čtvrtek 11. října 2007

My experience of World Cafe

The World Café organized in our Management Communication class was a completely new experience for me. After carefully reading the guidelines for crating a World Café I developed certain idea of what to expect, however I had my doubts about the outcome. At first I thought that my assumptions were proven, this was caused by participants getting sidetracked from answering selected questions, however as I understood later this was caused purely by lack of experience and unclear idea of what is the purpose of such session.

The whole situation was a learning process for me and I believe it had the same impact on my classmates. After experiencing the World Café atmosphere I can now conclude that such technique is very useful. It is a tool that enables participants to collectively brainstorm and shape their ideas through discussions while having an advantage of pleasant and intimate atmosphere of a small group. Everybody is welcomed and encouraged to provide their point of view on questions raised. However the whole experience is deeper than that. Not only people participate by providing their point of view but they also learn the point of views expressed by other participants – with their opinions shaped they then move to next table and provide perhaps more valuable opinion. Also the use of drawings provides the possibility for interpretation of such pictures by those who join another table and this also helps to shape their ideas. Until this point the whole technique is good for formulation of opinions however the next steps in which the discussions end and the ideas are collected and visualized – the outcome of the general opinion is clearly presented

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