Issue #2, June, 2007
 Greetings!,Welcome to the second issue of World Café TableTalk!In the 6-7 weeks since TableTalk was first launched, this emerging network has continued to grow exponentially.
One of the things that has become clear to me, as I draw the threads of your stories together from World Café conversations going on all over the world, is that there is so much more happening than any one of us could ever possibly imagine!
At a recent gathering of the San Francisco bay area regional group (practically my own back yard!) we found out for the first time about World Cafés that had been hosted at CalTrans and Nokia, in South Africa, Bosnia, New Zealand, and San Franscisco (read the story of what happened at the SF café here)!
What an incredible feeling washed over us all to see the scope and trajectory of this simple process based on the co-evolutionary concept of conversation about questions that matter. So I can only encourage those of you who have hosted a café or have an update or story to tell to send it to us so others can gain from your knowledge and enjoy your experience.
Remember - Your voice is important. Each of us holds a key piece of the whole; sharing the pieces with each other is how we learn and how together we can co-evolve the futures we want to see for ourselves and our children.Amy Lenzo, Editor and the World Café Community Foundation
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| Great Dates
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June 18th - 25: Boulevard Paulistrano in Brazil
June 24 - 30: Shambhala Institute's Authentic Leadership Program in Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 28 - July1: Tallberg Forum in Stockholm, Sweden
July 17: Global Climate Change Cafe in Nevada City, USA
July 25 - 27: IAF Asia Facilitator Conference in Kuaa Lumpur, Malaysia
July 31-August 7: World Café Bali in Ubud, Indonesia
August 8 - 21: IONS Conference in Palm Springs, USA
August 19: Global Climate Change Cafe, Nevada City, USA
Septmember 17: SoL's Academy on Wheels in Detroit, USA
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Details on all these events & more on the World Café website Calendar
Send us your dates!
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""Conversations are efforts towards good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate.
To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night.
If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act-it does not matter whom-and we will survive.""
- Barry Lopez, from the 2006 World Café gathering in Bali
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Dialogue for a Transforming World
(photo by Erik Veland)
Team members at the Bali Institute for Global Renewal in Bali are gearing up for the Awakening Global Action Gathering: Leadership, Indigenous Wisdom and Dialogue for a Transforming World event they are hosting in Ubud, Bali from July 31 to August 7. World Café host Ryan Feinstein, one of the younger members of the Bali Institute, recently hosted a intergenerational World Café with students at UCSD (University of California at San Diego) and seniors from a community only a few blocks away, in a dialogue designed to help students prepare for their role in the Bali event. Read his story here ... To Register/More Information on World Café Bali...
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What's New?
One of the newest and most exciting current developments at the World Café is the movement to use models like the World Café as an integral element in large-scale change initiatives addressing some of the critical content issues of our day - global warming & climate change, for example.
Nancy Margulies, who many of you know from her distinctive graphic recording work with the World Café, is a great creative catalyst in this area. She has been actively hosting World Cafés in trouble spots like post-Katrina New Orleans, engaging her community in cafés about local issues, and hosting a series of Climate Change Cafés, including several in support of David Gershon's Global Warming initiatives.
 Nancy has recently taken this work a step further by starting a collaborative blog - Global Climate Change, hosted by the World Café - to share tips, calendars, stories and resources for others who share her commitment to positive change and process activism.
For More News...
Check in with the 'What's New' page on the website for ongoing World Café news, and please send in your own updates so they can be shared with the network.
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News from Brasil
Reports from Juanita Brown & Carlos Mota Margain
 Lots of action and excitement happening in Sao Paulo right now!
Juanita Brown is there with many others from the Latin American World Café community enjoying a number of events and activities. These include Boulevard Paulistano, a long-term project which Carlos Mota reports on, and the launch of the Portuguese translation of the World Café book taking place at a World Business Academy gathering in Sao Paulo tonight.
In the first few entries of her Notes from Brasil, now posted in Conversation as a Co-Evolutionary Force, Juanita reflects on the "Warriors Without Weapons" work that Edgard Gouveia and other youth from the Elos Institute are doing in Santos and its implications for all of us.
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The World Café in the News
Media Citings
The World Café appears in Charles Cameron's blog post, along with a wonderful poem by Robert Frost
Interview with Carlos Mota Margain in llamada Entrepreneur (pdf 328K) about the Spanish translation of the World Cafe book
Article in The Bottom Line reports on a World Café hosted with college students, faculty and community members in Frostberg, Florida
Keep your eyes peeled and send any media citings to: news@theworldcafe.com
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Conversations that Matter
There seem to be several particularly hot conversations happening around World Café tables right now...
Starting with the harvesting of World Café Europe's Dresden event, which has been an incredible example of creativity and collaborative engagement (see 'Connectivity Tips' in this issue). You can get a great sense of this ground-breaking event and ongoing development in Europe by checking in to their blog.
Here are two more:
Reverend Terry Chapman recently shared a story from a World Cafe he experienced in Uganda, East Africa, around the question, "How can women be empowered to lead in Africa?".
He went on to initiate a conversation about how the middle of the table in World Café might relate to his understanding of Sabbath, as he writes about it in his thesis "Sabbath for a Postmodern World."
Does this analogy suggest anything to you?
Join the conversation...
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Juanita Brown posed a very provocative reflection in her Notes from Brasil post, about the combination of processes which foster collective intelligence and democratic voice and critical content issues like neighborhood development, indigenous rights, global warming, worker participation, AIDS, human trafficking, and others.
She says "... it's not just the World Café (a key catalyzer) or just the issue (the key "content") that's important, but the power of the combination that is truly the change force for large-scale systemic impact."
What do you think? Use the comments function at the bottom of her post to share your perspective.
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Visual Intelligence
Graphic Recording is a vital part of the World Café process! Each issue of TableTalk will feature our collective visual intelligence via a graphic that capures some important World Café concept or information.
This was one of Nancy Margulies' early ideas for a Global Warming Café icon ... Pretty hot, eh?
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Connectivity Tips
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Once again World Café Europe is pioneering new territory, this time with a Skype-facilitated online World Café, "live" with sixteen people rotating between four tables over the course of 2 1/2 hours. The event was beautifully planned by Ulrich Soeder, Ulric Rudebeck and Jeff Beeson as part of World Café Europe's team harvesting process.
Stay tuned for announcements of online Word Cafés for other audiences.
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Great Resources
 We have recently added a lot of new material to the World Café Cybrary, including a link to the incredibly resource-rich publication put out by friend and colleague Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute, who is also a co-author of the Conversation as a Co-Evolutionary Force blog.
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The World Cafe Community Foundation
Email: news@theworldcafe.com
Web: www.theworldcafe.com |
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