My World Cafe experience

World Cafe is a technique or process for having large group discussions which are emerging and not too controlled. It's based on the fact that if you create the right environment that useful discussion will be created. What is this environment like? It is like being in a nice cozy cafe, small round tables, candle light and people who are passionately about their subject. My experience with the World Café during our Communication Management class at UNVA was very similar. Although we did not have a coup of freshly brewed coffer and candles were not lit; discussion evolved from basic ideas to a highly complex thoughts.

We tried to apply the 7 principles of Wolrd Café: “set the context", "create hospitable space", "explore questions that matter", "encourage everyone’s contribution", "cross-pollinate and connect diverse perspectives", "listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions", "harvest and share collective discoveries". Using these principles we came up with some pretty interesting thoughts on the subject of “What might a great MBA experience look like”.

I like World Cafe and the ideas behind it. Personally, I think the World Café is a great tool can be used to solve problems and sparkle new ideas in many fields of interest. It seems to be a good tool to be used for brainstorming sessions in business environment but it’s more than that.