Exciting and inspiring stories about the World Café abound! We've selected a few that illustrate the use of the World Café in a wide range of fields and sectors, in countries around the world, to evoke collective intelligence in the service of bringing forth positive futures.
You’ll find other stories in The World Café: Shaping Life-Affirming Futures Through Conversations That Matter and on the online community (if you have a story about the World Café, please share it with everyone by posting it in the online community StoryNet section.)
Business. The Financial Planning Association listens deeply to its members and helps them co-create their own futures, while Ann McCluskey of Wells Fargo Bank shares her experience hosting a World Café to create a new technology plan for the entire bank.
Climate Change. There are many stories about people using the power of conversation to make a difference in issues that matter to them, like climatte change. Read some of these stories in the Global Climate Change blog and the special section in the online StoryNet.
Community Building. Friends from Down Under put their own unique twist on the World Café and energize the citizens of Marion in the process. Mara Senese hosts a World Café process for a town meeting near Oslo in which citizens come to terms with their dwindling cultural activity budget.
Conferences. In a tiny village in Italy, 20 international students gather in Café with a dozen music professors to consider the limits to freedom in music.
Cross Cultural Communications. World Café gatherings designed by Maori leaders integrate traditional tribal rituals to facilitate agreement among a diverse group of stakeholders at various stages of reclaiming land held under a 150-year-old treaty.
Democracy. People in Thailand share a story of hope about how processes like the World Café can influence and shape the future of an entire country. Author Robert Putnam teams up with Café partners in Tampa Bay to explore how they can increase social capital there. (download only)
Education. The first graduating class in the Masters of Arts in Leadership and Training (MALT) from Royal Roads University held their reunion using a World Café.
Faith, Religion and Tolerance. The World Café Goes to Church with Karen Speerstra, with divine results.
Government and NGOs. The World Café helps bring together government representatives, members of the public, and business leaders to craft a new relationship to their watershed in Australia. (download only)
Online Cafés. Bo Gyllenpalm of The Fielding Institute hosts a Knowledge Café in cyberspace. (download only)
Politics and Law. Inspired by her experience in an intimate Café for 1,000 people at a 2001 IONS conference, Liz Lafferty conducted a Café for 80 mediators working within the California judicial system.
Unusual Approaches. Mille Bojer hosts a remarkable World Café where "differently-abled" women in Africa form a network to work on AIDS and reproductive health.
Vignettes. Barbara Belknap shares brief stories of a World Café at a Recovery Center and a Partnership Café with the Alaska Dept of Health and Social Services.