Knowledge Cafe or World Cafe Workshop

with Workshop Facilitators from Rainmaker

What's a World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe workshop? 

 
 The World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe is a collaborative dialogue process that draws on the collective intelligence of a group, shares knowledge and provides creative solutions to challenging questions.

The environment is set up like a café. (Hence Knowledge Cafe)

People sit in small groups (4 or 5 to a table).

They hold a series of conversational rounds lasting from 20 to 45 minutes centred around one specific question. 

(The Rainmaker Facilitator will spend time with your team to make your questions CLEAN and unambiguous)

At the end of each round, one person remains at each table as the host.
The others travel to separate tables. Table hosts welcome newcomers to their tables and share the essence of that table's conversation so far.

The newcomers relate any conversational threads they are carrying and then the conversation continues, deepening as the round progresses. By providing opportunities for people to move in several rounds of conversations, ideas, questions, and themes begin to link and connect. At the end of the second round, all of the tables or conversation clusters in the room will be cross-pollinated with insights from prior conversations.

In the third round of conversation, people can return to their home (original) tables to synthesize their discoveries, or they may continue travelling to a new table. Sometimes a new question that helps deepen the exploration is posed for the third round of conversation.
After several rounds of conversation, a period of sharing discoveries and insights takes place in a whole group conversation. It is in these larger meeting-style conversations that patterns can be identified, collective knowledge grows, and possibilities for action emerge.
One important aspect of World Café is the equality of all contributions, status and ego have no part to play in World Café. 
Our Workshop Facilitators will encourage these contributions and this equality of input.

Even the quiet people will have their voices heard in our World Cafe workshops

Who are the people who will actually facilitate the World Cafe workshops?

Here is our key World Cafe and Knowldge Cafe facilitator

Allan James: Knowledge Cafe Workshop Facilitator

Allan has facilitated World Cafe and Knowldge Cafe workshops in various parts of the world.
He's facilitated leaders, managers and individual contributors in a range of businesses .

Allan designed and facilitated a conference of 120 managers in Toronto using the “Knowledge Café principles. The client was the internal function responsible for the development of intellectual property within a global consultancy. The objective was to the select five major projects which would be funded and delivered over the upcoming year. The result of the two and a half day event was that the five projects were selected, fleshed out at a high level and project teams were formed from the conference membership.
 
Allan designed and led the facilitation of a meeting of 60 people, comprising the management teams of two organisations about to be merged. The objective was to design the new organisation which included the functions, purposes and organisation structure. This was achieved in two days by people who knew that they might not have a job at the same level in the new organisation.

Allan has also led and co-facilitated many Boards of Directors of Large and Small companies in the UK through Strategic planning exercises  

This has included the telecom, electronics, consulting and IT sectors as well as functional organisations such as HR, Supply Chain and Marketing. He has also worked in the FMCG, Retailing, Telecom and Construction/ Civil Engineering industries.

He has a Master of Science degree in Organisation Consulting and a Diploma in Management Studies.

If this World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe Workshop Facilitation
looks like we could fit your needs…

What should you do now?             You have a number of options

Call us on 0845 652 1955

We are an experienced team
 
We are focused and small in number

We like to keep busy

Do you want to be first in the queue?

Then this is your best option

Take the Rainmaker Challenge

• Email us info@rainmaker-coaching.co.uk
• Describe your situation & the issues that you face in 5 lines or less
                                                          That's the challenge!
• We will respond back with 2 suggestions as fast as we can 

Take up our no obligation, completely free “Get to know us ” offer

Email us put “World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe” in your subject line add your contact details   

We will arrange an "All Ears" meeting to  get an understanding of your needs
We'll write up our initial recommendations
You will learn how we would run a World Cafe or Knowledge Cafe based workshop for you
You can go ahead with our recommendations or use them with other suppliers
Our promise is that you’ll have 2 useful and free suggestions from us