Ask Dr. Miller: What is The World Cafe

Comment

Comment by Tarit Kumar Datta Gupta on September 24, 2010 at 1:54am

24 September 2010

Dr. Miller, I am really fortunate to become the member of The World Cafe Community encountering many prominent personalities in development. It is a pleasure for me to go through your explanation which is really learning lesson for me. I have also the pleasure to go through Victor's comment and both yours one and that of Victor are relevant to my profession.

However, to my understanding from my experiences Appreciative Inquiry permits the researcher to use one's own imagination with well depth insights into the issue under discussion and forces the researcher to further search innovations using his latent knowledge in the frame of mind, approach and attitude toward the issue concerned. In view of my stated understanding I understand what Victor says open ended inquiry, I call it and I find also many developmental practitioners call the same as unstructured discussion or inquiry. It leaves the space wider and wider for the researcher to enter into discussion, and when the discussions become lively it drags the discussion to enter into more and more deep. But the researcher shall not fail to control the discussion. One such experience that I have is in around 1993 while I was conducting a study using open-ended checklists on the movement of landless in 'char areas' (river alluvial) the discussion started with a single respondent, continued all the day, entered into night and was forced to end because of thunder storm. However, usually this type of AI is used in investigation to bring the qualitative information from the community. But I understand AI instead of being limited to open-ended or unstructured discussion can also be semi-structured and structured that depends on the researcher and the issue that is being investigated.

Anyway, I am very much happy and glad to access your perception about The World Café in relation to sharing of knowledge but should we limit up to this. To my understanding, the differences in opinion are the creative tensions and are not negative to each other. The World café is the place for sharing each other’s perception in development and is also the place that crystallizes the process of networking the like minded people through sharing their experiences at regular intervals. Thus it invites that instead of limiting to sharing of knowledge fusion styles to follow in synthesizing the experiences from the participants to produce new goods and/or services (deliverables) to the new generations who we would consider to carry forward our mission.

Dr. Miller, and Victor I am very much happy to enter into conversation as well as I am also very much sorry to take much of your valuable time. Hope to come back to you again.

Thanking you once again and with very best of regards

Sincerely and honestly yours

tarit

Comment by Emmett Miller on August 9, 2010 at 11:45am

Inquiry is an excellent name for it. i often use "appreciative inquiry," although i am not certain that my use entirely accords with those who discuss "Appreciative Inquiry" (the AI group at Case Western says "Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the “unconditional positive question” often-involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design. AI seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities."
thanks for you interest and comment.
em

Comment by Viktor on August 9, 2010 at 4:53am

Great explanation Dr Miller.

Would it be useful to name this methodology?
In my experience this is called open ended Inquiry or just INQUiRY and is super powerful tool for exploration, learning, knowledge management and self development. It is also a tool that supports the organic systemic leadership within a system or community of people.

Thanks again