Lessons learned from training on "World Café" method at an International Organization

Nadejda Loumbeva, Sophie Treinen, Marco Piazza, Stefka Kaloyanova, Julie MacKenzie, and myself recently organised training session at our organization on World Café method. The training sessions are part of the follow-up to the Share Fair, and especially to the extremely high demand for training in knowledge sharing tools and methods.

World Café is a face-to-face participatory method which can be used to share tacit and explicit knowledge within groups and teams. It can help facilitate learning and gain a collective understanding of an issue through conversation. It can be an effective vehicle for opening up discussions that lead to solutions. The purpose of the training sessions on World Café was to:

• Show participants how World Cafés can be used as part of face-t0-face meetings and workshops to address and solve specific problems and challenges.
• Help participants understand the fundamental principles and benefits of the World Café process.

By the end of the session participants were expected to understand how to run World Cafés and identify opportunities to integrate World Cafés in the events they organize.

The methodology used for the 2 hour session is as follows:

1. Introduction (10 mins)

• Link to Share Fair
• Self introduction of Presenters/Participants
  

2. Theory (10 mins)

• Present basics of World Café.
• Give a brief introduction of the session. What is expected, what will be shown and what will NOT be covered.
  

3. Hands-on (80 mins)

• Divide into groups and discuss around specific questions. (5 mins)
• Rotate groups after 20 mins, 15 mins, 15 mins.
• Summarise the outputs (25 mins)
  

4. Debrief (20 mins)

• Discuss how the method worked? Didn’t work? How and when could it be applied? specifically within the context of FAO.
  

The idea behind this break-down is that participants learn the method by actually participating in a World Café. This learning by doing approach is extremely helpful as it increases the understanding of and modalities for conducting World Cafés. During the two sessions conducted so far the following questions were asked during the hands-on session.

Session 1:

1. Do you think there is a need for knowledge sharing related activities in your organization and why?
2. In your experience, what are the key enablers and deterrents to knowledge sharing in your organization? Do you have examples of activities which have worked?
3. What knowledge sharing activities should be part of your organization's strategy in the next 2 years to help you in your daily work?
   

Session 2:

1. How "green" do you think your current workplace is and where could we improve?
2. Do you think there is a need for a "greening" strategy? Who should it involve and what should be its main targets?
3. How would you like to be informed and kept up-to-date on ways to "go green"?

Lessons Learned

Method

• Because these kinds of methods are not so commonly used, the training sessions in World Café have provided the participants with an opportunity to get to know new colleagues and see that there can be interactive and participatory ways of communication without necessarily having to constantly revert to Power Points! Participants felt that it was amazing and refreshing; it gave them an opportunity to be creative. The learning by doing allowed participants to see how these methods can be used in different contexts such as to find solutions, reach a shared understanding of issues common to a team/group/etc. Many participants observed that the World Café method could be used to start a workshop as it allows people to be at ease with one another. It can be seen as a form of speed dating technique.
  

Organization

• Giving out information about the World Café (1 page flyer) was a good idea. It should/could also be sent out to everyone attending the day before. As many participants didn't know each other, having name tags for participants was a good idea. We could see that the facilitators had an important role in keeping the session lively and fun!

The major problems and how they were addressed

Participants

• The number of participants should be kept as close to 25 as possible with 5 to 6 persons maximum per table. (This as per what the room allowed us to do, as well as the couple of hours allocated to the training). In the first session, we had too many participants and thus it was too noisy in the room. Also, if there are too many people at a table, not everyone has an opportunity to participate and join the conversation.
  

Theory

• It is important to explain the theoretic concepts behind World Café (roles of participants, set-up of the room, etc.). In the second session, this was coupled with a one-page hand-out on World Café.
• We realised that we should perhaps be more clear on the roles of the hosts (i.e., they stick to their tables, at all times) and how questions get asked during the debriefing, as well as how time gets allocated to them to quickly summarise the main points. Aiming for more interaction among the participants and not just among the hosts during the 'reporting back' (i.e., debriefing) phase is good, however keeping in mind the special role of the hosts (see below).
  

Hands-on session

• The questions were sometimes double-barrelled and so maybe not so clear to some participants.
• One suggested alternative to the option of asking 3 questions is as follows:

  make the group circulate and contribute in all tables with the same question. In my case when I summarize what the previous group discussed, I felt that people wanted to contribute and discuss a bit more as it was a new group on the same question; however we couldn't because we suppose to discuss the new question. My previous experience with world café (used another name: panel) were to have three questions in each table and the group circulate and give their contribution, in this way everybody would contribute to the three questions but with different perspective. I would be happy to try this model in a future session of the world café.

Application within International Organizations

• We thought we should spend more time discussing applications of the approach to work people are doing, already, and the organization. This could be done by giving 2 minutes to the participants to discuss the application of the method in the context of the organization before the final debriefing on method.
• At the very beginning, we could see we should state clearly that this training is part of a series of trainings on knowledge sharing methods and tools, focusing on its relation to the Share Fair, rather than just point this out at the end.
  
• Concern was raised that there were not enough rooms to facilitate similar events. The lack of infrastructure and resources (facilitators) are an issue which needs to be addressed.
  

Reporting (Content)

• The approach used during the two training sessions on World Café has been to ask the hosts to summarise the main points. Another option could be to ask everyone to summarise together in order to enable more participation. Then the hosts could be asked whether there's been anything not mentioned in the points that are brought up.
• There was too little time assigned for summary at the end of the two World Café trainings we’ve conducted so far. This should be at least 15 – 20 mins in future similar sessions.
  

Facilitation

• It is important to keep the informality and the spirit of the session.
• In both sessions, we were too many facilitators. Two would have been enough with clear understanding between them of their roles.
  

In summary
Doing only a couple of trainings in World Café has shown a lot of interest in the method and demand for practicing it in order to learn it and about it, then apply it to the work. This is why we intend to organize more trainings on World Café in the near future.

Do you use World Café method in your organization? What have been your lessons learned? Have you used it to discuss highly technical issues (we used it to discuss more generic topics like knowledge sharing and greening)? Do you think it can be used in more formal meetings?

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Nadejda Loumbeva and Sophie Treinen for their co-facilitation of the event as well as useful feedback on the contents of this post!

Yet another introduction to microblogging..

You either love it, hate it or haven’t heard about it - yet. In the last year Microblogging has suddenly become incredibly popular. Microblogging is a form of blogging (which is keeping an on-line journal) where every post is limited to a single sentence (usually restricted to 140 characters). It is used for posting thoughts, ideas, questions, answers, statements and links on what you are working on, where you are or simply a way to express yourself. Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace, Xing and Orkut have their own microblogging features, commonly known as "status updates". However, some of the most commonly used microblogging tools are Twitter, Yammer and Jaiku.

The main advantage of microblogging is that it’s quick to create posts and can potentially reach a massive audience. Email on the other hand, is slow and lengthy to compose and the audience size is limited. Unlike email and voice calls, it is up to each person to participate, read or ignore microblogging posts. However, remember that whatever you publish on Twitter, and on the Internet, Google will remember it!

We recently did a training on microblogging and its use for use within my organization. The training was co-organised by @neoluk, @mariagraziab, @RomoloTassone, @mongkolroek, @TheRoadTo and myself (@gaurisalokhe) with live interventions from @rsamii, @aidworkerdaily and @ictkm.

The session started off with @neoluk explaining Twitter. So, what is Twitter, you ask? ;-)

Twitter is a microblogging tool that allows one to send "tweets" or messages of140 characters. These can be sent or received via the Twitter Web site by using one of the numerous desktop applications (TweetDeck, Twhirl, etc.) and with your mobile telephone (short message service -SMS, which is not free).

This was followed by a quick intro of Yammer by @mariagraziab.

Unlike Twitter, Yammer is limited to online networking and information sharing within organizations. Not only can you send messages longer than 140 characters, you can also create groups and send attachments. For example, if you have an @yourcompany.org email address, sign-up to join the growing YOURCOMPANY network on Yammer. Messages can be sent or received via the Yammer site, by using a desktop application, SMSs and email. Yammer is a free service but organizations can pay a monthly per user fee to claim and administer their own network.

Finally, @TheRoadTo showed identi.ca.

Identi.ca is an open-source microblogging platform similar to Twitter. It is based on Laconi.ca, which organizations/individuals can install and use to control their own data and services.

By looking at how microblogging has been used effectively, there are many ways to utilise these microblogging tools:

• Promotion - Twitter is often used to promote articles, blog posts, Web sites. See FAONews, Rome Permanent Representative, WFP Logistics, Friends of WFP.
• Internal/External Communication - Yammer can be used for communicating with a team when members are working in decentralised offices. Twitter, on the other hand, provides the possibility to connect to and engage with like-minded colleagues from other organizations. See E-Agriculture, CGIAR ICT-KM Program.
• Discovery - Twitter and Yammer are excellent ways for discovering upcoming events, new happenings, interesting sites/links and tools, etc. See recent blog posts on Bio fuels, Avian Influenza, Organic Agriculture.
• Quick group problem solving and discussions - with Twitter and Yammer, you can distribute questions to a large group of people. Of course, getting an answer back depends on how many followers you have, that is, people who have subscribed to your posts. See #AgChat.
• Live reporting from events or emerging situations - tools such as Twitter and Yammer have been used to capture unfolding events or situations. A crowd tag is usually created so that people can follow the event in real time. The tag "sharefair09" was created (and publicised) for the Shair Fair at FAO in January. Microblogging has been used in emergency situations and for citizen journalism, such as the current Swine Flu outbreak. It could be used to report locust or avian influenza outbreaks. See Share Fair 2009, Earthquakes.
• Informal research - tools such as TwitterPolls are used to get instant feedback about issues common to your twitter network. See the poll Do you use Twitter? What age group do you fall in? or Are we using confusing terminology when referring to communities?
  

The discussion during the session ranged from issues such as the time needed to monitor and actively take part in microblogging to how partner organizations such as WFP were using them to keep abreast of what was happening in the field where most of their staff are based. One of the questions that was asked during the session was: "What is the difference between emails and microblogs?". To answer/illlustrate this, I created the following table:

[click to enlarge]

Are there any issues here that I missed or mis-interpreted?

You can find more information about microblogging at: http://www.kstoolkit.org/Microblogging/.

Finally, special thanks to @RomoloTassone for his help with some parts of this post!

Running meetings with Open Space Technology Method - A Case Study and lessons learned

Earlier this week, my colleague @nadejdaloumbeva and I (@gaurisalokhe) facilitated an Open Space session. The session was the first, to my knowledge, of its kind in my organization. The session was organised by the climate change study circle, a cross-cutting area of work needing expertise from all parts of the organization. Although there is a more formal structure for ensuring that knowledge sharing takes places between different parts of the organization about climate change, it is primarily at a higher level and also more formal. The CC Study Circle, on the other hand, is informal, cross-cutting and has participants from all levels.

The Open Space started with introductions to the day and its focus on climate change related issues. Once this was done, Nadia and I explained the four principles of Open Space, law of the two feet and started with explaining the process of agenda creation.

To ensure that the 55 or so participants would understand the process of creating the agenda, where they are asked to write topics/issues/ideas that they wish to discuss on a piece of paper and put it on the board, we had planned that two of the organizers of the event will enact and start the process. Once they started, people started coming one by one to post their ideas on the agenda. During this process, there was also discussion about overlapping topics and possible merging of sessions. This was then carried into negotiation phase which allowed participants to reorganise the agenda further. The negotiation process is crucial because it helps clarify the real issue and understand better the idea of the convener in calling for that session.

At the end of the day, we did a quick debrief on the outcomes of the day as well as the thoughts of the participants on the new, informal process.

Here are some of the key lessons learned in terms of what worked well.

• Organization: The event was well organised and kept flexible, in the spirit of informality of the method, so that participants could decide at last moment if they wish to participate. Everyone across the organization was well informed ahead of time and participants were sent an introductory flyer on how an open space works.
• Agenda: The process of agenda creation went in a very positive manner with participants actively contributing broad variety of important topics. One the agenda was relatively final, it was typed out and handed out to participants. This worked extremely well!
• Documentation of outputs: The outputs were all documented using a closed Google Blog.
• Method: The participants appreciated the opportunity to meet other colleagues from across the organization working on same or similar issues. The external participants benefited even because they could meet large number of people working on climate change from different aspects.
  

What could be improved for next time?

• Organization: The participants were asked to prepare their questions/topics for the open space ahead of time, however, this may not have worked well enough due to lack of knowledge about the method (and how it would require them to actively participate in agenda creation process). Additionally, because the event was located in a room where organisers were not allowed to bring any food, there were no coffee breaks. This is something that is critical to ensure that the conversations continue in an informal format outside the sessions and that people build connections.
  
• Agenda: The participants felt that they did not have enough time to negotiate the topics. As negotiation is an important step in using OS methodology, it should be allocated sufficient time. Additionally, some of the topics were grouped together in haste, without really understanding the clear overlaps in the topics. This resulted in sessions with more than one convener and time being spent on trying to figure out the common thread. As there were also too many parallel sessions, the participants sometimes were spread too thin. It might be useful in the future to aim for a group size of at least 6-8 per session.
• Documentation of outputs: Inserting reports in a blog took a lot of time because half of the reports were delivered in handwritten format due to lack of sufficient laptops. In future similar sessions, participants should be asked to bring their laptops or it should be provided in each room to ensure timely and efficient recording of results. One idea for next session could be to use Wikis which can be collaboratively edited by multiple people, further distributing the task of reporting.
• Process: Some sessions were well facilitated, others were not. It is important to brief the conveners before breaking out about their role. Conveners should also be asked to either facilitate or report and not try to do both! If the convener wants to facilitate, s/he should ask for a volunteer reporter.
• Method: Some participants felt that although the method was informal, the reporting of the method was very formalized (a template was provided to capture future action items, who will work on them, by when they will be delivered, etc.).
  

For me, it was a great experience as it showed me that there is an opportunity for events of this nature in my organization. The beauty of this method to me is the self-organizing nature of the agenda and the sessions. With a very broad theme like climate change, this method is fluid and easily extensible wherein participants can modify the agenda throughout the day so that they can make the best of the event without being bound to pre-cooked agenda.

I would like to thank the climate change study circle organisers, Claudia Hiepe and Marja Liisa TapioBistrom, for inviting me and allowing me to be part of this exciting experience and development! The event ended on a positive note, I hope this is just the start!