Week Ten : The World Cafe Method

In discussion this week I was posed the question how can my entity leverage connection? How can it facilitate community progression and create behaviour through prompts, visualisation and encouragement? How does it advocate? In considering a response, I explored in-depth the World Cafe method. The World Cafe is a powerful social technology for engaging people in conversations that matter; offering an effective antidote to the fast-paced fragmentation and lack of connection in today's world. It offers a model which emphasises conversation as a core process.

It's design entails several principles, all of which underpin a nexus of philosophical thinking, new language and emergent social behaviours; they include;

• Setting the context;
• Creating hospitable space;
• Exploring questions that matter;
• Encouraging everyone's contribution;
• Connecting diverse perspectives;
• Listening together for patterns and insights; and
• Sharing collective discoveries.

The below video from World Cafe, illustrates further these principles.

In considering such a social phenomona I would suggest that the method serves well to encompass and structure the ideas that I am trying to embody with this contemporary marketplace. The cafe offers a channel through which individual subscription is at its highest level, not only facilitating personal meaning but also creating a culture of operation. I think that these notions translated into a more tangible sense would represent the physical infrastructure that prompts activity and use. This physical infrastructure then will need further exploration.