As in the early world citizen guides we published on education's collaboration entrepreneurs, I personally believe that how to host meetings is one of the huge missing items in schools, and not letting children practice this self-confidence and innovation dynamic before teens, when in richer nations they need to understand group dynamics (and start devekloing own flow in micreontrepreneurial mode) is one of the 3 most disastrous errors in most educational systems. I am not a teacher- just a parent - so I only represent an amateur view on education though communications maps have been my maths application all my working life

there are many examples of "cafes and circle meetings" though none exactly similar to the intent of collaboration cafe 1 2 when designed fully- before ever there was tv, communications and community involved meetings -and much more common sense transparency - it is worth noting that when adam smith wrote his economics books he was assuming that the community would ultimately get at the truth from all who traded around it - none of his free market assumpotions hold in a world of billion dollar advertising noise so he would most offended by all those who power over others claiming free markets justify this- political chicanery macroeconomics as my father dubbed it in 1894 or earlier; world economist's number 1 sustainability investment banbking model: microcredit iteelf is about peer circles but weekly ones among people who live in the same community and microinvestment club, and is more an apprenticeship community of prcatice

WHOLE TRUTH COMMUNITY MEETINGS

the quakers fascinate me, and their epicentre is opposite euston station- they have a bookshop- their founder around 1600s! innovated an audience format- when a big person came from the capital to issue rules on a community, the community would sit in a circle around him; listen; once he had finisehed and asked for questions, the rule the community adopted was you only got one chance at speaking; this has a very interesting dynamic which destroys the noisy person who just likes their own voice; and even if you are deeply concerned it is not obvious whether to go first so there is a silence and just as the speaker thinks there are no questions; one after another people get up and ask the most colective intelligent series of question a pompous speaker is ever likely to encounter; by accident or design, gandhi's last ever meeting in london was convened in the quaker hall in 1931; most of the english in the audience were still very much colonailists but people from all over europe who were anti-colonialists also attended; it was the end of londoners beleiving that the world would tolerate colonisation for long, and it was probably where gandhi first met alumni of maria montessori who later came to plant montessori education in India - Sunita Gandhi's family are the core of that network

about 253 years ago the royal society of arts was founded in a cafe- basically a socially minded person convened some businessmen and made such a compelling public case for greater business ersponsibility that a group of businessmen agreed to fund the royal society of arts; most springtimes starbucks and the rsa host a cafe format

in scotland, due to an international banking fraud in 1700, the country at time the largest investor in children's education in europe went bankrupt and was colonised by england; over the next 150 year over half of scots sailed the 7 seas rather than be valued as worth less than sheep by the english accountancy; many of these scots used the sabbath to walk for miles to a "church" which was primarily a debating circle on how to negotioate, typically the fare to leave by ship- my 4 times great grnadad convened ine such "free church"; it is slightly ironic that fazle abed studied being a naval architect in glasgow just as scots stoped making so much use of ships 

harrison owen originator of open space says that the circle format of OS was inspired by community meetings in africa he had earlier witnessed in the peace corps; unlike collaboration cafe, open space the simplest peoples conflict resolution model  may invite as many as 10000 people to a 3-day event; collaboration cafe is intended when done in its prest from as a micro open space; of the 3 stages of the open space , we do the inviting as intensely as an open space so the people who come are the right people; we hope that the after networking of the meeting can be as actionable as an open space; but instead of hudreds of smallish meetings, the ideal colaboration cafe has invited someone like muhammad yunus who has a solution to the crisis that people were invited to attend that works somewhere and which they could replicate

I am the world's worst faciliator live-time but mathematically I do understand dymanics of faciliatation designs before I walk into one, and can tell you whether it was done the way the founder of that design intended. chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk -what is the greatest meeting you have ever attended or look forward to hosting?

Before 2005: great if we can understand country histories of edu by region- as we unravel colonial down systems and make them micro up and open instead, what gandhi and my grandad -one barrister to another - spent 25 years in dialogue on 1920-1945

micropublishing's most exciting genre is edu's entrepreneurial revolutionaries : its alwasy quite an action learning adventure with -as always - lots of mistakes on my side -

2000-2005 I a spent quite a lot of 5 years trying to covince the eu http://www.knowledgeboard.com/ that centres of ignorance were more important than chiefs of knowledge management but the network battle on that was rigged by a few people in berlin -  our idea which we networked electronically in hunderes of blogs loosely connected by EU's KB from 2003 was 1000 people open space colabortaions in each city -got about 300 of knowledgnboard's 1000 most active members wanting it before top-down shut us up but then the eu never wanted km to be what drucker meant by knowledge work; apparently luxembourg from the very beginning of the eu has always loved machine-druven KM- oddly enough during the war luxembourg invented audio tape first which was darn inconvenient in the propaganda battles- funny how media and education will sustain or end us all