We can organise, facilitate or host an event for you, using this engaging and productive approach to large group facilitation.
Objective and Context
A hosted conversation engaging cross-pollination of thinking as people mix and match with new conversation partners while they explore a series of thoughtful, evocative questions. These conversations are not facilitated – the participants themselves engage each other in these discussions as the facilitator takes them through this series of questions. Insights, new questions, results and suggestions are recorded and ‘harvested’ at the end. A world cafe event may be followed by other types of meetings to process its outcomes.
Number of Participants
Any number of participants, from 12 to 1,200+. One facilitator can lead any size group.
Timing
From 1.5 or 2 hours to several days, depending on purpose and design. For a two-hour meeting, 15 minutes for framing and explaining the process, then three sessions of 20 to 30 minutes for discussing three or four questions. End with some time to invite participants to reflect upon and name what patterns and linkages they noticed.
Materials
For each table: Flip-chart or other paper to cover each café table, a container with markers of various colours, something beautiful like a bud vase with a flower, a handful of small candies, World Café etiquette cards*. A possible documentation variation: instead of paper tablecloths, different colored index cards are used – each color matches each question, and perhaps there is an additional color for people to record their reflections (if you include this in your design). So a stack (for example 10) each of each color used at each table. If it is not possible to have café tables, a tray can be on the ground in the middle of 4 or 5 chairs to hold these materials. If possible, the theme/task and the questions can be presented in PowerPoint on a screen in the room – or on flip-charts. If a graphic facilitator is assisting in documentation, note the materials needed by this colleague.
*Café Etiquette: Focus on what matters. Contribute your thinking and experience. Listen to understand. Connect ideas. Listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions. Play! Doodle! Draw!
Pre-Work
Take the important time required to create powerful questions. Questions should evoke energy, engagement, imagination and new thinking (rather than reflect on past problems), provide possibility, and be relevant. Play with different wordings until you finalize your questions so you are inviting and asking something in a way that is useful to the group and task.
Room Layout / Set-Up
Café tables with 4 or 5 chairs at each table. If no tables are possible, then set up a circle of 4 chairs around a tray holding each group’s materials.
Instructions:
The group will be seated four or five to a table or circle of chairs. Introduce the theme/task for the meeting and explain the process.
Ask the first question. Wait a moment and repeat the question so that everyone will have had a chance to hear it.
Participants will discuss this in their groups. After a 20- to 30- minute conversation session, invite the participants to change tables to sit with new conversation partners, leaving one ‘host’ at each table who will remain there to share key thinking or images from the previous conversation. Ask the group the second question for discussion.
After 20-30 minutes, invite participants to change tables again, with the host remaining to share key thinking from the previous group. Ask the group the third question.
After 20-30 minutes, reconvene the full group to invite reflection and a sharing of what people noted as patterns, threads and linkages. (One option is to precede this with some minutes of reflection in silence as participants write these on their last colored index cards).
If a graphic recorder/facilitator is collaborating on this event s/he will be capturing visual metaphors and images and text to capture key ideas, images and patterns during the full-group observations and comments at the end. She or he also has an option to wander through during the small-group conversations during those sessions to collect words and images during that time.
See also the book, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter , by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs with the World Café Community
See also www.theworldcafe.com