Well, the fabulous gathering in Tomales Bay is over, but the Stewardship Dialogue has just begun!

Besides the post-Stewardship Dialogue blog posts that will continue to be written here on the Stewardship blog by various authors, which you are warmly encouraged to respond to by ‘commenting’ as you are so called, there is an emergent conversation about the event and discussions about the ongoing stewardship of the World Cafe currently going on in the World Cafe online community. If you have not already registered please go ahead and do so now. Add the vibrancy of your voice to the virtual World Cafe conversation going on globally, 24/7.

Part of the Stewardship event discussion in the online community builds on an astute observation made recently by Finn Voldtofte - that we use the words World Cafe in three different ways: 1) as a unique process, or methodology for discussing questions that matter, 2) as a growing global community of people and organizations who use this methodology, and 3) as a metaphor (’World as Cafe’) for the deeper work of co-creating life-affirming culture through relationship and conversation. There are conversations in this forum that allow you to follow all three of these threads, explore a perspective that takes in the whole, and/or anything else you want to discuss.

Join in and play!

Also - check out the inspiring array of photos from the event that have been uploaded to the World Cafe account on Flickr! We encourage you to set up your own account with them and upload all your World Cafe photographs as well (let us know if you’d like help). Don’t forget to tag them (see below), so that we can all see & share.

Techie Note: Here are some ‘official’ tags we’re using for the World Cafe, so please use them in tagging your own blog posts, Flickr images, Technorati searches, etc.:

All General World Cafe: ‘theworldcafe’
Anything specific to the Tomales Bay event: ‘twcgsd06′

It’s early morning, Sunday, September 3. I sit alone in my little sun porch room overlooking Tomales Bay— 5 minutes drive from the Marconi Center where the World Café Stewardship Dialogue was held. Here is our home.

I am still glowing, still feeling a deep sense of gratitude for and amazement at the mystery of life and of the spirit—both individual and collective spirit and how it moves and unfolds in the service of life.

My mind goes back 40 years—to 1966 when we first drove into Delano, California in our Volkeswagon bus to begin our work with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement…to work with “La Causa.” Our Stewardship gathering held some of that same spirit—the sense of possibility, of hopefulness in the midst of challenge, of fierce but gentle determination, of common purpose, of seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole that was alive and knew its strength…..even in the face of the precipice that we are collectively confronting as a species on this fragile planet.

To dance in the face of darkness, to hold onto each other as friends of the heart, to know that the smallest act, like the acts of local stewardship of this small Bay and the acts that each of you who were here and the many around the globe who were here in spirit are taking into your own lives, families, organizations, and communiities….this is what makes me glad to be alive even in this time of uncertainty and upheaval.

We need each other. What happened here at the Stewardship Dialogue, in my view, was not only about the World Café process or method….although that was present. It was not about the World Café community….even though a fractal of that community was present….rather, it was about the deeper work for which the World Café is but one portal.

It is that work to which I am called….and I feel honored that the World Café has revealed itself to us and others as a doorway (among many others) through which we can, together, find kindreds on the path….and to make that path together by walking on it.

I offer my deep gratitude to those who were able to be here for the Stewardship conversation….and, more importantly, to all of you who have been friends and colleagues around the world for this work over the last decade. Whether or not you were physically present, you were here in spirit and I hope that this blog and the photos of the gathering enable you to know that you are welcome, always, to be a part of what Peggy Holman and our friends from the Open Space world call the “radiant network.”

I am honored to be a steward of one small part of it…..

Fondest regards,

Juanita Brown

One of the MANY highlights of the Global Stewardship Dialogues for me was meeting Edgard Gouveia of Brazil. His open heart and engaging smile quickly made everyone around him feel like an old friend. Throughout our time together at the Marconi Center, Edgard showed us all the importance of purposeful playfulness. On multiple occasions, he led the entire group in song and dance, weaving together story, laughter, fun, and connections — a true master at building a sense of community.

Edgard is deeply focused on facilitating positive social change in the world. I have no doubt that his exuberance, love of life and genuine compassion for his fellow human beings will allow him to continue to accomplish positive, creative change wherever he goes.

See also the Elos Institute workspace hosted on the Berkanna Institute website and the short video clip featuring Edgar (in Portuguese)

After two rounds of intense, little circles - some silent, some with outburst of movement and joy – the third round was what normally is called the break; as Tom put it.
We try to reconvene but conversations are so intense… so much needs till to be shared, appointments to be made, …

Tom: We are here for the world, and for serving the call that speaks to us; although we are now full in our heart of the friendship that is tangible here.
In this circle, we will invite people to stand and speak about what you are feel called to do in stewardship for the World Café. Related to very specific needs, which we talked about in the previous days.

Many, many voices,
many, many plans,
many, many commitments,
many, many people who step forward,
many, many promises,
many, many voices about connecting:
connecting people, generations, ideas,
taking responsibility for certain regions
taking responsibility for the financial situation in the future
and lots more…

then there were little gifts …
saying goodbye in all languages…
and we ended: DANCING! with a little Brazilian flavor!!!

Tuesday morning

We were welcomed this morning in the big circle, the online photo’s shown on the screen. After some practical stuff, gratefulness was shown in many, many ways and to many, many persons.
As this is the anniversary of Katrina hitting New Orleans, Nancy showed us how she worked with art, newspapers, masks around the questions of leadership…

What is NOW in my mind, in my heart, in my body; in between us and around us; and how that influences how stewardship also can be?

No tables this time, small circles forming; on chairs, sitting on the ground… two, three, four, five…

Finn said: We know how to do this! Indeed, we know. Without effort deep conversations start…
and smoothly new circles are forming…

We still have two hours to go and I don’t know if I will find the time to post something more. You will see in a couple of hours!

Monday afternoon
Tom called a conversation around the question: What are minimal, elegant and sufficient next steps for the stewardship? This is not the original wording; Tom was much more precise about it, but anyway you get the sense of what he called a conversation about.

Tom talked about ‘the world café commons’: what are the few things that belong in the commons, that everybody has access to, draw upon, support to…
One kind of thing that can be in the commons is money… if participants were tithing maybe. The commons also contains the purpose and the principles and they permeate the network… Those core memes serving the whole are continuously inquired and renewed. Another thing that the commons might contain is the minimum social structure we need… We are here both into verbs and nouns: things and activities.

Part of the sensing and thinking work that is already done, is written down in a map: eight parts on a wheel: as capacities that the network would need to support:
Core leadership and guidance
Enabling resources and energy to flow: the resource metabolism; how are they coming in and how are they flowing out?
Convening and hosting cafés: what from the perspective of minimal steps, what is needed to hosting cafés?
Spreading the word
Minimum necessary and sufficient infrastructure
Enabling the network to be visible
Fostering partnerships and connections
Developing knowledge and capacities

If these are the capacities, then what are the minimal common conditions for these capacities to thrive?
This is an opportunity for us all to bring our gifts; and to become very concrete!
End of Tom’s words.

What follows is some report of the conversation that came out of that. It is partly my clustering of themes, and partly the clusters as they were talked about later on. You hear now different voices…

We are looking for the minimal common conditions for the community to thrive. If the World Café is not an end to itself, then we need to open, to broaden; to finding ways to join all the other evolutionary forces that are happening. Then we would need to think about scaling up, replicability, …

I think it is time to talk concretely about this community; there is a fear that if we talk about global consciousness it will not be concrete… let’s think small!

Pioneers of Change, Chaordic Commons… all in a fragile state… it seem that we are missing something… what lies under these 8 quadrants…

The community is abstract; I want to focus on the real people… You cannot administer a network, you can only serve it! The eight quadrants are an administer thing. What do the people need; the hosts, the researchers, and other roles… it may be a whole lot simpler and elegant…

Tom again: We can even see it as: “What do I need?” The question was asked to all of us:
What is it that would serve and support me – and all others - as a participant in this network? And what supports the interconnection with other communities?
some moments to reflect on your own, and listen and speak from the silence within.

Later on, a strong voice was hard about: instead of ‘What do I need?’, ‘What can we contribute and what do we need to enable these contributions?’

A lot of ideas, a lot of conversation … too much to capture… a few clusters, highlights as I saw them. Most of these clusters gathered later in separate sessions, and a lot more, … I could only capture this. All were held with the principle of: What is the minimal, elegant, sufficient next step?

Acting locally.
Operating regionally.
Learning globally.

For the transition, let’s make sure that the baton is passed securely, and then let us run with it!

A working digital social network
Now there is Webcrossing: a forum for conversations (please join!) and some clumsy library. For the future we will need additional resources: more people, more technology, keeping up with technology…
the digital community can take many forms…
Space for What do we learn from it? a library of stories, practices… In more precise language: tools, methods, facilitation for a knowledge system.

Data resource - To be connected
We need a detailed database, a network map of the people, for anyone to be able to find a host, and to find each other; searchable on many different dimensions/criteria – geographical, lessons learned, sector, experience,

Website:
The hub is essential as point of reference. Amy is leading an update of the site, with all the old material and a lot of new one.
Principles are build on the Open Source Movement and on Beauty. Open Source Movement believes that Intellectual Property is free, and should be developed by the community. They provide a central place. Material only goes to the central place when new material is ready to go out into the world. It goes along with the Creative Commons Licenses

The resource metabolism
Money is one resource; but lets think about all resources at the same time! What can we do different? Can we set minimal contribution ground rules, that would enable both locally, regional and global?

developing and distribute basic tools and materials
Maintenance and ongoing development of the basic resource materials; especially for Africa, Asia etc.

Community connection mechanism
within and across levels
online and print stuff; referrals!
building on the annual ftf meetings
Is World Café possible to support it in Vietnam, in Sri Lanka? How can the world café community support this to happen?
having mentorship to learn from

Seeing the whole
Leadership and guidance
Having a group that is trying to hold the whole; to hold the helicopter view. A group that consciously can take a step back and look at the whole; that can look at the shadow; that can give overall guidance.

There was another reading this morning, a poem by William Stafford, that had particular resonance for me. It starts like this:

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

The poem speaks to me of a number of things… It points to the kind of knowing about each other we can have through dialogue (whether it be face to face or on-line), as well as to the importance of conversation deep enough to let us ‘know what kind of person’ we each are.

The kind of person who has gathered for for this Stewardship dialogue, and I suspect the kind of person you who are reading this are, is a person who cares about humanity and recognizes the transformative value and necessity of conversations that matter.

Today, on our last full day, the dialogue felt very rich, with a beautiful morning process followed by an afternoon of two consecutive small group sessions. Many of them, like the first group I was part of, focused on the practical details of the ‘minimum elegant next steps’ for stewarding the World Café as it goes forward and continues to evolve. There will be reports on the results, and these conversations will no doubt continue - here and on the World Cafe online community, on phone calls and emails, in small groups and inside us - distilling and clarifying what is needed and what each of us is called to do.

My second small group was in relation to a question called by Peggy Holman, about caring for the ‘Community of Communities’, organizations who care about dialogue and ‘conversations that matter’. It was a far-ranging discussion about the philosophical importance and functional purposes of connecting and collaborating with each other, exploring what supporting such a community might look like.

At one point we started to make a list of all the organizations each of us knew about that fit the definition of caring about dialogue and conversations that matter. With such a broadly representative group of organizationally experienced folks to draw from, the list of international organizations we were collectively part of or worked with quickly filled several pages. The sense was that we’d like to continue that process and really see the scope of the evolutionary movement that the World Cafe is one part of, and what we are capable of doing together that we cannot do alone.

At the end of the morning Tom and Anne shared with us ‘a process document’ about Elements of the Living Core of the World Café.
The Principles of Development and Co-Evolution are marked in kind of map. In the middle you see five design principles:

. Invitation, Offering and Inspired Hosting
. Listening and Being Present to Self, Other and the Whole
. Co-Evolving Through Friendship and Personal Relationships
. Conversations That Nourish Life
. Taking Minimum Elegant Next Steps

Around that are clustered ten other ones… takes too much time now to type them in, but probably they will become available on the net soon. I heard today that some people are working on a new website, which should be ready in the Fall.

To conclude the report on this paper: As Anne said: “Every principle comes out of the intention to have an “intentional co-evolutionary systems design work”. As said above, it is a process document… let’s all develop it further in the future!

After Juanita and David left…

Emmett, with some beautiful flute music in the background by Juan Carlos, takes us in a centering and relaxing space. From our own deep centering and gift to the world, to the invitation:
I am one who wants to be in, and now call a conversation with others who also care about…

It is clear we entered sacred space. The sharing is silent, the volume of the sound is much, much lower than in all conversations before. This is a magical moment…
Every caller starts with reading out this sentence and just adding their piece…

I never saw an Open Space marketplace with such concentration, efficiency and so on… we went to lunch … and right now, beginning afternoon, the break-out sessions are happening… more later!

David and Juanita were asked to share their story, their dream for the whole community yesterday evening, from a sensing in the design team.

David is speaking first, telling that he is first of all an emotional person. He learned, a very long time ago, that there are basically only four emotions. He learned to have his emotions on the front. “This community has given me the opportunity to experience these emotions. A lot of love, friendship, sadness, not so much anger…”
David and Juanita want to step away from the magician and the organizing. “I want to learn to steward this land, want to be with family, friends and live. I am ready! The letting go, at this point, is really easy. The dream will tell you…
All of my dreams have always been fragmented. This particular dream was totally clear, in three dimensions, full colour; grandioos. I’m an eagle with eagle eyes, I am over Las Vegas, at night, looking down to this incredible expansion of light. My eagle eyes zoom in on a hotel of 150 it didn’t have a the marq is 30 stories high: all red lights in the midts of the white light show: JUST TRUST!”
I woke up, and told Juanita.
I used it as a mantra since then. What I am able to do, because of who you are, I can walk out of being the warrior and the magician and being addicted to network you, just trusting that you will find each other. Trusting the purpose of the World Café: “to awaken and engage collective intelligence (at every level of human system) through conversation about questions that matter, to nourish and renew life”.
I trust that you will take this work into you own life and communities; to nourish life. That you will give it away to other people with an open hand and hopefully you never need to sell it. I just trust that it is there. I can now step away and be a steward of my own life. I can engage with you, when you invite me. I am in deep spirit of deep inspiration and deep respect. You are my community; I have never been more happy than now!
When I was in Mexico to study Spanish, before email was here, I send a fax; I took a dictionary and I wrote: Yu te much o sempre…. I say it to all of you!
Just trusting the work you will do, not mistaking that we are separate!”

Then Juanita goes on… she shows a little duck…
“David came home from a trip and he brought me a nest of little birds. There were 5 birds, and one of them was this one… it makes a sound… it always reminded me to the sound of yearning…. I realized in October, surprising and unexpected, confrontation: What did we want for our lives in this stage; and what could our relation with the World Café community also be?
What made that conversation hard for me, was to be fearful, to respond to this sound… somehow I would either see myself or that others would see me as abandoning the cause… I come from a long line of activists, my mother was an activist… I want to continue and simultaneously I want to balance the intimacy of my live. I want to have the intimacy of place, and to be the steward of some small place; of really being able to be present to the voice of a place; geographical and inside myself. I realized that by speaking of that yearning I will be serving the highest and best for the World Café as well. They said to me: You have to trust that! Give yourself that permission! and we did begin to speak about it…
I couldn’t work this out with my head; all the pieces were connected… I couldn’t work it out, what would be the platform… at the same time, we need unstructured time; some period of unstructured time in order to feel what it feels like to wake up in ‘a place’; I need unstructured time for unbridled creativity, to arrange flowers, to learn to play my flute, … We need some time to honor and be with my parents; not as an obligation, but to be present in that way; to the legacy that they have offered to me. I and we need to cultivate our physical well-being in order to continue our work. These were some of the things we knew we needed unstructured time for.
The other thing that we knew was, we wanted to continue to engage in right relationship with this community and to find out what this right relationship is… what I don’t know at this moment… I have no idea what form it will take, they are deeply personal, and it has also a deep relationship with this work. I have chosen not to have children, consciously, and I don’t regret… the possibility now that the generations come together, the younger ones coming into the live of this community and in my personal life.
You young people, where ever you come from, with your unique gifts! I didn’t grow up as net-native; but we do know what is the importance of it. I want to actively participate in this many-to-many; the grass-root of the future!!
Another tread, today’s meaning of activism; there is something very different now. What is the now activism, what is compassionate activism, what is spiritual activism? My grandmother in Mexico said: I want to die fighting! We, David and I, we don’t want to die angry!!!!”
Tears are heard… Edgard, young man of Latin-America… Juanita put her hands on his heart… tangible silence… she continues…
“My former life-partner D. is now on the other side, he passed away. He was a tall African-American, he was a renaissance man with an incredible heart. It occurred to me last night that perhaps the reason that I had reached out to E., in Mexico, is because he could have been our child. That was the spirit of this young man; the spirit of D. I feel so grateful to be in this community, that enables to show an Edgard in our lives! That we could dance!!!
It is the gift of this community to see that and to speak that.
David and I were walking on the beach: Could we imagine anyone in the world better in trusting some period of unstructured time than to the people coming to this gathering? We could literally not image there were better people!!! OK, I wasn’t totally trusting until yesterday afternoon…. laughing….
It was a Yes, yes, yes! What we would like to request to this community is a gift; like Anne has always asked of us; to deeply listen and take the minimal elegant next steps. What could we truly commit to in this yearning for unstructured time? We feel we can truly commit to six months of unstructured time, including making clear these treads of right relationship with this community. Deeply knowing that we don’t come back in the same roles. It can be held and become new in this community. We still evolve to know what is right relationship. That’s the blessing we ask from this community. It will start in January, that leaves 4 months for the transition.
What is also is important that we have your blessing and permission to take the rest of the day in unstructured time, so that we come back this evening to the celebration.

Everybody stands! applaus! singing:
as David shows the little world-balls on every table:
We got the whole world in our hands!
We got the whole world in our hands!

They leave!!!
“Bye mom! Bye dad!”
“Now lets find out how we are going to do it!”