World Cafe - A New Way to Engage Big Groups

Have you ever felt marginalized in a big group? Ever felt like the group was so big, your voice hardly mattered?

It's not that uncommon and it can feel like the bigger the group, the more order is needed for it. Let's face it, there are some things you can get from a small group - consensus, engagement, and order, whereas much larger groups can breed chaos. Much worse, even if you have a large group that is working togther, the level of discussion may be shallow. Some people hold back their thoughts, ofters monopolize the conversation.

Enter: The World Cafe

The World Cafe is a new technique used to create engaging big group discussions. This method was created by Juanita Brown and Davis Isaccs in their book "The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations that Matter" (2005). Peter Block goes to discuss the method extensively in his new book "Community" (2010).

A World Cafe is a method in which the large group can optimize with everyone and share thoughts.
It looks a little like this

1. Facilitator puts a large sheet of paper in front of a class with questions. In this example there are 5 questions.
2. The big group lets say, 40 people, distributes into smaller groups in individual areas (let's say 4-5 people in a small group).
3. Each small group will explore and discuss question 1. It's a small group so the level of engagement and discussion will be. high
4. Facilitator asks each group to go around and discuss 1 or 2 thoughts.
5. Each small group disperses, and 10 completely new groups are formed for Question 2.
6. The new group starts by looking at the work that the last small group did, discusses that briefly, and then starts again with their new insights for questions 2.

It may not look that different from small group discussions but it is. The unpredictability of new groups, the new interactions allow for networking, ideas do not get stale. It's fun for the whole group, and can be sustained for some time.

In april, I was able to experience a World Cafe event at the Organizational Development Network. It was a really interesting experience, because when your in it, you realize how each group has it's own short development, and how the ideas processed in that individual group might be different then the group only 5 feet away.

Hopefully more training and development experiences optimize their experience in a WorldCafe, that allows for some facilitation and a lot of peer to peer learning