Friends of the World Café are stepping forward to help guide the co-evolution of the World Café. Together we are cultivating the spirit and practice of stewardship. We invite your partnership, participation, and contribution!

Key stewardship circles include:

Global communications. Talented individuals in numerous fields are helping evolve tools for communication, connection, and collaboration throughout the World Café network – through writing and publishing, creatively hosting the book and its translations into the world, expanding the World Café’s online tools, gathering and harvesting World Café stories, and developing video and other multimedia products.

Global stewardship. An emerging group of global stewards, representing those who are already engaged in stewarding key World Café initiatives or regional networks, is beginning to co-evolve new patterns of collective leadership and guidance on behalf of the network as a whole. Participants explore what’s present or emerging across the network as a whole, foster cross-regional connections and mutual support, and nurture the sense of unity at the heart of the World Café.

Learning and conversational leadership development. Experienced World Café hosts are now developing the “next generation” of learning tool, materials, and processes needed to introduce the World Café and conversational leadership to new audiences and help World Café hosts deepen their practice. New World Café learning opportunities are also being developed, including in-depth World Café design seminars, workshops on core capacities like the art of formulating powerful questions, and learning journeys on “conversational leadership” and related topics.

Research and theory development. World Café hosts, researchers, and social innovators around the world are collaborating through a partnership between the World Café Community Foundation and the Fielding’s Institute for Social Innovation both to develop and disseminate the World Café as a methodology for participatory research and collective knowledge evolution, and to explore applications of the World Café in key areas such as change leadership, organizational development, and societal learning.

Resource development. Friends of the World Café from diverse fields are helping discover and develop creative models for resourcing the strategic priorities of the World Café, including the key processes and people that provide ongoing stewardship of the whole.

Place-based and regional stewardship. Dynamic networks of World Café hosts, conveners, and champions are developing as people meet and collaborate across sectors in specific communities, countries, and regions. Regional stewards help knit these networks together, convene communities of practice, and catalyze regional initiatives. Active networks exist in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and are developing in a growing number of cities around the world.