On 12 June,  I had the pleasure of facilitating a World Café for the World Summit on Information Society hosted at the International Telecommunication Union, attend by delegates from all over the world and representatives of all the UN agencies.

ITU, like all other UN agencies, has a tradition for fostering open dialogue and reaching consensus, and so it has easily adopted world café as an innovative, collective collaboration tool for its members.

This was my 12th high-level collaborative event at ITU and as always, I am deeply moved at how individuals from different nations, cultures, worldviews, languages can, within minutes, come together in warm, constructive dialogue when the topics have a profound purpose.

WSIS is a multistake holder platform, where representatives from private sector companies, civil society,  government and the United Nations agencies converge to establish a vision and implementation plans to create an inclusive information society of the future.

The key figures driving the WSIS process contributed to the world café with their knowledge and long experience:

• H.E. Mr. Adama Samassékou, WSIS+10 High Level Event Vice-Chair, Former President of PrepCom of the Geneva Phase of the WSIS
• H.E. Ambassador Janis Karklins, WSIS+10 High Level Event Vice-Chair, Former President of PrepCom of the Tunis Phase of the WSIS
• Prof. Vladimir Minkin, Chairman of the WSIS+10 Multistakeholder Preparatory Platform

As the designer and moderator of this event,  I found it very inspiring to see so many brilliant people talk with candour and passion about their efforts for the greater good, the challenges they meet and the successes the encounter.

Most of the World Cafés I have hosted are in multicultural and multilingual settings. This has never been a barrier to meaningful communication. The café methodology connects participants at a deep, fundamentally human level, and enables them to engage and understand each other across organizational or national cultures, it really does bring the best out of us!

See the agenda at

http://www.itu.int/wsis/implementation/2014/forum/agenda/#?se=220

See the photos at

https://www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/14219626530/