South Africa Connect

Notes from the World Café sessions at the Broadband Forum.

Most conferences, forums, working meetings and workshops take a similar format. Everyone arrives full of vim and vigour, and the situation quickly deteriorates into a roomful of people hidden behind their laptops, or twittering in isolation. The real conversations, if there are any, tend to take place in the tea and meal breaks, or over a cigarette quickly sneaked outside.

So it was really refreshing that at the National Broadband Strategy Forum, I was able to be part of really engaging conversations during the sessions, under the very able facilitation of Steve Song. Using the World Café method for fostering collaborative discussion, participants were encouraged to talk openly and easily with each other throughout the day.

“We knew there was going to be a ton of expertise in the room,” says Song, of the decision to use this process of facilitation. “And we wanted to maximise this cognitive resource. Some top regulatory, business and legal people in broadband are here today and if they hadn’t been allowed to speak and speak often, they would have been pissed off.”

The tone of these conversations were kept deliberately inclusive. “The language and metaphor we use around debate are the metaphors of war,” said Song, at the beginning of the Forum. “We say things like ‘I demolished his argument’ and that’s just not constructive.” To counteract this aggression, and the fact that in conference discussion scenarios some participants tend to be less forthcoming, each table appointed a host, whose role was, among other things, to make participants feel welcome at the table. As the groups moved around the tables, the hosts welcomed participants, updated them on conversations, and kept the conversations flowing. One of the challenges around broadband in South Africa is developing a common mindset around the challenges facing the sector. The World Café method, because of it’s inclusive nature, allows people to develop this common mindset, and think about meeting those challenges more effectively.

By covering the tables in large sheets of paper, and leaving colourful markers on the table, the organisers also encouraged participants to draw, write, doodle and colour-in during the sessions, and kept proceedings and conversations informal and flowing.

And flow they did. Several times participants stopped, sat back and said “Wow, this has been a great conversation.” At one of the tables I sat at, even the call for lunch wasn’t enough to break up the discussion. We sat, and continued to discuss the potential for broadband in South Africa to change the way rural children are educated. When you consider that one of the objectives of the Forum was to work collaboratively on refining the Broadband Policy Framework, it is easy to understand how a facilitation method like World Café can be a successful tool.