The World Cafe

[Lisa Heft]

Hi, folks –
 
Dave wrote:
< I was wondering what
experienced Open Spacers think of The World Cafe process and how you
would
differentiate between their use?>
 
I forget if we shared the website for World Café or not to inform folks
unfamiliar with this method – just in case, here it is:
http://www.theworldcafe.com/
 
I agree with Chris that using World Café might be a good way to engage
people in a short conversation about an issue.  People mix and match for
different insights, plus they are invited to draw on the tables (I’m all
for using other modes than verbal/text-based to enhance conversation and
thinking, whether in Open Space or other methods).
 
I’ve participated in it at conferences, and it has worked in some
instances and not in others. In the instance it didn’t work, people did
not want to have their conversations directed by the facilitator’s
questions – but they handled this quite naturally by talking about
whatever they wanted to talk about – they ‘mutinied’, as dear Harrison
would say.  I think in that case the questions (key to the design) were
not chosen with the participants’ needs/interests in mind – they were
not compelling or rich - but rather may have seemed like a good idea
during the conference design phase.  Also as you may have experienced in
many situations, perhaps the wrong method for the wrong objective at
that time (hard to say without knowing the inner workings of the design
committees for those conferences).  In the instances where it worked,
the tables I’ve been sitting at have still talked about whatever they
really wanted to talk about.  But hey, maybe the invitation to talk
about what matters is the wonderful part of it and I think that any
method that invites conversation brings wonderful things into the room.
 
I think World Café would be well-used as a way to follow some learning
(move into World Café to process and integrate the learning), and the
questions asked could bring people into conversations sharing case
studies or personal experiences to show how what they have learned
applies to concrete situations.  But when I design workshop curriculum,
I design this sort of thing in without using the World Café method
(there are many ways to engage more whole-body learning and reflection).
Still, I have participants mix and match for new viewpoints and
different engagement, I have them move to new areas of the room, and I
have them draw and such – all components to enhance learning and all
components which happen to also be used in the World Café method – all
good for learning and engagement.
 
The thing that World Café doesn’t do, to my mind, is invite personal
passion and personal responsibility, as even the short Open Spaces do.
So people can have engaging conversations and I think that’s great.  But
I find that it’s more amazing to see what the participants themselves
invite into the conversations – the unexpected and delightful (and those
elephants, skeletons, and hot porridge analogies we use to describe
what’s usually *not* being talked about are invited into the room, as
well).  Plus, in Open Space people gather according to their passions
and interests, and are so often surprised by who else shares their
passion.  Also, in Open Space, participants are told that any
conversation in or out of the room is the work – it’s all the work,
whether it occurs in the pre-set places or not.  I think this is a
marvelous invitation and honoring of the fact that whether one chooses
to sit alone and write, or engage over cookies, or sit in a circle –
it’s all good, and all important.  
 
I’ve done Open Space in under 3 hours as the plenary for a conference of
several hundred people, when they couldn’t take the tables out of the
room.  I just pushed a few tables more away from the center to create a
bit of open center space where folks could come up and announce their
topics, and I walked around the room to help create the intention of a
circle, asking people to visualize sitting in one big circle as well.
Not ideal, but it worked.  However if I was asked to do something in
*one* hour in a conference of hundreds of people, I might use World Café
or another process – I wouldn’t use Open Space.  World Café fits into
tiny timespans

 
What do others who have used and experienced both think?
 
Lisa
 
___________________________
L i s a   H e f t
Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
O p e n i n g  S p a c e
2325 Oregon
Berkeley, California
94705-1106   USA
+01 510 548-8449
 <mailto:lisaheft at openingspace.net> lisaheft at openingspace.net
 <http://www.openingspace.net> www.openingspace.net 
 

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