World cafe for a first resident meeting
Tips, Tools, Strategies, and Technology
I developed a World Cafe for a local neighborhood group 2 summers ago and again last summer. The intent was to get community members talking with one another in a different format - this particular community has TONS of meetings where people are talked AT but the actual residents of the community are mostly passive recipients of 'downloaded' information. Each cafe had a slightly different theme but they were both very successful in getting people to think together, connect and develop a sense of how they would like the community to be different, along with identifying commitments that community members would make to build a stronger community.
The questions that are developed and the atmosphere you create are key to the success of the process.