Natural Innovation » world café

World Café at the European Consumer Summit

simone — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:32:41 +0000

Brussels, March 2010

The European Consumer Summit is a multi-stakeholder event in Brussels organised every year by the Health and Consumer Directorate (DG Sanco) of the European Commission. This event used to be, what we would call a ‘classical conference’: with lots of plenary presentations, little opportunities for participants to contribute and networking happening only in the breaks.

The conference was 1.5 days long with ca. 420 participants in total, which were split up in 6 workshops of 35-75 people on topics as diverse as ‘Banking fees: how to ensure transparency and choice?’ to ‘How to improve urban sustainable mobility?’. We were invited host these parallel workshops using the world café method. We designed and facilitated the 6 workshops in collaboration with colleagues form the Art of Hosting network and practitioners from within the European Commission. Each of the workshops had its unique challenging context either through having very polarised stakeholders in the group or being very broad and open. However participants were very enthusiastic about the new approach taken by this more participatory way of working pioneered by the European Commission.

As the regulator of the world’s largest economy, decisions taken by the Commission often have a global impact, improving its engagement with stakeholders is not a minor issue. This was the first time that a more participatory approach was taken in such a large conference with external stakeholders.

Read more about this on the World Cafe online community

Spaces for Social Innovation

simone — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:58:57 +0000

Since 2006 we are actively supporting the Hub Brussels, Hub London, Hub World and other start-up Hubs in Europe and around the world as advisers, community builders, hosts, facilitators of co-creative meetings, strategists, co-founders and members.

The Hub is a social enterprise with the ambition to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising initiatives for a better world. It is a global community of people from every profession, background and culture working at ‘new frontiers’ to tackle the world’s most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges.

The Hub believes that there is no absence of good ideas in the world. The problem is a crisis of access, scale, resources and impact. It felt vital to create places around the world for accessing space, resources, connections, knowledge, experience and investment. There are currently over 20 Hubs on 4 continents and 50 more in the making.

Art of Hosting trainings

admin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:43:48 +0000

Since 2006 we have been calling and co-hosting trainings on the Art of Hosting (AoH) meaningful conversations in Germany, Belgium and the UK.

The Art of Hosting is about engaging the collective intelligence of diverse groups through dialogue that leads to wise solutions and actions for the future.

It is a living pattern, a network of practitioners, as well as a training experience for deepening competency and confidence in hosting group processes in Circle, World Café, Open Space and other forms, that support groups to go from strategic conversations to wise action and systemic change.

It is a response to a world that is becoming increasingly complex and fragmented, where true solutions and innovation lie not in one leader or one viewpoint, but in the bigger picture of our collective intelligence, in the wisdom between us.

To read more about the AoH www.artofhosting.org