Introductions

Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Wilson Moura on September 10, 2009 at 4:45am

Hi everybody,
My name is Wilson Moura from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I did study Mechanical Engineering and Total Quality Management and I do work as a Human Development Consultant as well as a Meditation Teacher. I have lived in Lille, France, for 4 years during the 90's and had the wonderful opportunity to travel and make business with Asia since that time. I am looking forward to meeting new friends from this magnificent tool called "World Cafe Community".

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Permalink Reply by John Inman on September 10, 2009 at 6:23am

Wilson I am a fellow traveler and am finding the people in this community kind and engaging. I am confident that you will enjoy our conversations as we are all here to learn, grow, and contribute together. I look forward to learning more about what you do and how I can support your work.

John

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Permalink Reply by Wilson Moura on September 12, 2009 at 5:32am

Dear John,
Thank you for your kind reply.
I do organize workshops concerning the following subjets:
- Global Responsibility Leadership
- Excellence in Quality of Life
- Emotional & Social Intelligence
- The Science of Meditation
All the contents are available at http://www.fatorzen.com but unfortunatelly I did not translate into english yet.
What about you, my dear new friend. Where do you live? Where have you been?
Wilson

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Permalink Reply by John Inman on September 12, 2009 at 4:12pm

Wilson I live in Central Oregon in the small town of Redmond, about 25,000 people. My current role is Leadership Development Manager for T-Mobile USA. My work is all about performance consulting and coaching. My personal avocation is dialogic practices. I am a process facilitator and love conversational work. I am quite Freireian in my workas curiosity and questioning are core to what I do and mentor my leaders to do. I love your focus on quality of life, emotional and social intelligence, global responsiblity leadership and meditation. What wonderful work.

In fact today I am in Santa Barbara Calif starting my doctoral program in human and organization systems with the dream of working internationally doing world cafe work and other dialogic work to help heal this world of ours. All of your core areas are of extreme importance and interest to me so I would love to keep in touch.

Your are welcome to visit my blog (have not posted in a few months by the way) at www.learning-conversations.blogspot.com and my web site at www.wetherhaven.com. I netwok and am on linkedin and ecademy. Many more sites as well. I always can be found with the call name wetherhaven. You will have to visit my web site to see why that name. I am the only one in the world. Hummm.

I wish you the best my friend.

John

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Permalink Reply by Marty Jacobs on September 25, 2009 at 12:15pm

Hi everyone,

My name is Marty Jacobs, and I live and work in East Thetford, VT, where the fall colors are just starting to come in. My consulting business, Systems In Sync, serves nonprofits, education, and government applying a systems thinking perspective. My focus areas are strategic planning, board governance, organization development, and community and civic engagement.

I first heard about the World Cafe in 2006, and I have been an avid fan of the model ever since. I have used it in a number of projects, but there are two that stand out for me. The first was a consultation with a state council that addresses issues for the developmentally disabled. The council includes developmentally disabled members who did not always feel that their voices were heard. I introduced the council to the idea of using the World Cafe to restructure their meetings, and after the first trial, one of the disabled members turned to me and said it was the first time he really felt heard at the meetings. I could have hugged him!

The second example I want to share is when I worked with a school district that was in conflict with its neighbors over the use of their artificial turf field. After designing a plan with a team of school and town officials, we launched a series of meetings, the first one of which was a World Cafe. Although there were times when emotions ran high, the World Cafe model helped set the tone and expectations and over the course of about three months, the school and neighbors were able to come to a mutual understanding. I was so pleased with the success of this particular project that I wrote it up as an article that was recently published in the American School Board Journal July 2009 issue. If you're interested in the details, I have a pdf of the article posted on my website at http://www.systemsinsync.com/publications.htm. The title is "The Juggling Act."

As a sole practitioner, I am looking forward to using this community as a way to connect with colleagues and share our successes and learnings. I am particularly interested in learning how practitioners are able to engage communities. I have found that many communities and organizations alike will sometimes balk at the time commitment and potential cost of a World Cafe. I am hopeful that this summer's fiasco with the Town Hall Meetings for healthcare reform will help more people see that there is a better way to creating dialogue and ultimately sustainable solutions.

Marty

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Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on September 25, 2009 at 7:19pm

Welcome, Marty!

What a juicy introduction! You had me in the first sentence as I am a passionate lover of Vermont, and I know this time of year is incredible there. :-)

Thanks so much for those stories - I hope you will share your article in the "Cybrary" category of the conversations here - it's a place where we share resources like this that might be of interest or help to others. I'd also really encourage you to share your stories in the StoryNet because they are exactly the kinds of things we learn from and help us grow as individual hosts and as a community. How wonderful to have you here!

Warmly,

Amy

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Permalink Reply by Marty Jacobs on September 27, 2009 at 7:58am

Hi Amy,

I would love to share that article here, but ASBJ owns the copyright and they only gave me permission to post it on my website. However, I have other articles of which I own the copyright and will be happy to share them here. I'll also make a note to share my stories on the StoryNet. Thanks for those suggestions. I still feel like I'm learning my way around this site.

Best,

Marty

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Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on September 27, 2009 at 9:06am

Marty,

I understand perfectly about the copyright. What I meant to suggest was that you add the information - in this case a link is great - to the Cybrary so that others can find it (things like this placed in a conversation will only be generally accessible for those looking in the conversation itself, whereas the Cybrary holds all our shared resources).

So you'd just "add a conversation" via the link at the top of this page, and fill it out as usual, being sure to choose "Cybrary" as the category (and fill out the relevant "tags" or keywords. Let me know by personal message if you run into trouble or need help (or check the FAQs). I'm more than happy to support you, or anyone who needs help "learning their way around this site". It's great to have you here!

Amy

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Permalink Reply by Marty Jacobs on September 27, 2009 at 2:41pm

Thanks, Amy. That was helpful!

Marty

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Permalink Reply by Bern Fourie on October 12, 2009 at 7:00am

Hi there,

I am Bern. I'm fm the Western Cape in South Africa.
Iam very new to the site and also the concept of The World Cafe.
I have subscribed to the World Cafe newsletter and signed up on the site.
I work within an organisation called LifeLIne. It's a NGO that offers a range of services inclu. free counselling services in all areas as well as community development through empowerment and Talking Circles.

We have only just become active as far as the talking circles are concerned. we basically work on the basis of community members with silmilar interests and concerns get together to discuss and be participatory members of the discussion.

However i would like to know more about world cafe, not just how everything works but also the legalities involved. For example - are we allowed to have our talking circles marketed under the name and logo of The World Cafe?

I would really appreciate it if any1 could assistI would also like to know if there is any reading matter on getting these discussions under way and sum literature explaining exactly waht The World Cafe is.

I know I have a lot to learn but I am more than willing and would really like to help others start this life changing course. I truly believe we can change our countries through methods used by The World Cafe.
The communities in our areas have very few resources and are very impoverished. I believe that with the right guidence we will be able to all join together and put into place community plans to improve the places we live in.

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Permalink Reply by juanita brown on October 12, 2009 at 12:54pm

Hi and welcome!
You might want to get our book, The World Cafe: Shaping our Futures Through Conversations that Matter as well as going onto the direct World Cafe website www.theworldcafe.com where there are a lot of resources and articles.

We are asking people not to use the World Cafe name or logo for marketing purposes so people don't get confused, for example, in considering traditional talking circles to be World Cafe dialogues which have a very specific set of design principles--so we'd appreciate your honoring that request.

However, feel free to use materials from our website and on this on-line community as well as from the book with appropriate credit to either the authors or the World Cafe Community Foundation.

We wish you every luck as you begin your journey in learning how the World Cafe can be of support for your efforts and we'd love to hear your stories!

With warm regards,
Juanita Brown
Co-Founder, The World Cafe

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Permalink Reply by Janet Buck on October 13, 2009 at 7:09am

Juanita,

I attended your Maestro Month call with Nicole last week. I just wanted to express my gratitude - it was fabulous. Through this, I joined the community. I was initially interested in the call for the use of the Maestro Technology for group process. But I immediately was drawn into the content and the participation in the discussion. I have reflected on it several times since then and know it has changed how I view intergenerational relations and trust that my behavior has changed as well. I guess that is the power of good process!

To the community - I live in Laguna Beach, CA and am a co-principal in a collaborative consulting company, Emergent Success. I run the business aspects of the company and my background is in finance and technology. I am a "convert" to collaborative group processes and still get excited when I see the power in them. I am passionate about people, process and emerging trends. I am looking forward in learning more from all of you.

Best,
Janet

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