I often run Knowledge Cafés at conferences. Conference settings are rarely ideal for a Café, but they are possible as can be seen below.
video playerA Gurteen Knowledge Cafe at KM Egypt conference in Cairo, Egypt, September 2010.
Timestamps
- 00:00:01 Introduction
- 00:00:26 My talk
- 00:17:04 Start of conversation
- 00:31:31 Feedback
A Gurteen Knowledge Cafe at the KM Egypt conference in Cairo, Egypt, in September 2010.
This video is 50 minutes in length and covers most of the Café. I start the session with a rather long talk about what the Café is all about before the actual conversation begins.
The size of the conference hall, the large conference tables, and the large groups were far from ideal for a Café, and neither was my long introduction.
The Café also ended with a series of report-outs rather than a normal whole group conversation.
But as you can see, it works well, and there is a high degree of engagement from the participants.
Many conference talks could be adapted to run this way.
A Gurteen Knowledge Café at the KMPAP conference in the Knowledge Management Research Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, facilitated in 2006.
This video is 40 minutes long and captures a full Café. It is slightly unusual because I hosted it with a colleague Raksha Sukhia.
Some of the small group conversations have been edited, but enough remains to get a feel for the dynamics, but the whole group discussion is included in almost its entirety.
It is a large Café, and the room and the layout of the table and chairs are far from perfect – in fact, it looks a little chaotic. This is often the case in a public Café, but as you can see, this only adds to the energy in the room.
It is an excellent example of the degree of engagement and energy in a Café. Also, note the informality – another critical element of any Café.
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