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The Knowledge Café process is highly adaptable and can be modified for many different purposes. It should always be designed to meet a specific predefined purpose.
Consider the process description below as a starting point for your thinking, not a prescriptive recipe.
- People are invited to the Café. They are not mandated to participate.
- A Café is a gathering, not a meeting.
- The Café host welcomes the participants.
- The host initiates a short session to help connect people. This often takes the form of three short rounds of speed conversation.
- The host briefly explains the intent or purpose of the Café and the Café process.
- The host points out that it is OK to go off-topic during the small group conversations.
- The host then introduces the Café Speaker.
- The speaker gives a short talk. Ideally, this is without PowerPoint slides, but a few are acceptable in some contexts.
- The speaker speaks for less than 10 minutes but usually no more than 20 minutes.
- At the end of the talk, the speaker poses a provocative question to the participants to initiate the conversation.
- The participants sit in small groups of 3 or 4.
- Everyone has an equal voice. There are not any table hosts, leaders, or note-takers.
- Three rounds of small group conversation now follow. Each round lasts 10 to 15 minutes.
- At the end of each round, the host asks a few people from each table to move to another table. The instruction is not more prescriptive than that.
- At the end of the three rounds, the host stops the conversation and asks the participants to move the tables to one side of the room and to form a circle of chairs.
- A whole group conversation then continues in the circle.
- The host goes around the circle (a round-robin) and asks each person to share one actionable insight that they are taking away from the Café.
- Finally, the host thanks everyone and closes the Café.
This is the essence of the Café process, but as I said at the start of the description, it is not prescriptive, and you should adapt it to the specific purpose you have in mind.
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