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."

"The graphic recorder being a keystone in the entire process also got me. Instead of merely capturing contributions for posterity, what's now emerging is using this as a platform for helping participants make connections in the present."

"What most impresses me about the Café work is the extraordinary attention given to setting the context, the space, the questions, the contributions, listening, harvesting and the dialogue. Each one is equally valued, wonderfully described and indispensable. Rarely do we have such a perfectly thought out, researched, well developed organizational way of coming together."

"Last year I participated in a World Café at ___ . I was very impressed by what I experienced and I am so pleased to have participated in this course where I now have the tools at hand to engage in this work myself."

"When I started out this course, I thought that the World Café was an interesting methodology for large groups interventions but I could not begin to imagine the understanding and depth that was behind it.

Working my way through the obligatory literature, I found that the World Café is actually a very researched and studied intervention methodology that goes far beyond what meets the eye"

"I have learned how consciously and consistently the Seven Principles should be applied and how these interweave with each other in design, development, hosting and harvesting stages. I have also learned much more about harvesting – this was something about which I was concerned as I was unsure about my graphic skills. The different ways harvesting presented in the literature widens the choices available and I now feel I have a much better grasp on how this could work with my participant groups. This feels quite liberating"

"I have appreciated the guided way in which we have been invited into the theoretical depths and nuances that the Café represents. The dissertation takes us through the processes of narrative inquiry, cycling in and around philosophical, ideological and sociological theories but also challenging us to consciously consider what this means in practice."

"I would say I have a much fuller understanding of how all of the principles work independently and together, a deeper understanding of the whole, but also of how the individual elements interact. Armed with that understanding, I take more confidence and trust into the process of hosting and interacting in conversations that matter"

"I would never have had the opportunity to learn from and contribute to such wonderful conversations with people from around the globe had it not been for this online platform and for that I am very grateful. Online interaction can be a lesser substitute for face-to–face conversation, but in this case, I actually think I learnt more from having the time to reflect on questions and read others’ responses, asynchronously."

"I felt that as humans, we long to connect to each others. But in the western world, we are used to listen to the differences and to speak for ourselves, to demonstrate our leadership, our strengths, our efficiency and the value of our own ideas, in order to feel recognized and to find a place. At the opposite, in this World Cafe, I felt a deeper call from the heart, the brain and the spirit to connect with people. I have found "in the middle" a great sense of connectiveness, even at distance; individual characteristics didn't matter anymore. That was my "mad magic in the middle"! I found that trust in each other is the key element for a meaningful conversation. That's is also the moment we really start to learn from one another, by building on each others' knowledge."

"The most interesting part to me was the diversity of people who had come together. I appreciated the diversity of thinking, the diversity of communication styles and the diversity of ways to approach the World Café process."

"What have I learned? So many things. I have to say that this course transformed me."

"What’s interesting for me to consider is that I’ve generally been a good listener, but that doesn’t mean I’ve always been the best conversation partner because my questions, were just, well, regular questions. Now I have some practical tools for asking better, deeper, more thought-provoking questions of individuals and groups I am working with. Questions that don’t lead in a particular direction, don’t assume too much or too little, that do keep ideas flowing, that do raise other even more interesting questions—these are my best learnings."

"This course was very helpful to my reigniting my passion to learn and try new projects and methods overall. Often as a solo practitioner I can tend to be insular in my thinking. I tend to stick to my knitting. Being engaged with such a diverse group of professionals was very enlightening."

"I was reminded of the reasons why I love the World Café process. It works the way I want the world to work."

"I like “being around” people who think like the people who took this course. I found them warm and generous … working at jobs that contribute to the world in a very positive way. These people make the world a better place."

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

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

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.

*  *  *  *  *

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