Café Conversations

Café-Conversations was inspired by the concepts and principles of The World Café (www.theworldcafe.com).

Rogamur, though, focuses on Systems/Entity Architecting, using Café-Conversations for Graphic Facilitation & visual collaboration between groups of 15 stakeholders or less. It is a method pioneered by The Grove in San Francisco more than 40 years ago.

Research has shown that the use of Graphics, Metaphors, Stories and large wall charts to facilitate group meetings — in an interactive manner, individually as well as in combination — are highly effective for enhancing communication, understanding and collaboration.(Young 2003 "Methods and tools for collaborative environments to support innovation opportunities" A. Leslie, Dr K. Young, Dr F. Lettice, and "An exploration of the use of Graphic Facilitative Methods within the Strategic Change Process" Dr Karen E. Young: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Thesis.)

These tools and techniques add the important element of dialogue into the process. Dialogue has been shown to be an important outcome of using these techniques, and dialogue itself is increasingly being seen to be an important element for improving communication, understanding and group behavior change.

There are few other methods available which are as flexible and as beneficial to group processes as the graphic facilitation methods. Particular benefits of the methods are: shared understanding, group memory, improved communication, increased interaction and enhance knowledge sharing and creativity.

Of particular benefit, Graphic Facilitation and the use of the Group Memory:

- Shows a system on one chart – encourages big-picture thinking
- Invites group participation
- Is the most effective way for a group to make decisions

To ensure successful collaboration, create a clear structure and process for collaboration, and establish the firm demarcation of roles and responsibilities. The collaborative environment facilitates the recognition and communication of the differences of opinion between the participants thus enabling potential misalignments to be transparent. The result is a process that can enable a constructive discussion and positive resolution.

The use of Diagrams & Metaphors and the Use of Graphic Guides makes it easier for meeting participants to gain consensus and common understanding on the issues under discussion. The Grove is the primary source for prebuilt Graphic Guides or they can be reproduced and customised by Cafe-Conversations (usually the case).

Graphic Guides assist organisations to make their business processes come alive graphically. With these Graphic Guides, Cafe'-Conversations can help your organization or team to look at its history, analyze your industry's competitive structure, create a vision or make a Gameplan for who is going to do what, when. The large graphics make it easy for everyone to participate, as well as to gather all the information in one place.

In planning and running the collaborative Conversations and creating Graphic Guides, we make use of the “Group Graphics Keyboard” which includes a way of managing the graphic displays and provides the building blocks which include: Posters, Lists, Clusters, Grids, Diagrams, Drawings and Mandalas.