Issue #5: March, 2008
 Greetings! Welcome! Come cozy up to the table for some World Café TableTalk and hear some of what's been happening within the World Café network lately.
Patricia Munro of World Café Europe leads off with details about this year's World Café Europe Gathering, scheduled for June 5-7, 2008 in Bilbao, Spain.
Patricia and the Bilbao planning team have a question for us, so be sure to check in and let them know your response.
The World Café has always been interested in supporting multi-generational collaboration, and with new leadership coming from younger hosts we're thrilled to find this pattern has become more and more pervasive - this issue reports on several multi-gen World Café initiatives and there are new ones being started everyday.
Read on for updates about other stewardship activities, announcements of events you'll want to attend, and stories and photographs of World Cafés hosted all around the world, including one in another world altogether!
As always, please remember that your participation is an essential part of the co-evolution of this network. Whether you participate through sharing your stories, contributing money or volunteering time, hosting conversations that matter, providing graphic recording, taking photographs, creating videos, or responding to questions in the online community forum, your contribution is a valuable part of what we are all creating together.Amy Lenzo, Editorand the World Café Community Foundation
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The Gift of the World Café:
Pay it Forward!
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| Great Dates
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March 24 - 30
Conversation Week
everywhere
March 29 - April 1, 2008
Nexus for Change
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
March 29, 2008
Regional Climate Change Café in Reno, Nevada
April 11-13, 2008
Seeds of Compassion
Seattle, Washington
April 13 - 17, 2008
SoL Global Forum
Muscat, Oman
June 5 -7, 2008
World Café Europe Gathering, Bilbao, Spain
__________
Details on all these events & more on the World Café website Calendar
Send us your dates!
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GiveLine:
Shop & Give Online
An Easy Way to Support the World Café
The World Café Community Foundation is registered as a 501c3 non-profit 'cause' at the socially-responsible online store GiveLine.
Giveline
redirects consumer dollars to charities and non-profits. So now all
your shopping can benefit the World Café. Use the link above, or the one on the website's Ways to Contribute page to browse available products.
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"It's not about right or wrong. It's about dancing."
~Finn Voldtofte"
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World Café in Bilbao, Spain: June 5-7
A planning team has been meeting for months now in preparation for a World Café Europe gathering in Bilbao this year.
(This is the Bilbao planning team's mascot, Patxi!)
Read Pat's story for details about this innovative city-wide initiative, which will be the second in an ambitious series to be hosted in cities all over Europe.
The planning team invite us to consider the question that will be the focus for the World Café on days two and three in Bilbao: What role does renewal play in addressing the challenges of the world today?
Go to the World Café Europe blog and be sure to add your response to the wonderful reflections already beginning to show up there!
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Resourcing Update
After the last TableTalk issue on the Gift Economy, and the letter we sent out in December inviting contributions to the World Café, we received a number of financial contributions from you, members of the World Café network. Thank you! Each one is very much appreciated, and vital for our ability to continue supporting this work. Tom Hurley of the World Café Community Foundation has created an
Overview and Invitation (pdf, 2.9M), which is a clear, concise guide to the World Café and already proving itself an invaluable aid in helping us find partners, including resourcing alliances, to support the ongoing co-evolution of the World Café. Please download your copy and use it to introduce the World Café to those in your networks and to consider how you can participate more fully in the co-evolution of the network. |
Multi-Generational World Cafés
There's a lot of multi-generational excitement in the
World Café these days:
 To start, the California Bay Area stewardship team hosted a Multi-Gen World Café in Alameda this January. About 50 people between the ages of 13 and 92 participated in a four hour conversation about the strengths and inspiring effects of multi-generational interaction.
Co-host and Regional Steward Laura Peck compiled a fabulous summary of the event.
Juanita Brown and Samantha Tan just submitted an
article on multi-gen particpation to Kosmos magazine. The article is illustrated by photographs ranging from the recent Imagine Miami that Ana Cristina Maldonado hosted in Florida to the inter-gen World Café at the Girl Scout National Convention hosted by Christina Whitney Sanchez in 2005.
Finally, Dania Quirola hosted a World Café with the Pioneers of Change in Brasil, and sent this short power point movie about it.
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World Café in Second Life
by Amy Lenzo
Several of us have been working to create online World Cafés that are based on the same principles and
practices as in-the-flesh Cafés, and that can similarly access the collective
intelligence (or 'magic in the middle') of a group. This project has
been active for a while now, and we are experimenting with a variety of online tools and
methods.
I recently hosted an online World Café using one of those
tools, Second Life, in an innovative collaboration with Nancy White (who drew the image above), Rockridge Institute and Grove International.
Read on for the story and transcripts.
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Seeds of Compassion
 Seeds of Compassion
is a 5 day gathering in Seattle, April
11-15, 2008; a collaboration with the Dalai Lama
designed to "plant hope" and "nature kindness and compassion in the
world, starting with children and all those who touch their lives" (listen to the Dalai Lama video on the subject).
Educator and World Café host Ashley Cooper has been 'on the scene' in Seattle, supporting the Seeds of Compassion event by bringing World Café principles and practices to the design of Compassion Circles.
These spaces for dialogue will support the Seeds of Compassion event as
well and conversations leading up to and following it. Here's Ashley's report on the way they'll be used during the conference.
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What's New?
Fielding Graduate University's Institute for Social Innovation Announces a Groundbreaking Research Partnership with the World Café.For More News...
Check in regularly 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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Conversations that Matter
Hot conversations in the World Café network
 There have been a lot of new people joining the World Café online community forums lately, and it is wonderful to see how the spirit of friendship within our network moves to respond to their questions and welcome them in our midst.
One member, Morag McClurg, brought a discussion about friendship to the forum, and received a warm response from the incomparable Kenoli Oleari.
Since the sprit of friendship has always been such a strong supporting design principle in co-evolving the World Café, perhaps this is a conversation that you will feel drawn to, too ...
What are your thoughts and feelings on friendship? Add your responses to the conversation Morag started, send them to us here, or include them as comments on the World Café Community blog.
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The World Cafe Community Foundation
Email: news@theworldcafe.com
Web: www.theworldcafe.com |
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