us know that we never walk alone!

I believe that when we get over this situation, we can be stronger, more gentle to the people and environment, and create the better society which we can be proud of. In order to realize this, conversational leadership will play the most significant role.

I am determined to dedicate myself to the recovery of our society by creating space for reflective and generative dialogue such as the World Cafe offers with our networks of practitioners!

Announcing the New World Cafe Logo!

The World Cafe New Logo Contest was a phenomenal success! We received 29 entries from 12 designers in 10 countries around the world. Designs came in from Turkey, Indonesia, Germany, the U.S., the U.K., Serbia, Brazil, India, Mexico and Pakistan. They were all extraordinary, and they all interpreted the complex necessities of our criteria in creative and sometimes surprising ways.

We were very pleased with the quality of entries, and it took us quite a while to make the decision and follow standard procedures to resolve any potential trademark or brand issues. We are deeply grateful to all our contest entrants - not only for responding to our call and giving us their best work, but also for their incredible generosity and patience in waiting for us to be absolutely sure we had the right logo.

We are especially grateful to our winner, who showed great professionalism and worked tirelessly to help us achieve our ambitious goal of a logo that can do everything we need it to do.

It is our great pleasure to announce the winner of the World Cafe New Logo Contest - Gabriel Kurauchi from Brazil, and to introduce our new World Cafe logo!

Gabriel is the talented young designer who created this friendly yet professional logo - a mark that is inviting and immediately accessible to our wide range of users; that reaches across generations and is at home in cultures all over the world. It is a design that is classic and clean and reproduces well in a variety of media; a logo that will stand out in a crowded brandscape and tell our story of global connection and communication.

Can you tell we are in love with it?  We can't wait to show it off in our website re-design, which will launch in the new year. Look out for our interview with Gabriel in upcoming communications - we feel he's so talented that we'll all be hearing more about him in the future.

It was no easier to choose the runners up than it was to choose the winning design, and it is our honor, with great appreciation, to present the top five outstanding logos that captured our admiration and consideration.

In no specific order, the runners up in the World Cafe New Logo Contest are:

Designer: Christian Grambow, from Germany

 

Designer: Ana Vujosevic, from Serbia

Designer: Sunil Gajjar, from India

 

Designer: Lara Elijah, from the United States

 

Designer: Kim Philips, from the United States

 

Thanks again to all our contest entrants, and Congratulations to Gabrieil Kurauchi and our five runners up - Christian Granbow, Ana Vujosevic, Sunil Gajar, Laura Elija and Kim Philips!

World Cafe in Elementary Schools!

This from Jean Kluver of the Explorer Elementary Charter School in San Diego:

"I thought you might be interested to see how we use World Café at our school with children from K through 5th grade.  We learned it originally from Nanci Cole, a master teacher from the California Association for the Gifted (we don’t use that term, or separate our children - we like their strategies but think they are for all children) but she never told us where it came from. 

Now I have found your website and shared it with all of our teachers. Now that we know who you are we will credit you and link to your site.

Have a look at our website and you can see how we use it"

I have another example of how it is used in first grade.

We are part of a network of nine charter schools and a graduate school of education, so I am spreading the word of your resources.

Thanks, Jean!

"I share, I appreciate, I experience joy": World Cafe in Russia

Our friend Raffi Aftandelian told us about a second World Cafe hosted by a corporate coaching company in Moscow. The World Cafe was entitled "Coaching is about change: I share, I appreciate, I experience joy."

He sent along this report in Word, for those among us who read Russian. Download Coaching WC