Cafe' Conversations

What are Café Conversations?

Café Conversations or World Café is a flexible, easy to use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing mutual knowledge, and discovering new opportunities for action. Based on living systems thinking, this innovative approach creates dynamic networks of conversation that can catalyze an organization's or community's own collective intelligence around its most important questions. The key to creating a successful Café Conversation is employing the seven guiding principles, which when used in combination foster courageous conversations and collective intelligence.

The Café process is particularly useful in the following situations:

* When you want to generate input, share knowledge, stimulate innovative thinking, and explore action possibilities around real life issues and questions

Café Conversations focus on the future not the past and focus on how we can make things better rather than dwelling on things we cannot change or past events that cannot be undone. They start from where we are now and move us on from there.

* To engage people--whether they are meeting for the first time, or are in established relationships--in authentic conversation

* To conduct in-depth exploration of key strategic challenges or opportunities

* To deepen relationships and mutual ownership of outcomes in an existing group

* To create meaningful interaction between a speaker and the audience

* To engage groups larger than 12 in an authentic dialogue process

The Café is less useful when:

* You are driving toward an already determined solution or answer

* You want to convey only one-way information

* You are making detailed implementation plans

* You have fewer than 12 people (better to use a more traditional dialogue circle, council or other approach for fostering authentic conversation)

Source: The World Café

Click here for More Information

How to Facilitate a Café Conversation

Café to Go This concise Guide provides an overview of the principles used in designing World Café conversations. It contains tips for creating powerful questions, outlines the World Café assumptions and etiquette, covers how to set up your meeting space, as well as all the supplies you will need on hand.

EASTCONN Staff can faciliate a Café Conversation in your district or school. For information contact Jim Huggins at jhuggins@eastconn.org or 455-0707. See examples of Café conversations used in educational setting facilitated by EASTCONN.

Additional Resources

Cool Collaborations Power Point presentation at the Association of Educational Services Agencies 2006 Conference.

YouSay YouSay is an online Café Conversation for students.

The World CaféThis web site contains a wealth of information and resources you can use to host your own World Café dialogues.

The World Café: Shaping Our Futures with Conversations that Matter This book provides a means for engaging with many others in exploring important issues at a variety of levels: group, corporate, community, national, or international. It presents the World Café Process, which generally consist of three rounds of progressive conversation, each lasting about 20 or 30 minutes, followed by a dialog among the whole group.

Conversation Cafés At Conversation Cafés, we will learn together how to create a culture of conversation—which is a culture of intelligence, peace, and political awareness.

High School Students Discuss School Culture

Where the Café Conversation Was Used:
Café conversation was used at Windham Mills on May 18, 2006.

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
20 students who were participants of the Interdistrict program, Waves of History, were asked to come to Windham Mills to be a part of café conversation. Students were representative of the ethnic groups at Windham High School. The purpose was to discuss the culture at the high school and bring their findings back to the high school.

Participants:
20 Windham High School students who were participants of the Interdistrict program, Waves of History.

Setting:
The room was set up with tables and chairs. Each table had a red and white checkered tablecloth and there was a small vase with flowers at each table. There were also markers at the table. Food was available for students to eat during the session.
Agenda

Questions Asked:
Question Sheet

Results:
Student Responses

Student Exit Slips

Planned Next Steps:
The two lead teachers planned to present the findings to the staff at the high school. The responses were typed up and they planned to inform the administration and faculty about the café conversation results.

Imagination Connections Project Planning Meeting
The Beachfront Conversation Cafe

I am certain about nothing
but the holiness of the heart's affections
and the truth of imagination.
-Keats

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
To share knowledge, stimulate innovative thinking, and make concrete decisions about the Imagination Connections Interdistrict program.

Participants:
Teachers participating in the Imagination Connections Interdistrict program

Setting:

Questions Asked:


Results:
The results were to add the two bilingual classrooms and to make 3 of the groups, poetry and 3 storybooks. The teachers agreed that the emphasis on diversity and making friendships is as important as the writing. We also agreed upon a theme for this year which is “A smile is a smile in any language.” I agreed to add multi-cultural literature and I have done that through poetry of Issa and Basho (great book called Cool Melons Turn to Frogs), Latino storybooks like Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto (who is also a poet) and African American literature like the poems of Langston Hughes and many others (I have a large anthology) and From Miss Ida’s Porch by Sandra Belton.

Planned Next Steps:
We are in process now, having already written 2 collections of poetry and 2 storybooks. One of the collections of poetry is in Spanish and English.

What Does Your Heart Long For in the Workplace?
Taking a Pulse of Our Culture

Where the Cafe Conversation Was Used:
EASTCONN Regional Educational Service Center
Willimantic, CT

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
Our agency had gone through reorganization. We felt that some of the things that we valued and felt were important to our culture in the past were lost. We wanted to use the cafe to take a pulse of how the transition was impacting our culture. Our goal was to surface differing perspectives about the desired culture, the present culture and identify implications for the future of our work environment.

Given that we are a learning organization, we wanted to explore the Cafe Conversations as a potential strategy for use in educational settings. We often "try out" strategies with colleagues to determine their effectiveness and potential application.

Participants:
Staff Developers and Support Staff

Setting:
It took place as a part of the staff meeting. Tables were set up cafe style with tablecloths, markers, paper, and Cafe' Etiquette tent cards. Participants were given a Cafe' Menu as they entered the room.

Questions Asked:
Cafe' Questions

Results:
The group concluded that the strategy was effective and could be applied in a variety of settings. It generated the data we needed to determine the state of the culture and use as a springboard for future planning. It solidified for our new leader who we are, how we operate and how he can use that information in his interactions with individuals and groups.

Planned Next Steps:
Several staff developers planned to try out the strategy in a variety of educational settings. The information was used as we planned our end of the year retreat and future staff meetings.

Defining the Hedgehog Concept for EASTCONN

Where the Café Conversation Was Used:
Management retreat in June 2006.

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
The Management Team participates in an annual retreat each summer. This year the goals were team building and vision alignment. It was decided that the Café Conversation would be an effective tool for achieving both. We had read and discussed a monograph (Good to Great and the Social Sectors) earlier in the year, which we used to generate the questions asked.

Participants:
Twelve members of the management team at EASTCONN, a regional educational service center in Connecticut, spent a day at our performing arts magnet school. The session was facilitated by three members of the management team and was preceded by a separate team building icebreaker conducted on the stage of the main theater.

Setting:
The café conversation meeting was held in the café adjacent to the Capitol Theater Arts Academy lobby. The room is designed to look like an urban café with stainless steel tables, chairs, high bistro tables and barstools. There is a wall of windows that face the downtown street. After three rounds of conversations we broke for lunch. After lunch we moved to the gallery on the other side of the building, where we had dessert and discussed the implications of our morning discussion.

Questions Asked:
The following was distributed in advance of the meeting:

*Our Café Conversation will be structured around “The Hedgehog Concept” from the Good to Great and the Social Sectors monograph that we recently read and discussed. The three questions that we will explore are:

1. What are we deeply passionate about? (What does EASTCONN stand for? What are our core values? Why do we exist? What is our mission or core purpose?)
2. What can we best in the world at? (What can EASTCONN uniquely contribute to the people we touch, better than any other organization on the planet?)
3. What drives our resource engine? (How can we develop a sustainable resource engine to deliver superior performance relative to our mission? How do we attract people willing to contribute their efforts at rates below what their talents would yield if they worked in other settings including state agencies, public schools or in the private sector? How do we ensure a healthy fund balance and sustained cash flow? How can we cultivate a deep well of emotional goodwill and mind share of potential supporters? How do we produce tangible results and ensure that potential supporters believe not only in our mission, but in our capacity to deliver on that mission?)

This section of the monograph can be found on pp. 17-23 if you want to review it in advance of our meeting.

Results:
Feedback gathered at the end of the day yielded the observations that follow. Participants felt that the questions were powerful and raised appropriate, relevant issues. They felt that the time was sufficient and that the level of participation was good. Concerns were expressed about how we would subsequently use the information we had generated.

Planned Next Steps:
It was agreed that the information generated would be used to inform resource allocation. Several priority areas for follow up were identified.

NAEYC Accreditation Facilitation Project Meeting

Where the Café Conversation Was Used:
At the NAEYC National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on November 9, 2006.

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
To facilitate common understanding about what facilitation projects are, what they do, and how they are different from one another. It is intended to stimulate on-going conversation among project staff.

Participants:
Accreditation Facilitation Project coordinators from around the United States.

Setting:
The room was set up with tables and chairs. Each table decorated with autumn leaves. There were also markers and chart paper at the table.

Questions Asked:
1. How does the facilitation project create shared understanding with programs of the standards and criteria?
2. What are the rights and responsibilities of facilitation projects and what are they for the early childhood programs?

Results:
Coordinators from the different projects were able to share information, ideas, and strategies to use in their own projects.

CT Accreditation Facilitation Project

Where the Café Conversation Was Used:
In the NAEYC Accreditation Study Group on the Teaching Standard at Windham Mills on September 14, 2006.

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
To have participants discuss the criteria in the Teaching Standard.

Participants:
Directors, Administrators and School Readiness Coordinators for center-based and public school preschool and kindergarten programs.

Setting:
The room was set up with tables and chairs. Each table had a red and white checkered tablecloth and there was a small vase with flowers at each table. There were also markers at the table. Food was available for participants to eat during the session.

Questions Asked:
1. Why is play important and what does it look like in your classroom?
2. What is the process that you use to counter biases in curriculum, materials, and teaching practices?
3. How does your classroom reflect the children’s learning?
4. How do your teaching strategies support the curriculum?

Results:
Participants used this discussion as a model for study groups in their own programs.

What Motivates You to Learn?

Where the Café Conversation Was Used:
Café conversation was used at Windham Windham Middle School on February 16, 2007

Purpose of the Café Conversation:
To collect information from students and provide them with an opportunity to share their ideas and opinions about what motivates them to learn. This group of students used the questions posed on EASTCONN’s wiki, YouSay, and will be posting their collective thoughts on the website.

Participants:
Mary Blain’s 8th grade Language Arts class from Windham Middle School.

Setting:
The classroom was set up with tables and chairs. Each table had a red and white checkered tablecloth and a piece of flip chart paper for students to draw or write their thoughts. There were pencils, pens, and different sized markers at each table.

Questions Asked:

• What do you put your time and energy into learning on your own even though it can be frustrating at times, you continue to persevere and don’t give up?
• Why are you willing to do it? What is your motivation?
• Do you put the same amount of effort and perseverance into learning for school? Why or why not?
  
  Our Collective Discoveries (Whole Group Discussion)
• What is emerging here?
• If this were one voice, what would it be saying?
• What deeper questions are emerging as a result of these conversations?
• What patterns do you notice, and what do they point to? How do they inform us?
  
  Lastly
• What would need to change in schools to create the same motivation?
• What suggestions do you have to improve learning at schools?

Results:
Responses are published on the YouSay wiki
Responses (PDF)

Samples of student scribble/doodle on flip chart paper during the café:

Student Reflection:
Student reflection form

Samples of student responses to reflection questions

• I liked the way we just talked and discussed rather than get talked to. I also liked how we were always with different people.
• I liked the way people just talked while the others listened.
• If you are all talking then your ideas all become one big idea that incorporates everyone’s thoughts.
• I found out that most people have pretty good motives for what they do and work at.
• I found it easy to discuss the questions this way because we could write our answers down as well as saying them.
• I found out that many of the kids in class focus more on after school activities than school itself.
• I think that we would be learning better if we weren’t just memorizing and spitting back on tests. We need to actually learn in school, not memorize. If that changed, school would be better.

Next Steps:
Will be student driven