The World Cafe is a 20 year old workshop activity for engaging your participants in conversations that fits nicely into our team building activities section.
It draws on 7 design principles to create a simple, effective and flexible format for hosting large group discussions for between 12 to 200 participants.


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Objectives
What is it?
When Would You Use It?
The 7 Design Principles
Design principle 1 – Set the context
Design principle 2 – Create hospitable space
Design principle 3 – Explore questions that matter
Design principle 4 – Encourage everyone’s contribution
Design principle 5 – Connect diverse perspectives
Design principle 6 – Listen together for patterns & insights
Design principle 7 – Share collective discoveries
Resources Required
World Cafe Etiquette
Process
- 1Setup small café-style tables in a rooms and seat 4 or 5 Participants at each. These are your ‘conversation clusters’.
- 2The Facilitator then explains to the group they will now have 3 rounds of conversation of approximately 20-30 minutes each.
- 3Questions or issues that genuinely matter to your work, life or community are discussed while other groups explore similar questions at nearby tables.
- 4The Facilitator encourages the table members to write, doodle, and draw key ideas on their paper tablecloths or to note key ideas on large index cards or placemats in the center of the group.
- 5After completing the 1st round of conversation, the Facilitator asks each table to agree a ‘table host’ who remains at the table while the others travel to different tables.
- 6The travelers now get up from the table and move to another. They can go to whichever table they prefer carrying with them key ideas, themes and questions from their old table into their new conversations.
- 7The Facilitator asks the Table Hosts to welcome their new guests and briefly share the main ideas, themes and questions from the initial conversation (max 2 mins). Encourage guests to link and connect ideas coming from their previous table conversations – listening carefully and building on each other’s contributions.
- 8At the end of the 2nd round, all of the tables and conversations will be cross-pollinated with insights from previous conversations.
- 9In the 3rd round of conversation, people can return to their home (original) tables to synthesize their discoveries, or they may continue on to new tables, leaving the same or a new host at the table.
- 10An optional step is for the Facilitator to pose a new question that helps deepen the exploration for the 3rd round of conversation.
- 11After your 3rd round of conversation, initiate a period of sharing discoveries and insights in a whole group conversation.
- 12Make sure you have someone flip-chart this plenary conversation so you capture any patterns, knowledge and actions that emerge.
That is amazing. Thank you so so much for posting that. I love it.
Pleasure Simone. Thanks for saying thanks!
Thanks so much, Nick. This is perfect for a visioning meeting I will be helping to lead at my local church. I had such a hard time explaining how the WC works, and now you’ve given me the images and words I need to convey its magical properties!
That’s great Nancy. I try and simplify these tools and activities as much as I can for you.
Great stuff Nick! Thank you again for your generosity.
And thank you for leaving a comment Gill 🙂
Really good tool & details provided here. It helps
Thank You
Really good tool & details provided here. It helps
Glad to hear it Bindu. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
World cafe activity is awesome and good idea for brainstorming ,
The equilateral triangle activity is a little confusing as my participants chose same people to form triangles could you share the instruction of how I could clarify that only three participants should form a triangle ?
Do you have any activity for accountability and ownership training ?
Nick,
World Café is bedded into our training programme, it goes down extremely well with all. We use it on a group of 20 and have four questions set out in a room. We use questions from our Senior management teams who would like to get a better understanding of the working environment and what challenges lay ahead in the future. The results then get sent to them, do they react to them? Not had any replies yet. The students really enjoy the experience, we provide good quality coffee and biscuits, Music to ease the mind and a positive welcome and personality to really let students feel comfortable in the environment.
World Cafe is a great way to explore subjects maybe not breached before as it allows all to have their say and be represented. for us students write on Banqueting paper and we then hang these up for all to see and discuss after the four rounds.
http://www.theworldcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Cafe-To-Go-Revised.pdf
This is great stuff Nick. I had an experience with it at a workshop held for staff at my workplace and now I’m just thinking of how best I can adopt in my workshops for A Level Literature students.
It’s a very flexible process so you should have no problems
Great stuff indeed and very useful
Glad you like it Richard
Thanks for condensing the tool! I had been part of this type of activities, I have already tried to recreate it in certain contexts, but didn’t know it was called world caffe. 🙂
Glad you like it Tamas.
What a wonderful exercise Nick! Thank you for sharing this with the world. Namaste! 🙂
It’s a pleasure Jonas … please let us know how it goes if you have a moment after you run it.
Excellent resources – which also help to spark off creative ideas!
Thank you.
Regards
Bev Agard Owen
Thank you os much Nick. I look forward to use the material.
This is amazing! I really appreciate how accessible the information is, easy to understand and reference. Thank you so much!
Hi Nick
This is a great write up and has reminded me of some of the key principles that I had forgotten about. I also realise how much I adapt the technique to suit the situation and audience (and therefor ignore some of the key principles as a result!!)
As promised here are some hints and tips based on how I have used and adapted the technique through the years.
I have used this amazingly flexible and dynamic technique at conferences, team work shops, Executive Strategic Briefings…
Do you want all people to:
1. Select which questions are most important to them/ they can contribute the most to?
2. Answer all the questions you have?
If 1. then you can let them self select and move freely from one topic to another at an allocated time
If 2. then you can do as 1. or you can move them around the room in the same groups from one table to the next.
I use this technique to identify key themes and develop solutions. Writing with different pen colours helps you differentiate the responses for each question ie blue for the issues identified and green for the solutions.
In a conference setting, where I was encouraging Executives to share their experiences, I kept the same people at the same table and changed the questions (this helped to build trust and deepen their sharing). For each question I removed the pens from the table and replaced with pens of a different colour. This helped me I identify the responses relating to each question.
The table host (ideally a facilitator in this situation) can remain at the same table. This person helps retain focus on the question to be answered, encourages people to write on the table cloth and facilitates contribution from everyone. The host can also provide a summary of key themes to be captured in plenary at the end.
Keep the table free from clutter ie note pads, dishes, glasses etc.
At the end, I capture the key themes on flip chart in plenary. I photograph each table cloth to circulate to the attendees along with the key themes.
I hope this helps and would be happy chat anything through if needed.
Most grateful for this wonderful tool. I first experienced at an OD workshop some three years ago.
Love it!
Thank you. I am researching this tool, with a view of using it at the end of a development programme for delegates to showcase their work and learning. Not sure if its the answer however it is an excellent tool which I will use for other events if not this one.
Hello, I entered my email to get a free copy of your pdf and received your email. However, the link to download the pdf does not work. Could you provide a working link? Thanks, Geri England