Eleanor Roosevelt observed: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” In my experience, the most interesting people are interested in ideas.

The World Café is full of such people.

Cafés have always been associated with artists, poets, writers, and other creatives. Before mass media, cafés were the idea incubators and Internet of their time, connecting creatives with each other and cross-pollinating and growing their ideas across all the arts, from music to drama.

In the cafés of early twentieth-century Paris, the birth of the Impressionist movement was monumental and revolutionary.

The Impressionists, led by Claude Monet, defended their new way of seeing and painting against the criticisms of the classical-style artists, the stalwarts of the old guard. On both sides, artists, their supporters and critics had loud, animated discussions, sometimes culminating in upended tables and fistfights between the two camps.

Looking back, it seems quaint that people would get so worked up over their ideas of right and wrong artistic expression. In those days, art really mattered to them.

Today, we seem to have so much more on our collective minds than how art should look. Mass media has brought the cares of the world into everyone’s consciousness, creating massive stress in the process.

However, the café experience may still hold the keys to helping us resolve some of the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing us in today’s world. Do you ever wish you could just find like-minded people who care about the issues you care about, and sit with them in a café to figure out solutions by using everyone’s collective wisdom?

Now you can.

Enter The World Café, and grab a cup of delicious possibilities. Sit with like-minded people and ask the questions that matter most to you. Through The World Café process, ideas are explored and collective wisdom is revealed. Possibilities emerge. The path is cleared for positive action steps.

The World Café is a revolutionary concept that can lead to a peaceful groundswell of positive changes for our planet. Instead of upending tables, this process can upend the false, defeating idea that today’s problems are too big for anyone to tackle.

Maybe the problems are too great for any one of us … but not for many groups of us.

Those were the tantalizing possibilities I sipped in my first cup of The World Café experience. Would you like to grab a cup too?

The World Café is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. All around the world, members will host local cafés during October, 2015, to share The World Café experience. You are welcome to join one in your area, or you could register to host your own café.

Discuss the questions that matter. Sip the delicious possibilities in your community.