Thought leader

By David Gurteen

I am often asked what is a knowledge café, or what is a Gurteen knowledge café, and how does a knowledge café differ from a world café? Let me explain.

The term knowledge café is a general term that is applied to many different processes and applications. Some people call their blogs or websites ‘knowledge cafes’; others hold online or virtual knowledge cafés and many workshops are dubbed knowledge cafés. The term has no standard meaning.

But, predominantly, most people understand a knowledge café to be about bringing people together face-to-face to have a group conversation of some description. It is a ‘conversational process’ that focuses on dialogue and ‘conversational café’ or ‘café’ are often used as generic terms to refer to any format of café.

Many workshops, although they involve a great deal of conversation by the participants, are to my mind wrongly dubbed knowledge cafés. Apart from the focus on open conversation, I think there is one other key factor that distinguishes a knowledge café from some other form of workshop and that is that the major outcomes of a true knowledge café are the things that individuals take away in their heads.

A true knowledge cafe is not about group decision making or reaching a consensus or a documented proposal. A true knowledge café is about individual learning, and insights; the surfacing of assumptions, issues, problems and opportunities; and, seeing things that have not been seen before, or seen only dimly. The value of a knowledge cafe is what the participants take away in their heads.

I should add that is not, that things are not captured in knowledge cafes or that there are no other forms of output but this is not the prime objective.

There are various forms of café.

The World Café is a conversational process that originated with Juanita Brown and David Isaacs in 1995, and was subsequently developed by the global World Café Community. It is a similar but more elaborate process than the Gurteen knowledge café and some of the core principles are different.

The Gurteen knowledge café is a conversational process that I developed in 2002, quite independently from the World Café process. The process was greatly influenced my own experience of ‘death-by-PowerPoint’ presentations and small group work. I deliberately dubbed it with the Gurteen label to distinguish it from other knowledge café formats that I felt were fundamentally different to mine.

The term knowledge café tends to be used as a generic term for many conversational processes. Often the format is the World Café or Gurteen Knowledge Café process or an adaptation of one of them. And often the term is used loosely to describe a workshop of some description.

Café communities: cafés can be both conversational tools and communities. The World Café is both a process and a community. The same is true of the Gurteen Knowledge Café. I have held regular knowledge cafes in London since 2002 and this community now has over 700 members and typically 50 to 60 people attend these events in London. I also have communities in Bristol, Liverpool, New York, Adelaide and Zurich who regularly run Gurteen Knowledge Cafés.

Conference cafés: The café process can be used within a business context as a conversational tool for a specific business purpose, but it is also often used more generally as part of conference or a workshop open to the public.

Open Gurteen knowledge cafés: Often, when I visit a city, I will run an open Gurteen Knowledge Café. This is a one-off event. I find a host, I invite my local community; the host invites theirs and others too are welcome to attend. I have run open cafés in Sydney, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur in the past few years.

There are other styles of café too. Google Stars knowledge café, Socrates Café, or Cafe Scientifique to learn more.

So, I hope this explains what the knowledge café is all about. One final comment: I am often asked how to run a virtual knowledge café. I am sorry, but you can’t. Knowledge cafés take place face to face and that interaction cannot be duplicated online.

David Gurteen is founder of Gurteen Knowledge. He can be contacted at david.gurteen@gurteen.com