• Revealing the hidden or sub-issues related to a general one
• Demonstrating that there are many ways to tackle a same issue
• Sharing knowledge and experience on a specific issue
• Highlighting solutions to overcome the main issues at stake.

Duration: 2 hours

First, care about the ambiance: set the room as if you were at a regular café, with several tables of 4 to 5 persons and invite the participants to enter into it. You will act as if you were the waiters of the place and will offer coffee and snacks during the session.

To start, invite the participants to take a seat and announce that a Conference will take place, but that there will be no lecturer. The “customers” will have to discuss and produce the knowledge. They will be the “experts”, creating collective knowledge by sharing their experiences, ideas and points of view.

To guide them, ask one simple question (“How can we work together?”) that they will have to rephrase in a more specific way according to their experiences. For example, focusing on the issue of communication within a team: “How can we better communicate between teammates?”. Give them 20 minutes to make a proposition of a new question the way they think the question should have been asked.

Collect and mix the rephrased questions, and distribute them randomly to the different tables. The people sitting at the table will work on the question they got for the next hour, looking for solutions. Encourage them to make some clear and realistic propositions that they will share with the group at the end of the Conference, in the way they prefer, whether in a formal or non-formal way, using their creativity and pedagogical skills to do so. Close the session with the presentation of each working group’s findings to the others (5-7 minutes per group).

• 4 paper boards + Paper
• Pencils / markers