The Unpredictable Lifecycle of a Conversation Café

by Vicki Robin

Larry Gaffin, who passed away of cancer in June, hosted his Conversation Café in Seattle faithfully every week from the early days in 2002 until soon before he died. Each week he pulled another juicy topic from the hip pocket of his fine mind. He arrived each time eager to engage and was welcoming to every person who showed up. He also served on the Advisory Board here in Seattle, helping to mold and grow the Initiative. Larry was an inspiring host and is already missed. He made it look effortless, but we all know there are many hosting hurdles and hoops he – and you – have navigated.

Hosting a Conversation Café is a unique – and sometimes very challenging – volunteer opportunity. Hosts are unsung heroes and heroines of public places and this article is to give hosts among you some empathy for the thorny moments, appreciation for your towering achievements (showing up, keeping going, getting regulars and newcomers) and some perspective on the whole lifecycle of a CC.

First, bravo! However many CCs you’ve hosted, however recently or long ago you did it, you are a brave, imaginative and likely fascinating person.

It’s truly for the self-empowered. CC Central only provides the template of the process and agreements, a few do’s (Show up. If you call it a CC, follow the minimal CC rules.) and a few don’ts (No committees will be formed. No marketing.). The training video we want every host to watch (as a DVD or streaming on the web) is a mere 27 minutes of instruction. Claudia McNeill sends out materials (wallet cards, mostly) and cheerful encouragement, Susan Partnow and Katharine Wismer have provided some great phone training. The website supports the whole community with new information and a list of current Cafés. And that’s it.

Here’s some of what you’ve been up against as volunteer hosts…

Just showing up week in, week out. As with the postman, neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night is supposed to daunt you… and how do you go on vacation if your guests resolutely do not want the responsibility of hosting? Most volunteer opportunities have a definite start and end time – and a little “volunteer appreciation” party to boot. How do you take a break, or even shut down a CC location, and feel successful?

Despite the glowing rhetoric about how easy hosting is, sometimes it isn’t. Intervening in difficult conversations is tricky, to say the least. Conversations can get stuck, boring, overheated, even volatile – and what’s a nice host like you doing in a dark place like this! The CC rules, the host manual, the little training – none of it seems to help and you just want to go home and hide under the covers.

Yep, volunteering to host a CC isn’t like helping with a church event or getting out a mailing at your favorite non-profit. It’s more like joining a creative team of social innovators who are so inventive and ahead of the curve that there’s no road map, no destination… and maybe not even a road.

As a team member, I want to reflect on what I’ve experienced about the natural lifecycle of Conversation Cafés.

I’ve started and hosted Cafés in 3 different locations. Two of the locations persisted after I left – hosting passed on into other hands… and passed on again. Sometimes I’d drop in as a participant and think, “How wonderful! What great people! What great topics! What an interesting set of ideas are emerging!” Sometimes I’d see that the group had become politically or culturally homogeneous –without any strangers to interrupt people’s certainties and challenge them to be inclusive. “Oh well,” I’d think, “CCs are open space, open source and free – and, as we all know, freedom allows for deviancy – or even homogeneity!”

One CC I started did not continue. As much as the regulars loved our Tuesday afternoon conversations, no one wanted to be responsible for showing up every week. Or every two weeks. Or even once a month.

Let me hereby say that all this and more is ‘right’ in the CC system. If you as a host got bored or overloaded or just interested in trying something else and shut your Café down, that’s perfect. If you lost interest in marketing and the group settled in to a small set of regulars, that’s quite typical. If you’ve done your best and no one showed up, hurrah for doing your best. Sometimes something doesn’t click. I used to go to my CCs in the early days, muttering to myself, “This isn’t a popularity contest. If no one comes, it’s not that I’m a loser. This isn’t social dancing class in 7th grade. If no one sits down, it isn’t that I’m ugly and can’t dance.”

CCs seem to have a lifecycle. After initial blazes of glory, they do settle down. After a time, they do shut down. Some take off and grow. Some fizzle. Not everyone can be a Larry Gaffin! Keeping the faith as a host through all these trials – and often being a lone voice in your community – takes real guts.

What would allow you to feel as free to stop a Café as you did to start one? What would allow you to feel as free to not enjoy some of the folks who sit down at your table as you do to try your hand (and heart) at including absolutely everyone? Do we need to know that hosting – like life – has its ups and downs, successes and failures, beginnings and endings?

What kind of “Volunteer Appreciation” would work for a gang of self-empowered people like you? Maybe just knowing that every conversation we’ve had – and there have been thousands now amongst us – has ripples. Every conversation says, “Mamma was wrong. Talk to strangers.” “We are the talk show.” Every conversation contributes to an open and free society – no matter what happens in the halls of power.

So, good job, hosts! Five gold stars. But you’re going to have to go out, buy them yourselves and stick them on your own forehead!