A Resource Guide for Hosting Conversations That Matter at the World Cafe

The World Café is an easy-to-use method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter to the real-life situations of your organizations or community. In this beautifully illustrated booklet, Juanita Brown collaborates with Nancy Margulies and the World Café Community to articulate seven guiding principles for people to use to host their own Café. Learn about the thousands of people on five continents who have experienced the World Café, a model for setting up the ideal Café for your group, the roles of the hosts, crafting powerful questions, Café assumptions and etiquette, and more.

Resource Link: http://www.theworldcafe.com

Café to Go! A Quick Reference Guide for Putting Conversations to Work

The World Cafe Community Foundation, 2002.

This concise 7-page guide to the World Café covers the basics of the process. It includes brief outlines of each principle, a description of Café Etiquette, an outline of key elements of the World Café conversations, and tips for creating Café ambiance.

Resource Link: http://www.thataway.org/exchange/files/docs/cafetogo.pdf

Conversation as a Co-Evolutionary Force (the World Cafe blog)

The World Cafe's blog provides a space for people to speak to each other in their authentic voices. Across the diversity of language, culture and geography, this is a place where we can ask the questions that truly matter to us and listen for the patterns that emerge in response.

Resource Link: http://conversationsthatmatter.typepad.com/theworldcafe/

The Art of Hosting and Convening Meaningful Conversations

The Art of Hosting and Convening Conversations is a practice retreat for all who aspire to learn and find new ways for working with others to create innovative and comprehensive solutions. We are a growing community of practitioners, supporting each other to explore and accomplish what we most care about. The hosts of the Art of Hosting invite you to explore the practise of hosting conversations that matter with us, to enhance your own practices of inviting, designing, opening and holding inspired and meaningful spaces in new places in your work, communities and life.

Resource Link: http://www.artofhosting.org

The LTA Café: A Design for Hosting Large Group Let's Talk America Dialogues

Let's Talk America (LTA), 2004.

This design, which combines elements of Conversation Café with World Café, provides a process for groups from a dozen to hundreds of people or more that will honor LTA principles and enable you to take the conversation from small talk to big talk in a way that allows everyone to feel respected, safe and heard. Unlike the simple Conversation Café process outlined in the Host Training Guide, this process does require the guidance of an experienced facilitator. So we offer this design based on the assumption that you have previous experience facilitating large groups. Ideally you will have facilitated or at least attended a World Café in the past.

Resource Link: http://www.thataway.org/exchange/files/docs/LTA_cafe_host_manual.doc

The World Caf? Listserv

The World Cafe.

This listserv is focused on creating a community of dialogic practice based on the Principles of the World Cafe.

Resource Link: http://www.theworldcafe.com/listservagrees.html

World Cafe Method, Metaphor, and Community Foundation

Juanita Brown and David Isaacs from Whole Systems Associates use the model of the cafe setting to create a warm, inviting environment in which people can converse. Participants gather informally at small tables and are encouraged to map out the ideas generated from conversation onto the paper table cloths covering the tables.

Resource Link: http://www.theworldcafe.com