Hosting Conversations about Questions that Matter
Question of the Month
Hi all,
I am passionate about powerful questions, and I have been thinking if we could organize a monthly contest in this online community: The Question of the Month.
This is the idea:
We contribute the questions that are most important to us and share them somewhere in here. We collect the questions for a month, then leave the community some days to rate the questions, and we can find out and publish the topfive questions every month.
Could that be a way to monitor what we are caring about? Could that be a way to make this community visible to itself? Not to say to explore the face of this (new?) community ...
Would you be curious to find out the best questions for the world? And then share it with the world ... and create conversation and coordinated action to inquire how to best solve them ...
What would be the best questions to guide the ratings?
Please share you resonance and build on this idea. If you have any ideas how we could implement this, please share your thoughts. There might be some statistic tools somewhere in cyberspace that could be used.
I am completely overwhelmed by the activity in this Now Online Community! So I am listening forward to the resonance this idea might create.
I have hosted a World Café last year on the topic of the moralisation of markets. In this café we have explored and collected »questions that should be answered in order to take wise decisions in respect to the moralisation of markets«. Don't ask me what the moralisation of market means (I never understood it – it was the topic of the conference where the café was a central communication tool), that is why the question was so complicated. 120 participants produced many questions, we made a collective rating, and we came out with a top ten list. If your enter TWCBayreuth as a search term, you'll see the graphic recordings and some impressions of the café. Some of the questions I have been touched most was: Who makes moral? Do we need a global moral for a global market? Can we afford moral?
So again: What are the questions that matter most for you?
I am passionate about powerful questions, and I have been thinking if we could organize a monthly contest in this online community: The Question of the Month.
This is the idea:
We contribute the questions that are most important to us and share them somewhere in here. We collect the questions for a month, then leave the community some days to rate the questions, and we can find out and publish the topfive questions every month.
Could that be a way to monitor what we are caring about? Could that be a way to make this community visible to itself? Not to say to explore the face of this (new?) community ...
Would you be curious to find out the best questions for the world? And then share it with the world ... and create conversation and coordinated action to inquire how to best solve them ...
What would be the best questions to guide the ratings?
Please share you resonance and build on this idea. If you have any ideas how we could implement this, please share your thoughts. There might be some statistic tools somewhere in cyberspace that could be used.
I am completely overwhelmed by the activity in this Now Online Community! So I am listening forward to the resonance this idea might create.
I have hosted a World Café last year on the topic of the moralisation of markets. In this café we have explored and collected »questions that should be answered in order to take wise decisions in respect to the moralisation of markets«. Don't ask me what the moralisation of market means (I never understood it – it was the topic of the conference where the café was a central communication tool), that is why the question was so complicated. 120 participants produced many questions, we made a collective rating, and we came out with a top ten list. If your enter TWCBayreuth as a search term, you'll see the graphic recordings and some impressions of the café. Some of the questions I have been touched most was: Who makes moral? Do we need a global moral for a global market? Can we afford moral?
So again: What are the questions that matter most for you?
Replies to This Conversation
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Permalink Reply by Ria Baeck on -
Great idea! But I do have some questions... what is the framework, the context for 'the questions that matter most'? Questions for the World Café community? Questions for the world/Earth?
Only when I know the context that I can start thinking, sensing into the questions...
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Permalink Reply by Ulrich Soeder on -
Hi Ria,
the first »qualitative« round of looking for good questions would be exactly this: How do we set up a meaningful frame for the question of the month? How should this question be framed?
For me this online community is an intersting experiment: Will we be able to create shared rules of conduct or activity? One example to test this could be: Can we create meaningful rules together for searching for great questions?
What would matter most for you?
If I have a question like:
»How can I host the best World Cafés for the world?«
Is this question about the World Café method, the World Café community, or about the planet? Or all at once?
My personal preference would be to leave as much space as possible ... And still have some clear intention.
I could imagine that great conversations develop around sharing the background of the questions: Why does this question matters to you most? We will see if there is enough trust to share.
Ria, what would be a context that would inspire you to start sensing into the questions?
Cheers, Ulrich
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Permalink Reply by Martine on -
Hello Ulrich,
I just wrote an introduction, mentioning my fascination for questions. And Juanta replied and told me about the conversation you want to start.
I love the idea of collecting powerful questions. Maybe we could group them by topic, to give a context.
About the rating. I don't know how the technology works, but I've seen a lot of sites where people can vote, can rate,...
Personally I believe powerful questions go right to the heart...and that could be the rating. And then we can add ' Why does this question matters to you most?' like Ria suggested.
Kind regards
Martine
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Permalink Reply by Ulrich Soeder on
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Hello Martine,
do we need a context to start collecting questions?
Or could we start with questions and then see in which context they fit in?
The broadest contexts I can think of would be body, soul and spirit. Or nature, culture and spirit. Or prepersonal / personal / transpersonal.
Body / nature would address the worlds of things, soul / culture the individual and social worlds, spirit would address the worlds of meaning and the foundations that make communication possible.
Would these categories really help in starting to look out for and share great questions?
Maybe we have to start from the other end:
There are no stupid questions.
There are only stupid answers.
Do you know the »shift happens / did you know?« video clip?
There have been 31 Billion searches on google every month in 2008! To whom where these questions addressed B.G. (before Google)?
And what kind of questions cannot be answered by Google?
I think we should start to share great questions and see if there is resonance.
Here are some of my alltime favorites:
Where do I come from/ where do we come from?
Where do we go?
Why am I here?
With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?
With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?
(these are borrowed from Daniel Quinn, Ishmael)
Woody Allen might add:
In the meantime, where do I get the best pasta?
What are questions you like? Let's get started.
Cheers, Ulrich
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