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Dear Conversationalist,
Welcome to another edition of the
Conversation Café
e-newsletter!
News from Conversation Week 2008
- Vicki Robin shares highlights, exciting new directions for Conversation Café, and the great role hosts can play in Conversation Week 2009
- Susan Partnow shares dreams and plans for Conversation Week 2009
- Alan Zulch tells about Global Mindshifts partnership, brining the first online dialogues to Conversation Week
- Ron Gross tells of his amazing experiences, from streets and hotel lobbies to library and university settings
- "From the Field" offers a snapshot of a wonderful conversation held in Montara, CA – (Keep those stories coming! Yours is wanted for the next edition!)
Coming attraction: Watch for official report of the Conversation Week 2008 harvesting is just on the horizon. You can expect it to be in your email boxes and on the Conversation Cafe website in early July.
Be sure to Notice: hosts around the world have begun sharing their insights from Conversation Week 2008 in brief. You can find these under the pins on the Conversation Week 2008 map. If you haven't shared your insights yet, it's not too late. Email them to Lorie at CC Central and she will get your insights posted under your 'pin' for all the world to see. Don't miss this opportunity to have your conversation 'heard'.
More inspiration and Conversation Café news in this edition:
- "Socrates Asks -- Ron Gross shares ideas, techniques, and experiences, including topics for sessions, facilitation strategies, and promotional tips.
- 'Ask Susan!' -- Susan Partnow helps you get your CC back on track by relying on the simple yet radical basics – especially the agreements
- Leif Utne shares his incredible first-hand experience of bringing the CC Methods to the world of architecture. (Leif was part of Let’s Talk America and brought his phenomenal public relations skills to Conversation Week 2008. We're excited to announce he now a key part of CC Central, and will help to bring the CC methods to organizations and conferences throughout the world)
If some or all of the above has inspired you to realize that now really is the time to finally start your own Café, or to brush up on your hosting skills, find the hosting resources you need on our website, and go for it! And for a more personal learning experience, join Susan Partnow's next tele-conference training June 24th at at 5:30 pm PDT for CC novices and those who need to refresh their hosting skills or just need a little inspiration.
We also welcome financial contributions, at whatever level is possible for you, to help keep the Conversation Café process and agreements alive, active, and available, generating BIG talk conversations around the world. Just send your check to Conversation Cafés, PO Box 1501, Langley, WA 98260, or click on the Donate button:
Meanwhile, happy reading!
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Big News from CC Central
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by Vicki Robin, co-founder, Conversation Café
We need your help. If you are a host or just love the CCs, please read and respond to the many questions below.
The core team met May 8-9 and are about to make some changes. Please be empowered. Blurt out your opinions and ideas.
Here are the headlines – then read below:
- Successful Conversation Week opens new possibilities for 2009
- New clarity about mission and strategy
- Susan Partnow, Leif Utne and Vicki Robin are now functioning as the interim leadership team, with Susan taking over from Vicki as chief poobah.
- Adjust the CC agreements? Heresy? Long overdue?
Conversation Week a Smashing Success
One hundred and fifty hosts and 2500 participants in 24 countries explored the 10+1 questions in Conversation Cafes during Conversation Week. Dozens of people also convened online through Global Mindshift and Second Life.
Without you, none of this would have happened. We played the Conversation Week game together – fully.
Can you imagine doubling that for next year? Three hundred hosts, 5,000 people in 48 countries. What would it take to reach that goal? How would you go about making it happen?
There’s a simple answer – though not necessarily the best one: if each host trains one more host and helps them set up an additional CC, that would double the numbers. Think you could actually do that – or more? Or what do you hope we at CC Central would do?
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Global Mindshift Helps Bring the World
Closer during CW2008
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by Alan Zulch, Global Mindshift
Global MindShift was thrilled to team up with  Conversation Café for Conversation Week 2008. Providing the ability to thoughtfully converse online and from all parts of the world, together, across boundaries, is what Global MindShift is all about, and with the knowledge gained from this collaboration, we're excited by the possibilities for improving and expanding upon this inaugural experience.
For a pilot, we were pleased to have well over a hundred people sign up this year, from all over the world, and see no reason why we cannot multiply that number many times next year.
When we started out, we weren't sure whether we would have enough hosts for our online conversations, but thanks to an amazing turnout, we actually ended up having more hosts than we even needed!
Happily, the opportunity to dip your toe into online hosting is still very much available at Global MindShift (http://www.global-mindshift.org ), where right now you can create and host your own conversation using either pre-existing topics (including the Conversation Week 2008 questions) or come up with your own.
If hosting an online conversation doesn't appeal, why not join an existing conversation? At Global MindShift, the dialogue continues!
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Become a Co-Creator of Conversation Week 2009
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By Susan Partnow, co-founder, Conversation Café and Executive Director, Global Citizen Journey
We are beginning to dream and plan for Conversation Week (CW) 2009: these past two years have been a great experience learning about how to develop an exciting way to invite the world to help us identify the burning questions – and they’ve led us to appreciate how truly transformative the power of our simple conversation café process is. Now we’re inspired and ready to roll out CW in a major way for next year.
There are two ways for you to get involved:
*Join the CW Steering team: We want to expand the leadership for CW beyond the initial founders to invite new ideas. We’ll have periodic phone meetings to oversee planning and coordination.
- How can we enhance this initiative?
- What is the best strategy for marketing and outreach?
- What partnerships and related activities are possible?
- Who are potential funders?
- What are ways to learn more from the experience and to make this a truly global conversation?
- How do we enhance the ‘harvesting’ of the conversations?
- How do move towards embodying the Dalai Lama’s call to make this the Century of Dialogue (now that we’ve survived the 20th Century of Violence).
Your creativity and energy are welcomed!
*Super Host for Multiple City Roll out: We are identifying 3 to 10 key cities to roll out Conversation Week with a big splash next year.
The ‘Super Hosts’ who step up to co-lead this initiative will dream and work together. We’re imagining many possibilities. We can plan special face-to-face host trainings in each city, to help foster a circle of hosts in the community.
We can get the local mayor to declare it Conversation Week. Each city may create a Gala Celebrity Launch or culmination event of some sort – perhaps inviting some locally well known figures to help attract people to a ‘super café’ event where dozens or even hundreds of participants can have simultaneous conversations, bringing a great energetic charge to the room.
And with this, there will be multiple cafes set up throughout the city for CW (which ideally, will continue beyond). Would you like to bring Conversation Cafés to a bigger level in your community so they will attract lots of people and help more cafes get established? We are actively fundraising for this initiative and plan to have a modest stipend for the Super Hosts.
Let us know if you want to be considered for one of these positions.
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Socrates Asks...
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by Ron Gross, Socratic Conversations; Co-chair, Columbia University Seminar on Innovation; columnist, ABOUT.com
In this new column, Ron Gross will share
ideas, techniques, and experiences,
including topics for sessions, facilitation
strategies, and promotional tips.
Ron conducts his Socratic Conversations at
Columbia University and throughout
New York City, writes a column on lifelong
learning for About.com, and is the
author of SOCRATES' WAY
(www.SocratesWay.com) and 20 other
books. While the
form of Socratic conversations is somewhat
different from Conversation Cafés,
the principles and intentions are very much
the same. His (and Socrates') wisdom can
help us all have livelier, richer, deeper
conversations.
-Vicki Robin
How would it feel if you were involved in a great conversation every day for a week? What impact might it have on your mind and spirit?
I tried to answer that question during Conversation Week 2008, March 24-30, a global initiative spearheaded by Conversation Cafe and Global Mindshift . (My personal thanks to the Gang of Six: Vicki, Lorie, Susan, Leif, Kern, and Alan - for their incredible inspiration, guidance, and support.)
If you'd joined me on the streets of Manhattan during that week, here are a half-dozen examples of what you would have seen and heard - "Law & Order" style. So cue up that staccato Ba-dum.
Ba-dum! Monday, 10:45 a.m., on the steps of the NY Public Library on Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street.
I held against my chest a bright yellow placard that read: LET'S TALK, NEW YORK! (This rhymes - but only in New York!, notes Melanie Frey, who came up with the slogan.)
Once four people had been enticed to sit down on the steps, I handed out The Ten Questions, which had been suggested to groups worldwide for Conversation Week discussion. Our little group gravitated to #8: "What Kind of Leadership Does the World Need Now?"
This being NY, one of the group, Jules, already had the ANSWER - which he kindly provided to the rest of us so that we could save ourselves a lot of valuable time.
To which one of the others responded brusquely (this being NY): "WHOA!, amigo! I've got more to say about that!"
By this time three others had latched onto the group, and all of us went at it. I introduced my wristwatch as a "Talking Object" - it can be any item that's handy, and that can be passed from person to person. When you are holding the Talking Object, you have the floor, with no cross-talk.
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From the Field...
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A Snapshot into One of the Many CW2008 Events
Conversation Week 2008 brought hosts and inspiring conversations from all over the world. Some met online to have conversations via Global Mindshift, participated in conversations in the virtual world, Second Life, conference calls, kitchens, coffee shops and restaurants.
There was no right or wrong locale and each had a conversation that left participants inspired that conversation holds the key for change.
More information about what we learned from the conversations that took place during Conversation Week 2008 will be coming out in a report in early July, but here is a snapshot of a multi-generational Conversation Cafe that took place in Montara, California.
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Case Study:
Architects Get Talking at Oregon Design Conference
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By Leif Utne
The classic Conversation Cafe--a small group gathered weekly at the neighborhood coffee shop or in a host's living room--is just one way to use this powerful dialogue method. The CC process is a useful tool to get just about any group of people in any community or organization to go deep quickly. We frequently hear reports from hosts who use it in schools, conferences, churches, and workplaces. But I, personally, had never had such an opportunity until recently.
In April, I had the chance to test the Conversation Cafe method in a new and unusual setting. I was invited to give the opening keynote at the Oregon Design Conference, the biennial gathering of the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The conference theme was "Think Out/Out Think." Not an architect myself, I thought long and hard about what I could possibly say that would be of interest to this crowd. Since I'm a journalist, I'm a bit of a professional dilletante. My knowledge of most subjects is a mile wide and an inch deep (well, maybe a few inches). I can tell stories, but how could I speak with authority on anything useful to these highly-trained professionals?
Then the solution hit me: Let them do the talking. I suggested to the conference organizers that rather than the usual 45-minute lecture followed by Q&A, we open the conference with a Conversation Cafe. I would speak for 15 minutes about the role of dialogue in social change and introduce the CC process and agreements, then lead the audience through an abbreviated CC process, followed by report-backs from several of the small groups.
They loved the idea.
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Ask Susan!
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By Susan Partnow, co-founder, Conversation Café and Executive Director, Global Citizen Journey
Getting Back to Basics
when your CC Drifts
How is the quality of conversation in your café? Do you continue to be moved, touched and inspired by what arises? Or has it begun to feel stagnant?
Sometimes we notice certain patterns and challenges arise in ongoing groups: perhaps a few ‘old timers’ tend to dominate. Or a member shows up who tends to get challenging (“you’re wrong”) or a fervently opinionated member launches into a lecturing or preaching mode).
The group seems to tolerate this by being nice and the host says nothing, reluctant to create a conflict. Or there is a rising pressure to skip reviewing the agreements or using the talking object: after all, people ‘know’ the process and could get along fine without them.
If you want to reclaim and enhance the alive, creative and generative spirit of your conversations – renew your commitment to the basics! They really work.
The conversation café process is distinct from ordinary conversation and it is adherence to the process that takes small talk to Big Talk. In our ordinary conversations, while we may agree to be ‘civil' – we have not contracted to suspend judgment or actively work to stay open and indeed seek new insights and discovery. The agreements are actually quite radical in the shift they create.
Full Article...
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Dialogue Wisdom
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We often feature excellent articles we've
collected about conversations that matter.
We welcome readers to forward powerful
articles to us. Send your submission to:
[email protected].
"I see...dialogue as a chance for people of different cultures and traditions to get to know each other better, whether they live on opposite sides of the world or on the same street."
- United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, United Nations Year of Dialoge Among Civilizations
"If we look back at the development in the 20th century, the most devastating cause of human suffering, of deprivation of human dignity, freedom and peace, has been the culture of violence in resolving differences and conflicts. In some ways, our century could be called the century of war and bloodshed. The challenge before us, therefore, is to make the next century a century of dialogue and non-violence conflict resolution. In human societies there will always be differences of views and interests. But the reality today is that we are all interdependent and have to co-exist on this small planet. Therefore, the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue. "
- The Dalai Lama, on March 1997, 38th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day
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Host Learning Circle
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A New Resource for Hosts
Hosting Conversation Cafés may be one of
the most rewarding and complex volunteer
activities you've ever done. The
conversations are at once rich and
challenging. Topics, guests and keeping
the agreements can be thrilling or tough or
both at once. You as a host are outposts for
civility and community in a sea of alienation
and confusion. Hosts are courageous
conversationalists. We can all use an
occasional hand - a round of applause and a
bit of assistance.
Host Support Calls are designed to help you
with every aspect of your ongoing hosting
and foster a sense of community among
current and former hosts around the world.
Some calls are open topic, welcoming all
concerns and celebrations for group
reflection. For others, specific hosts who
have a deep interest or good track record in
a particular aspect of hosting will share tips
and hear yours and together we'll create the
breakthroughs we desire.
Don't miss these wonderful opportunities!
They are only the cost of a phone call and
will be one of your best hours of the week,
guaranteed, because it's a meta
conversation café among your peer hosts. --Vicki Robin
The next Host Learning Circle Tele-
conference call is July 8, 2008 from 5:30pm to 7:00pm PDT, with host Susan Partnow.
TOPIC: Getting Back to Basics when your CC Drifts
Does any of this happen at your CC? If not, did it ever? Or if you are a novice, want to solve the problems before they arise?
- the agreements get sort of lost and overrun by habits
- there isn’t a clear ‘contracting’ or buy-in to the agreements for each session
- there is an unofficial ‘core’ of ‘old timers’ who dominate
- some of the agreements seem to get violated – a member tends to get challenging (“you’re wrong”)
- a fervently opinionated member goes into lecturing or preaching mode, etc.
- the group ‘handles’ it by tolerating (‘being nice’) –hosts may be reluctant to make waves -- nothing gets said
Please join Susan Partnow for an enlivening conversation about what happens when the form fades and the quality goes down. To register, send a request with your name, location, contact info. (email address and telephone number) to CC Central.
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Host Training Conference Call
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Talk to the Pro!
June 24, 2008:
5:30 pm-7:00 pm PDT
Join our own Susan Partnow,
professional
trainer and CC co-founder, for a telephone
training June 24th, 5:30pm -7:00pm Pacific
Daylight Time.
Sign up yourself, or (and!)
forward the newsletter along to other folks
you know who would enjoy a jump-start into
CC hosting.
A donation of $18 for this 90-minute training
is requested.
To register contact
[email protected]
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