sharing the learning from stewarding groups

Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by John Inman on December 4, 2011 at 9:08pm

Benjamin, I seem to be in my own world these days. I do not feel drawn into conversation and I wish I were. Many endeavors seem stalled or just at the edge of chaos, I am not sure which. My biggest challenge is to frame my research so that my committee will buy off on it, and that seems far harder than I thought. I appreciate that you reached out, that is a huge step. My group is TWC Fielding research group BTW.

Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on December 6, 2011 at 12:37pm

What a great idea, Benjamin!

I know there are some very active and lively groups here, and I'd love to learn from the successes and challenges of other group hosts.

There are some "gaps" I've noticed in our interest groups - one obvious one being education. There are so many educators among us, and the World Cafe has been used so powerfully in education, that it seems like it would be a natural.

You welcome everyone, Benjamin - what are you noticing about the kind of group that would serve the needs of people coming in to the community these days?

Permalink Reply by Benjamin Aaron Degenhart on December 12, 2011 at 12:07pm

That's true Amy, it really calls for an 'education' group. Who might step up to host it? There are almost 1600 members here who indicated education as the primary focus of their World Café work, quite a potential to tap into i would think :)
 

In terms of gaps i am thinking that a group like "World Cafe in Business" would do justice to the increasing number of people use it in this kind of settings and learning valuable ways of framing it and speaking about it in 'business terminology'.

And maybe something around "Creative Combinations" to collect some ways how to model the World Café into a flow of methodologies and also how to adjust and flavor the The World Café itself in the process?

I created a tagcloud of all profile answers to the question what people would most like to receive from this community as i thought that might inspire thoughts for group-gaps :) What does it make you think of?

Permalink Reply by Raffi Aftandelian on December 13, 2011 at 9:15pm

Benjamin,

thanks for putting this out. My intent in starting the Russian-speaking group was so that people could find this online community and connect with it. I don't imagine right now at least seeing a lot of activity with this group. I've only experienced world cafe a little bit and still don't quite get it, to be honest. That said, i know it takes time to understand a process-- and my wish has been that this approach reach a wider audience, including in the post-Soviet space...

also, i'm less connected to Russia these days since returning to san diego a few years ago...

hope this helps!

Permalink Reply by Raffi Aftandelian on December 13, 2011 at 9:17pm

In other words- i think what's important is that there be a way for russian-speakers interested in TWC to be able to find this online community...having this group listed seems like one strategy for that...perhaps there are other ways of achieving the same thing...

Permalink Reply by Christopher Smerald on February 4, 2012 at 9:40am

Perhaps have a 90 day self guided stocktaking exercise and ask each group to:

A) over 45 days: summarize things they have feel good about having done (with links) and things important to still do, then

B) over the remaining 45 days look at, say, three other groups' "part A" (maybe you can "assign" these for those not quick to self-assign) and give some feedback and suggestions.

 

This may need to be made more 'fun', but you have the basic idea :)