World Cafe Community

World Cafe hosted by Coach for Peace

From Coach for Peace and Association Resources, a World Cafe in the Geneva region of Switzerland and France, with some fabulous visuals - photography, video, doodles and drawings. Check out their website section all about the World Cafe!

German Mayors enjoy the World Cafe

In a totally Girl-Geek style, Gabriela Ender, creator of the OpenSpace-Online software, shared this little story with me via Plaxo:

"Several month ago our dear cooperation partners, the Association for German Towns, asked me to help to bring a group of innovative mayors into good dialog during a traditional face-to-face conference.

I suggested to do a 2hours World Café with them, they agreed and so in February 2009 they had their first World Café. In 2008 the Association had already conducted two OpenSpace-Online conferences with mayors (next OpenSpace-Online conferences for them are in planning). Now the time was ripe to allow also meaningful face-to-face dialogs among attendees (mayors) between panels and speaker sessions at their traditional conferences.

I prepared and facilitated the World Cafe as simple as possible, so that the process and I was at the same time a good role model for the mayors to take the World Cafe format into their towns to use it by themselves if appropriate.

It was fun for all the participants, for me and it was a big success. The spokesman of the Association for German Towns said, that our World Cafe session was the highlight of the entire 1,5 day conference. A few days later the Association put photos and a nice video about the whole conference at their website, but unfortunately only open for network members."

World Cafe in Korea

David Tamoschus recently sent this pdf with the story of a World Cafe he hosted for a multi-national company in Korea. They called their event a Space Cafe, and David's story includes many details of their unusual design.

Download the pdf here.

World Cafe in First Grade

Several heart-warming stories have come in lately about the World Cafe being used in schools with young children. Read this one about a World Cafe in First Grade, by Stacey Stevenson. Stacey is from the Explorer Elementary Charter School in San Diego, which is part of a network of nine charter schools and a graduate school of education. (the story was submitted by Jean Kluver):

World Café is a teaching technique that helps students think deeply about issues by asking them to find evidence of various trends and concepts in what they are reading.  At Explorer, we use World café often in the upper grades.

When we do World Café in first grade, we modify it quite a bit, since some of the children are not yet reading and writing and their attention spans are short. It actually can take us up to 2 or three weeks to prepare and go through the whole process. The text that we analyze is usually a picture book or a chapter book that I am reading to the children.  Last year, for example, I read them James and the Giant Peach and we did a World Cafe on several of the chapters.

Be the Change ... But How?

This story is about the Santa Cruz World Café held on March 24th, 2009
By Nicole Boyer and Brooking Gatewood, of Adaptive Edge

On a beautiful spring evening in Santa Cruz about two-dozen people gathered at The Empty Boat, an atmospheric little teahouse on Squid Row for a World Café dialogue on the timeless and timely questions: how do we “be the change”? What’s the relationship between our “inner work” and “outer work”— between personal transformation and transforming the world?

Why we did this
The first impetus to host this session was simple.  Brooking and Nicole wanted an opportunity to do a dialogue session together.  Since Santa Cruz was Brooking’s home turf, we thought that was a good place to start. 

Then, the more we talked about it, the more reasons we found to do this.

The obvious hit us right away. For decades, Santa Cruz has been a hotbed of innovation for personal transformation work and world-changing activism, making this a fitting and fecund nexus for this conversation.   “Location, location, location!” we chimed. 

Nicole was also looking for inspiration for a book project called “Personal Futures”, which had been gestating, for too long, on the sidelines of her work.  Then something clicked into place, an “ah-hah” that the café format could be a form of participatory research, a way to frame and understand the questions people were holding.  All of sudden, this café became a pilot conversation for something much bigger, with a full day workshop being the intention for the summer.

Our civic instincts were powerful drivers as well— perhaps the most deeply held of all. At this moment of deep transition and uncertainty, we felt in our bones the importance of getting people to talk about these questions, to be more actively engaged in how to “be the change.”  For it's moments of systemic change, when everything is in flux that individuals can make the most difference in influencing events and the future.   So for a little investment in time and tea, we figured it was well worth doing… and it was.

Why people came—and who showed 
As people gathered around 5:30pm, it was clear that many came out of sheer curiosity, drawn in by these powerful questions and the promise of something a bit different.   Not many people in the room knew each other, a surprise given that many folks were long-time residents, and most had no clue what a World Café was or would be.  As one person said later on, “I had no idea what this would be about, but instead of watching TV, I thought this would be a different kind of entertainment.  And it was! It was best way to spend the evening!”

 Serendipity also played a helpful role.  Many in the room showed up because of Brooking’s excellent networking (often in person at her local café, Asana), and through the help of Daniel Blumberg, an amazing “connector” in the community with deep experience and passion for these questions.  This café wouldn’t have been possible without them.

Our group was diverse for Santa Cruz, and delightfully so.  We had therapists, energy healers and body workers to professionals in sustainability, real estate, financial planning, logistics, and marketing— plus a few people from San Francisco.  Many people came with years of personal and professional experience with this subject matter, and others were in early phases of their own inner explorations.   Beginner minds helped seasoned practitioners and vice versa.

What we did
The introductions, alone, would have met our expectations.  Already a palpable energy was building in the room as everyone realized what an amazing group had been gathered— a buzz that continued well into the evening thanks to abundant quantities of pu-erh tea expertly brewed and served by Noah, a linguistics student at UCSC.  

Once we explained the World Café principles, we spent the next two-and-half hours, at four lively tea tables, intimate and low to the ground, exploring our questions in 30-minute rounds, in the following sequence: 

1. Why is this important? How does “inner work” translate into world-changing action?

2.  What enables this to happen— i.e. the nexus between inner work and changing the world? What key factors need to align for real transformation to happen?

3. What are the barriers?   What gets in the way of inner work translating into world-changing work? And what is the shadow side of all of work?

When the rounds were complete, people shared what was emerging for them.  The key themes included: the importance of having good tools for these transformation processes; creating “containers” or safe spaces for the often painful and frightening explorations that can lead to inner change; creating community and support networks for birthing more whole leaders and supporting their work in healing each other and our planet.  “What if our political leaders had to go through personal rites of passage before taking office,” said one person, “how world-changing would that be!”  Many participants also expressed appreciation (and pleasant surprise) for the organization and structure of the World Café process itself, which was a living example of the kind of “containers” we need in the world.

(click the image to see it full size, or download the pdf)

Lastly, the group also recognized a great power in itself— perhaps the most important insight of all. Many participants were already engaged in great work that the rest of the group was eager to explore and help support, and a “yahoo group” will likely be created to help the participants continue to connect and support each other’s personal and professional journeys. The sense of excitement, shared-interest and connection was so strong afterwards that many of the participants went out for a late dinner, and dancing ensued well into the evening! We were thrilled to see this happen as a result of a three hour World Café process and are planning to host similar events on this subject in other locations later this year.   Once again, we’re reminded that it’s the simplest of things that change the world.

 - - - - - - - - - - - -
The co-hosts: The co-hosts were Brooking Gatewood and Nicole Boyer of Adaptive Edge, a "better futures" organization based in San Francisco.  Brooking lives in Santa Cruz and is a long time environmental activist and is involved locally in dance church, women’s work, and co-operative living. Nicole lives in San Francisco and has spent her career engaged in futures thinking, strategic foresight, and scenario planning work.  As her book project alludes to, she is deeply committed to helping people discover their best “personal future”.  Nicole is also a steward of The World Café, and is working with its founders and foundation on its long-term sustainability.

Our World Café: Kitchen Table Conversations for Change

This story is reprinted from the You Learn Something New Every Day blog, thanks to Gillian Martin Mehers from The World Conservation Union in Gland, Switzerland:

This morning our Director General invited the headquarters staff for a World Café on our institution's Organizational Development and Change process. Fifty-four of us met in the cafeteria to participate in the process. Here are some of our "hot" reflections on the event.

World Café is an innovative way to think collectively about an issue, with conversation as the core process. In our case, 12 conversations happened in parallel, and after each of the four rounds we took some highlights from these conversations. With interesting, rather iterative questions, you could feel the energy build as people made connections and meaning for themselves and others. Here are the questions we used:

• What is your vision of a highly relevant, efficient, effective and impactful IUCN? • What underlying assumptions have you had about how we, in IUCN, work? How might these need to shift?

• What can we do to help identify and embrace opportunities for IUCN’s organizational development?

• What patterns are emerging from the three earlier conversations? What are the implications for you and for us?

The results of the discussions will feed into our organizational development and change process, through the people in the room, their teams and our individual action. Additionally the process itself will help us move towards some of our articulated goals around creating a culture of dialogue, interaction, and an enabling environment for innovation and cross-pollination of ideas.

Since we (the Learning and Leadership Unit) are the 'process people', we captured some of our learning about holding a World Café in our institution. Here is what we thought went well, and what we would do differently next time. We are also sharing our learning with the World Café online community at the request of David Isaacs, one of the authors of The World Café book. (More knowledge resources on The World Café can be found on the Society for Organizational Learning's website here.) [note: there are free hosting guides and other resources available on the World Cafe website]

What worked well with our World Café:

•    The process brought lots of positive energy to a conversation about change;

•    People appreciated being listened to;

•    Mixed groups combined different teams and levels within the organization and gave opportunities to get to know new people (when we asked the group if this process had given them a chance to speak to someone they did not know, almost every hand went up);

•    It was hosted by the Director General and connected to a real internal process where people had questions and a desire to contribute;

•    It linked with an in-house tradition - Wednesday morning sponsored coffee - a weekly coffee morning for staff supported by our Learning and Leadership unit and the Human Resources Management Group to promote internal dialogue and informal learning;

•    We held the World Café in our cafeteria, so instead of trying to transform a formal space (like a meeting room) for informal conversation, we went right to the organization's kitchen literally for these conversations, which changed the interpersonal dynamic. There was kitchen noise and the sound of coffee machines making it all the more real;

•    We did not use a flipchart to take down the "popcorn" ideas between each round. We wanted to avoid to externalising the ideas and actions too much and directing the focus away from the group. Instead the comments came from within the group, were given to the group (and not a flipchart), and stayed with the group. We did, however, record them all for future use, which we will share with participants, among other ways through the use of a wordle (take a look at this application that creates beautiful word clouds, if you have never seen one)

•    We distributed an "ideas form" to give everyone the opportunity to share some of their top ideas with us afterward. We handed this out just before the end and also sent an email for people who wanted to send us some ideas electronically. People did a great personal prioritization for us and themselves, and the act of writing it down also helped people to go through the synthesis process and create a set of potential next actions that might help them remember what was most useful for them.

•    We put flipchart-sized graph paper on all the tables as grafitti sheets. People used them for recording ideas. Added benefits: the gridded paper (instead of plain) made it seem more like a checkered table cloth, and the white paper reflected on people's faces making the photos better!

What we would do differently next time:

•    In a room not made for speeches (i.e. a cafeteria), acoustics can create challenges for facilitating and hearing ideas from the tables between rounds. To address this we used a soft whistle to get people's attention and asked people to stand up when sharing their ideas. Next time we would get a louder whistle (!) and we would contract lightly with the group in advance to quickly conclude their conversations when they hear the whistle.

•    In our briefing, we would emphasize further that the host is responsible for ensuring interactive conversations, but not necessarily for recording or reporting back. At the beginning, making this clear would have helped our host volunteers come forward more quickly.

•    Whilst the vast majority of participants stayed throughout, a few people trickled in and out due to other commitments, which was fine. We might have created better messaging to ensure a crisp start.

Only a few people had participated in a World Café before, out of our 54 participants; now that people know how it works the next time we might not notice this.

We got some terrific ideas and comments out of our World Café, including many thanks for running such a process internally. People seemed to be happy to take this kitchen table approach to connect and make new meaning together around our organization's future. And this open process provided plenty of opportunity for everyone's ideas and concerns to be laid on the table - besides the kitchen sink - which was nearby anyway.