The following groups share many perspectives and are well worth investigating.

Socrates Café
www.philosopher.org

The Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI) is a grassroots nonprofit organization, comprised of philosophical inquirers of all ages and walks of life. Its members strive to form communities of philosophical inquiry - "Socrates Café" - across the globe, at places like coffee houses, libraries, hospices, senior centers, nursing homes, prison, plazas and other public spaces, bookstores, homeless shelters and community centers, and also at schools, where we typically call our gatherings "The Philosophers' Club." SPI's diverse members are devoted to resuscitating the once time-honored art and skill of Socratic philosophical inquiry.

Center for Nonviolent Communications / Marshall Rosenberg
www.cnvc.org

Nonviolent Communicationsm (NVC) is a process that strengthens our ability to inspire compassion from others and respond compassionately to others and ourselves. NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves and how we hear others by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting. It is a language of empathy and honesty, and is sometimes described as "the language of the heart."

NCDD brings together those who actively practice, promote and study inclusive, high quality conversations. We believe that elevating the quality of thinking and comunication in organizations and among citizens is key to solving humanity's most pressing problems.

GFSC is dedicated to helping communities, groups and institutions address their needs, by helping people learn how to resolve conflicts, solve problems and create sustainable solutions. GFSC works with volunteer facilitators to strengthen and support their own communities using facilitation techniques that encourage the use of local resources and strengths.

Study Circles Resource Center
www.studycircles.org

Study Circles Resource Center helps communities organize study circles - small-group, democratic, peer-led discussions that give people opportunities to make a difference in their communities. In study circle programs, communities across the country are bringing hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of diverse people into democratic, face-to-face groups to address critical issues, such as: Racism and race relations. Crime and violence. Education reform. Growth and sprawl. Diversity.

Public Conversations Project
www.publicconversations.org

PCP designs and facilitates conversations in which people who have become destructively divided by their differences can deliberately avoid repeating their habitual, unproductive ways of relating and, instead develop new modes of communicating that lead to mutual understanding, respect and trust.

Future Search
www.futuresearch.net

Future search is a task-focused planning meeting that enables a system to transform its capability for action very quickly. The meeting is task-focused. It brings people from all walks of life into the same conversation - those with resources, expertise, formal authority and need. They meet for 16 hours spread across three days. People tell stories about their past, present and desired future. Through dialogue they discover their common ground. Then they make concrete action plans, devising new forms of cooperation that may continue for months or years.

Dynamic Facilitation seminars
www.tobe.net

Dynamic Facilitation seminars empower participants to a new level of facilitative competence... helping others address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, so that they achieve breakthrough results. Dynamic Facilitation generates a higher level of thinking than normally happens in meetings - not decision-making but "choice-creating." Better results are achieved, people grow personally, trust develops and there is enthusiastic commitment to resulting decisions. People learn how to bring out the best in others ... and in themselves … in all kinds of meetings and in all life situations.

Open Space Technology
www.openspaceworld.org

Open Space Technology enables all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. In Open Space meetings, events and organizations, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance, such as: What is the strategy, group, organization or community that all stakeholders can support and work together to create? The common result is a powerful, effective connecting and strengthening of what's already happening in the organization: planning and action, learning and doing, passion and responsibility, participation and performance.

Conversation-Matters
www.conversation-matters.com

Conversation-Matters site offers multiple resources to enhance conversation: self-tests, articles, a book list, links to other sites, free weekly ezine. National holiday, "Better Conversation Week" with related resources to support quality family conversations. Self-help group program, "Conversation Coaching Circles" launches in fall 2006.

Institute of Cultural Affairs
www.ica-international.org

The aim of the Institute of Cultural Affairs is to develop and implement methods of individual, community and organizational development. ICA activities include community meeting facilitation, educational research and training, organizational transformation, youth and women's programmes, sustainable rural development symposia and projects, leadership training, personal development workshops, strategic planning seminars, conference facilitation, documentation and evaluation.