Conversation in Hong Kong A Knowledge Café with eight speakers

In 2011, I participated in the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Society’s annual conference at the Langham Place Hotel in Mongkok, Hong Kong.

Interestingly, they asked me to help them turn the conference into a Knowledge Café.

You may not consider turning a 1-day conference into a Knowledge Café too outlandish, but it is a hard enough job convincing Western conference organizers to do this never mind an Asian one.

First, Nicolas Gorjestani, former Chief Knowledge & Learning Officer for the World Bank, gave a keynote talk. I then gave a pitch on the role of conversation in business and explained the Knowledge Café process. We then broke for coffee.

On our return, we had eight “conversation leaders,” standing in line. These were former MAKE award winners. I said a few words of introduction and passed the mike along the line.

Each leader then spoke for about 3 minutes and talked a little about their KM initiative that won a MAKE award.

In the room, we had 8 round tables, one for each conversational leader. Between 5 and 8 people were sitting at each table. (I would have preferred a smaller number, say 4-5,  but sometimes that is not possible.)Each leader now joined a table in the room.

They then had 40 minutes to talk about their project and to engage in conversation with the people at their tables. I then asked the leaders to move tables and 3 or 4 people to change tables at the same time.

The process was repeated once, so two rounds of conversation were held in total. I then brought everyone back together for about 15 minutes and asked them to share their insights with each other.

I would have preferred 4 or even 5 rounds of conversation, and I would have loved to have brought everyone into a circle at the end to continue the conversation and share their insights, but we only had half a day, so in the circumstances, it was a reasonable compromise.

There were some concerns by the organizers and conversation leaders before the event.

• The conversations would dry up.
• Some people would dominate the conversations.
• A facilitator would be needed at each table to encourage conversation and control things.
• People would congregate on just 2 or 3 tables, and thus some groups would be small causing loss of face for those particular leaders.
• People would be upset that they could not freely choose their tables.
• If an English speaking person sat at a table, then the Chinese speakers would be forced to speak English, which would stifle the conversation.

I assured them that none of this was needed or would happen, and I was right. I also had breakfast with the conversational leaders to talk things through so they felt comfortable.

Les Hales, who was one of the organizers and instrumental in inviting me to run this Café, wrote this in a pre-conference briefing:

In a presentation there is formality. The speaker is mainly talking, and the participants listening.

Usually, Q&A, often a very interesting part of the presentation for both the speaker and the audience is either restricted to a few minutes or doesn’t occur.

A knowledge Café is informal. The leader while keeping in charge of the conversation encourages Q&A as part of the presentation of his/her case study.

Being a small group encourages participation, not just passive listening.

Conversation should not be discouraged as it is the basis of knowledge sharing.

At a conference, we talk so that someone else can listen. In a Knowledge Café we talk so we can learn.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the event. I only wish more conference organizers had the courage to take a similar approach.

Briefing for MAKE table leaders

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