Word’s getting around. Canada’s paper of record, the Globe & Mail, ran a wonderful piece about Conversation Week today by Fiona Morrow, who attended a conversation this Tuesday at a cafe in Vancouver. Morrow writes:
The question chosen for discussion is “What kind of leadership does the world need now?” We pass around a smooth grey stone (the “talking piece”) to indicate whose turn it is to speak.
Kate Dugas, community manager for ChangeEverything.ca, struggles with the concept of leadership. “My parents were both journalists and leadership became a scary word - it was all about political backstabbing bastards.” Host Laura MacKay talks about her work in “backcasting” at the Natural Step Canada, a Canadian non-profit, a process by which you work backward from the desirable future to create a sustainable plan in which to achieve it. In those terms, she suggests, we are all leaders. Community development planner Lama Mugabo is a Rwandan who has lived in Canada for almost three decades. “I think of [Nelson] Mandela and how he talked about leading from behind,” he says.
We’ve always said Conversation Week is a grand experiment. Yesterday, a group of people tested out the Conversation Cafe process in the virtual world Second Life. Check out these snapshots, taken by a participant who goes by the name ~C4Chaos, who blogged about the experience here.
We’re looking forward to more reports from participants, particularly on how well the Conversation Cafe process transfers into this virtual world where, even though users are represented by humanoid avatars and some can chat by voice, most communication happens in the form of live text chat.
Special thanks to Vivienne Cassavetes for hosting this dialogue at her Peacemaker Institute on Second Life’s Commonwealth Islands.
Vivienne will host one more Conversation Week dialogue tomorrow (Friday) at noon SLT (that’s Second Life Time; same as US Pacific time). If you would like to join tomorrow’s event, please RSVP here.
These Conversation Week dialogues are just the beginning. After this week, Vivienne will be hosting ongoing Conversation Cafes at the Peacemaker Institute every Wednesday. Join the group “Conversation Cafe” in SL for updates and weekly questions.
Voting for this year’s Top Ten Questions is now closed. Please come back on Monday, March 3, when we unveil this exciting list.
If you’ve hosted a Conversation Cafe in the past, or a salon or a dialogue or a Socrates Cafe, help us tell others what the hosting experience is like. Here’s some ways I’ve described it:
A host is curious about what others think, has the courage to ask and the humility to listen.
A host makes community through making safe spaces for conversation.
Over at http://victoriaroserobin.blogspot.com I wrote a longer essay about hosting where I said:
I host conversations - at cafes, in my home, with strangers - because it’s who I am, not what I do. I can’t help it. I am always hosting. I am always inviting others to make meaning with me. I am always asking questions and listening to the answers, always wondering what others think and feel.
Now you. What is hosting to you? What does a host do? Not do? Say? Not say? Feel? Help others imagine what it would be like to host.
Your questions are in and the voting has begun!
Please take 5 minutes now to rate this year’s top 50 questions, and help us pick out the top 10 most important questions in the world today. People around the planet will consider the ones you and others pick during Conversation Week 2008, March 24-30. Please take the survey now.
Once you’ve voted, please send this survey link to others. The more people vote, the more we’ll know truly what the most important questions are.
Two hundred fifty people from every continent save Antarctica submitted 600 questions for review. Brilliant, heartfelt, searching questions. Almost every one of them merited consideration, but we winnowed and combined and came up with the top 50 for you to vote on.
Please vote now at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vZIiOzEV1pL0LV_2f17vLcLQ_3d_3d
Winning questions will be announced March 1, 2008, three weeks before Conversation Week begins.
Talk about herding cats. It’s hard to know if we humans will ever agree on who we are, what we believe, where we are headed and how to get there. But with over 30 significant wars raging globally, a human population topping 6.6 billion and oil, water and other reserves dwindling there are some very important conversations we just need to have. Conversation Week is that one time a year when the table is set for people to talk with strangers and friends about the most important questions in the world today. Of course, who can agree what those questions should be? That’s why we are asking thoughtful people — like you — to suggest potential questions, and asking people who care — like you — to vote on them and then inviting people who can listen and be curious — like you — to host conversations.
Conversation Week began in 2002 to launch the Conversation Cafes in Seattle, Washington. Then, 9-11 was on everyone’s mind. Since then we hosted CWs in 2003, 2007 and now 2008. The questions from last year (with some answers from around the world) are later on this blog. Reports from prior CWs are at www.conversationcafe.org.
Don’t pass up the chance to submit a question before Feburary 12, vote on your top pick questions from February 14-27 and host a conversation during Conversation Week March 24-30.
