Calling all hosts - and hosts to be.
Conversation Week is March 24-30.
Now is the time - and for some of you the first time - to host a conversation in your community. Here's how the roll out will go between now and the last week in March.
You are invited to get on board and participate in the whole ride. Conversation Week will be as big, grand and global as we make it.
- In January we invite all hosts as well as experts around the world in dialogue and global issues to submit their ideas for what are the most important questions in the world today.
- In February we invite anyone, anywhere to vote on the best questions so we can get consensus about what's uppermost on people's minds everywhere.
- By mid-February updated manuals and promotion materials will be available on the web.
- In early March we'll provide ample phone training for all new and old hosts so everyone feels ready for their Conversation Week conversation.
- By Mid-March the 10 BIG QUESTIONS will be announced and the PR will go out. If you have advertising, marketing or public relations experience and want to use your talents promote Conversation Week far and wide, please contact us!
- And the last week in March you and hundreds of other hosts on every continent will gather people in cafés, libraries, cafeterias, living rooms and other rooms to entertain the questions - and allow them to entertain, fascinate and provoke you.
- In April we'll gather insights from every conversation - and find ways to tell the world what we learned together.
Conversation Week is our once-a-year opportunity as hosts to use the same questions, in the same week and share what we learn at our tables with our global colleagues. Conversation Week is the once-a-year opportunity to polish your skills, get extra support, and be inspired by how your local work connects with a global network of dialogue hosts.
The CC team will offer special support to all CW hosts so now is the time to give it a try. Think. What do you want to talk about? Who do you want to talk with? Where do you imagine conversations happening? How much of a difference do you think we can make together - if for one week hundreds of conversation circles convene on every continent to grapple with the 10 BIG QUESTIONS of the year?
This is a collaborative effort. The CC initiative will provide the framework, materials, support, but you, the hosts, will make it come alive. Please consider including one conversation week event in your plans for 2008. You'll be amazed at the power that comes as our network lights up together. Remember the electric feeling at a CC table? How interesting, provocative and safe, all at once? How unpredictable the insights? How satisfying the sense of being heard - really heard? Remember if you've been there the feeling at a large conversation event where hundreds or even thousands considered the same questions at the same time in the same room? How all the small groups seemed to get in sync - with the room in high buzz and then quieter intensity with nobody orchestrating anything? How the sense of significance of your words grew?
This is what we will feel in Conversation Week. Can a mere conversation make a difference? You bet. In fact, most change starts in conversation. Every new life direction, every resolved issue, every courageous step forward is linked, in some way, to an exchange with other humans. It may seem like "just talk" but humans uniquely reflect on themselves and their world - and then act. We think and feel and decide. and then we move. So the simple plea, "Can't we just talk about it?" isn't naïve - it's crucial to finding ways to a better future.
Ready. set.converse. Please participate and invite other to participate in Conversation Week 2008. It's fun. A service. Unique. Attractive. Different. Essential. Yours.