This reply is an illustration of how the process is emerging because in March, I posted this topic on "emergent taxonomy" and, thanks to Helen's engaging with my suggested actions, something became increasingly clear: The outcome of her wonderful, the first draft of the AoH taxonomy strawman needs to be enhanced by the perspectives of the core pattern holders of AoH. Only then can they help us discovering a community-validated set of top categories of the taxonomy.

Relying on the two key documents of Art of Hosting, which are online here, wouldn't give us as rich and alive source of taxonomy emergence as in-depth interviews wit leading practitioners of Art of Hosting about their perceptions and mental models of the territories, processes, and tools of their work as hosts. 

"What are the meaningful results we are looking for?"

(Text in black is from Amy Lenzo and blue from Jim Miller)

1) Each participant feeling personally heard and part of something important.

a) At the first opportunity, we send out a personal invitation to each person who has indicated an interest in attending a World Cyber Cafe event. We need to mention that their interest or point of view is need for the event and would be welcomed.

b) Before the event, the presenters post their notes or text of talk with citations where appropriate. As these are posted, an RRS feed notifies all who have registered for the event and suggests they forward our message to five friends who might be interested and sending a CC to the facilitator/moderator of the event (or to the WCC admin.)

2) An opening in participants' ability to really listen to others. We might introduce the idea of a talking stick. A Chat room takes care of talking over. In a conference call, normal pauses and a dropped voice usually signals that the speaker has relinquished the “floor”. Or we could devise a verbal signal, “over” as in the HAM radio days.

4) Collective/shared awareness arising from the whole group interaction. In a conference call, we could start out with a song such as a Mitch Miller sing-a-long “duck” song. Or we could have performers sing the melody and the rest of use supply the Doo Wop. Rhythmic clapping? Singing in the Rain? Over the Rainbow? Oklahoma?

"What are the group dynamics behind World Cafe that gets the results we value?"

1) unusual, beautiful, welcoming/inviting environment. Sayings from Starhawk or others might be a good intro. New age visuals or some powerful Mexican murals might appeal to the crowd.

2) personal welcome. Yes! The Moderator should have a “Welcome” package which each participant gets downloaded when they actually sign in to the live conference. How about a door prize? Contests? Free software?

3) shared introduction encompassing the whole room. Before the meeting, each registrant for the meeting has the opportunity to add a profile to the Membership page. The Greeting should mention this fact so that any member can review the attendees' profiles a few days in advance.

4) visual graphics for welcome, guidelines, and the question/s (as they evolve) for reference throughout. Visuals are best uploaded to a server ahead of time, and then added to the Event's WikiWebsite for all to see. These can be combined into a Power Point show with or without text and with or without sound.

5) being in small groups of no more than 4-5 Depending the total number attending, the smallest “table” or “room” should be five and the largest eight.

6) participating in a collaborative, collective visual "doodle" while speaking. Probably a white board: one for the entire event and one for each table. Hopefully this allows for concurrent users – not sure of this.

7) hearing "the buzz" and snatches of conversation around us as we speak and listen in our small group. Each participate will have the ability to shift from one “page”, “table” or “room” at will. It would be too difficult and confusing to have background noise or “buzz”.

8) rotating the small groups for at least 2 rounds of conversation. Good. The scrivener should stay at h/h first assigned table, take notes and summarize the prior discussion/votes to the new attendees.

9) the chance to harvest what we've heard in our conversations and listen to others' perceptions . Yes, the scrivener does this or we can use the transcript from the Chat Room for exact replication of the text'd discussions.

10) The ability for everyone to see our shared thinking represented visually at the same time. As to the entire event, probably we need a talking head to summarize each table's discussions or we could put the camcorder on each scrivener to summarize h/h table's conclusions.

"How might we implement these dynamics online?"

In relation to

 #1: personal invitations, clear directions, welcoming visual design, easy to use interface, friendly tech support, freely offered and available throughout. Excellent. Not sure how we are going to staff the tech support. I'll do my part but we will need 10% of the number of participants doing tech support before the meeting and two people during the meeting.

#2: visual video access to all the people in the room, special care taken among the hosting team to be thoughtful and personable in compensation for the emotional "gap" caused by the relative lack of expressiveness in the online environment. At the table level, each participant has a webcam clipped to the h/h monitor, aimed at the participant. If we have a combination of physical tables in a physical cafe with Cyber participants online, then MS has a solution for the table: MS LiveMeeting has a 360 degree camcorder which sits in the middle of the table and records motion video and audio. The drawback is that this device costs $3,000.  See this in one of the demos listed on the EVALUATION MATRIX of the World Cyber Cafe( WCC) http://worldcybercafe.wetpaint.com/ . This digital data stream can be recording.

#3: a way for the whole group to be in one place, and hear a shared presentation, a host that's comfortable in the online medium and familiar with the technology being used. While we need a talking head to start the event, we should quickly break into sessions for a hour or two, then come back to the talking head.

#4: participant & hosts having access to a shared visual screen that can change throughout the café process. We can put small thumbnail  squares on the display screen, with each square displaying each of several tables, which are clickable. I'm not techie enough to know how to do it, but I've seen it done.

#5: a way for the group to divide into small, contained groups of 4-5 that they can have private conversation within, and yet retain visual and auditory connection with the whole group. GoToMeeting, iLink for meeting  does this as does MS LiveMeeting.

#6: shared equal-access whiteboard for each small group. Good idea. I'm not, at this point, techie enough to know how to do this, but I'll looking into it.

#7: Feedback. We should have a survey questionnaire up and running during the event so that as it progresses, each registrant can “fill in the blanks” or check off or add an essay. At the end of the Event, these are uploaded via the Admin to the WCC website.

#8 a way for new small groups to be easily formed Self-chosen by Topic on a first-come, first-serve basis.

#9: the same as #3

#10: same as #4, with a real-time component and the addition of a graphic recorder who is comfortable in the online medium, and skilled in using the technology of online real-time graphics capture. Since WCC is totally digital, no problem in creating galleries of pictures and playlists of video and audio. If we have a combo physical cafe and a virtual cafe, then there will need to have a computer and a scanner at a back-room physical table for non-digitized visuals, or we could use a ditigal camera, take a picture of the analogue visual and upload the digital image.

#11. Gear. To promote the WCC in live video/audio, each registrant will have to invest in some software, a set of head phones with a mic and a Web cam. Theses are cheap enough so that the cost should not be a barrier. (A whole lot cheaper than driving to a physical event). Visuals are important so we need to encourage each registrant to get a scanner and some scanning software so they can hand draw a visual or use a non-digitized photo and still have the ability to upload.

#12 Freedom of choice. I have been to conferences, only to find out that they are not what I expected – vague words, no action plan, a re-hash, stream of phrases, a marketing pitch. The value of WCC is that the registrant can simply drop the connection and go about h/h business instantly.

Regards,

Jim Miller