Welcome to Café U!

Submitted by George Por on September 28, 2008 - 23:01.

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in "Café U," our shorthand for the home of online conversations about the inquiry into the potential for:

• Synergies between the processes of Presencing and of the The World Café, including when either or both of them are enhanced with Web 2.0 technologies

• Collaboration between the Presencing Institute, the World Café Foundation, the Fielding Institute and other academic institutions

We're very excited about the rich possibilities for interaction between these two social technologies, and want to invite you to join in and make your own unique contributions to the conversation.

After you've read the wiki material on the Café U Action Inquiry, we'd like to invite you to share your responses here by either adding your general thoughts below, or starting another thread with a more focused subject line.

If you have any questions, please go ahead and post them and one of us will get back to you on them.

Have fun!

Warm Wishes from me, and all of the Nexus hosts for this "Café U" conversation,

Amy Lenzo, George Por, Sherl Erickson & Ria Baeck

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New possibilities already arising!

Submitted by Ria Baeck on October 13, 2008 - 21:56.

I love when connections are made and new things may arise out of that! The more collaboration between our different 'streams' the better!

Ria

How To

Submitted by Greg Giuliano on October 13, 2008 - 20:38.

Hi Helen:

I'd be happy to have a conversation with you to discuss how we structure our conversations. It would also be fun to talk about how we might collaborate to help you in your work. Let's find a time to chat.

Cheers,

Greg

a rose by any other name...

Submitted by Greg Giuliano on October 13, 2008 - 20:36.

Hi Amy:

You're right. To 'cafe' might mean anything. And, we find it emerges naturally within our client community after their first experience of the World Cafe in their organization. It's only then that they make the personal and collective executive decision to make the grammatical shift. It's our experience that the person using the verb 'cafe' has full knowledge of it's definition:

Cafe (Ka-fey) verb - to design, convene, host and/or participate in a "World Cafe"

We're just excited that their culture is shifting and they are wanting more conversation and collaboration before they jump to action.

Great dialogue. Thanks!

Greg

What's in a Word?

Submitted by Amy Lenzo on October 13, 2008 - 17:25.

Greg,

I love the freshness and possibility in your words, as I too love to watch language emerge and with its presence create new realities.

One of the things I think David was pointing to in his comment (although I can't speak for him, so perhaps I'm wrong) is that as a verb, "cafe" might mean anything and not necessarily a World Cafe.

So another way of putting his question might be:

Is there value in making our meaning specific? i.e. including the adjective "World" in the cases where we're explicitly referring to a World Café?

Nice to connect with you, Greg!

Amy

~~~~~~*~~~~~~*~~~~~~
The BEAUTY DIALOGUES:
http://www.beautydialogues.com/

“... all experience of beauty is experience of cosmic wholeness, of harmony. Beauty is microcosmic intuition of macrocosmic reality.”

Do you have a script?

Submitted by Helen Titchen Beeth on October 13, 2008 - 06:52.

Greg, this is fascinating. Do you have a script of a past café U process that you have done with a client that you could share so I can get an idea of how you articulate these two together? I work in the European Commission and would love to try doing something like this for strategic conversations there.

and...

Submitted by Greg Giuliano on October 12, 2008 - 23:21.

I forgot to mention that our own organization is an example of the intersect of TWC and U. We regularly have an internal 'cafe' to design and convene a U conversation.

one small step...

Submitted by Greg Giuliano on October 12, 2008 - 23:19.

Hi George:

Thanks for the invitation to dialogue. We articulate a U process to our clients as an inner and collective dialogue in three steps. We use the World Cafe methodology as well as exercises for individual and collective reflection to move teams through a U process. The conversations move them from co-creating a vision and strategy to developing their operating plan to make their vision a reality. They see the process as alive and ongoing so the plan is constantly evolving as they begin to move forward after the initial 'cafe' conversation. Our examples are of how we interact with teams in large for-profit enterprises. We feel we've taken one small step...

The Café in U and U in the Café

Submitted by George Por on October 12, 2008 - 21:18.

Greg, thanks for reminding us the expression of "let's cafe that." You also mentioned "how the World Cafe enables teams and communities to engage and move through a U process." Do you have exampes when TWC was used for supporting the complete U process, including the right leg up into co-creating and co-evolving?

A corollary question is this: do you, or anybody else, knowexamples when the U process was used to support a Café intervention, in any way?

Looking forwadr to our conversation in the confcall.

george

From noun to verb

Submitted by Greg Giuliano on October 12, 2008 - 20:19.

I understand the distinction David offers between "World Cafe" and cafe." From a strictly grammatical perspective, one is a proper noun and the other a noun. And, what is emerging?

People around the world now say things like, "Let's cafe that." The World Cafe has become a verb! The number of people who understand what is meant when someone says, "let's cafe that." is growing every day.

As we explore how the World Cafe enables teams and communities to engage and move through a U process, we may see new language emerge to describe what is occurring. How cool is that?

What's in a name?

Submitted by David Isaacs on October 4, 2008 - 18:50.

To offer a linguistic distinction between the "World Café" and "Café"...

"Café" as shorthand can be construed to be any kind of café. it could be a knowledge café.... an Amsterdam Café... a conversation Café, a Parisien Café, etc. ... or a U Café.

the World Café ... or "World Café", is a process when a "collection of intelligences becomes at risk of becoming a collective intelligence"

a U World Café, or U Process World Café, or a World U Café in that context can be experienced as very different from a U Café.

the idea of a U World Café might mean that the U Process is being engaged upon the practice field of the World Café... in which the essence, principles, and cycles in the U Process are consciously activated in a World Café conversation.