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 John Inman on -
Ria as I think about your question, I am not sure that the quesitons need to be segmented. It seems that pwerful questions that any one of us could embed in a cafe would be helpful. In other words by using the cafe process, maybe we can bring forth the learning and healing around those important questions. Then, you are most correct, we need to explore how to move TWC forward to make an even larger impact on our world. So maybe both. Thank you for your thoughtful question.
John
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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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The figures presented in the clip - shift happens - are awesome. If we are now exhausting some of the world's resources, and destroying others in a desperate attempt to provide enough substitutes, how are all those children just born going to handle the world in future. So, the main question is:-
What is our responsibility to this ever more crowded planet?
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Permalink Reply by John Inman on
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Nice Tess. Yes a good question to build a cafe conversation on.
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Hello Elke,
I am very interested in what you have to say. You see the huge increase in information available as inevitable. I don't see it like that. While the all knowing, fast thinking computer is a possibility, it depends on what humans decide.
So questions such as: 'Do we have the energy available to support the creation and running of such a machine? and 'Is it beneficial to have a great computer which tells us what to do? ' must be answered. Because, however good it's thinking a computer cannot make moral judgements. So, if it were to decide that the only effective way for the human race to continue to live on this planet was to kill half the children, or make Euthanasia compulsory at 40 yrs, or kill all the wildlife we don't use as a food resource, so that we can make our resources last longer, how would we deal with that as human beings?
We have always been afraid of being taken over by a greater intelligence, for very good reasons. Yet we now have the possibility of creating it. I find this quite frightening. Your thoughts about speeds of human development and maturity are very interesting, but it is difficult to see how it could be measured.
I think that has to be all for now. This is a very big question indeed.
Not very happily inspired. Tess
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Permalink Reply by John Inman on
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Ulrich, we are making headway. The essence of TWC process is to address those questions that are not to be answered through a Goggle search. They involve the human and world condition. They are philosophical and at the same time applicable to drive action. We need to be in conversation as humans to answer these questions and TWC process allows us to engage multi learning modalities, ways of knowing, and backgrounds to enrich the outcomes.
John
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Permalink Reply by John Inman on
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Ulrich, yes questions are the key to the kingdom so to speak. Communities rise and fall on the power of the question asked. This is a wonderful idea. As I frame in my mind your question, I am asking, What questions if asked as the foundation for a cafe conversation, will engage participants to action to help heal this world?
Questions that I am specifically interested in as I mentioned to you before are those that if researched will help move TWC process more into the mainstream of conversational practice so that TWC can create a bigger impact in helping heal the world. This will help me frame my research question for my education which is important to me. So questions for this group might be:
How do we quickly build communities of practice that are using TWC as an intervention to build community, trust, learning, understanding, and healing?
How do we build collaboration between disparate cafe practitioners who are focused on their own practice and have little time for collaboration?
In what settings will TWC process yield the highest impact on creating social and ecological justice?
Where is the greatest need for TWC as we survey the world and the challenges we face?
With whom can we partner to create the biggest impact? Scharmer, Isaacs, Senge, Wheatley? Who else and where are the opportunities and how can we as researchers and practitioners step in to help build those partnerships?
It is my view that acting alone we stay weak as a movement, but together we can create world change.
These are but a few of the questions on my mind.
John
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Hello John,
I am a newcomer to this movement, as I have been invited to join two local discussions with a group which has now closed down. I am disappointed in this, and would like to see more possibilities for people to discuss important issues. However, I agree with you that this cafe could easily become a 'talking shop' - an English phrase for a group which talks but does or achieves nothing.
One way in which this cafe could be more connected would be to encourage members to let others know about actions they are taking part in, particularly if they are already global, or could become so if other cafe members and groups in other areas decided to take part too. An example which is very important is the 350 movement, which is about giving a strong message to the forthcoming Copenhagen Conference, due to take place in December, at which representatives of world nations will try to reach decisions about how to deal with climate change. 350 is a very important number, as it is the amount of carbon parts per million needed for the earth to stay alive. We are currently exceeding it. But the website, 350.org is what people need to know about so they can join in and make the message stronger. TessThis sort of action I feel is an ideal way for the cafe to make real differences.
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Permalink Reply by John Inman on
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Tess what a wonderful idea. So it sounds like we need a conversation created specifically to share projects that people are working on to help gain visibility for the work and help build our community. I am going to ask Amy if she would suggest a format for just such a group. Thank you so much and I hope your week is a beautiful one.
John
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