Dialogue at Vendome this Wednesday September 11

Hello Dialogue Artists,

I’m very much looking forward to our dialogue this coming Wednesday September 11 at Vendome starting at 6:00 PM.

After last Wednesday’s dialogue it occurred to me how important a skill dialogue is. Compare it to the skill of a concert pianist. If you’ve heard the performance of a great pianist and you’ve also heard the performance of a three-year-old child banging on the keys of a piano, you’ll know the difference between dialogue artistry and the performance of a bull in a china shop. As with playing the piano, dialogue is a skill set that each of us can improve with practice.

As if to illustrate the point, Rob provided this list of

Conversation Café Agreements

Open-mindedness: Listen to & respect all points of view.

Acceptance: Suspend judgement as best you can.

Curiosity: Seek to understand rather than to persuade.

Discovery: Question assumptions, look for new insights.

Sincerity: Speak from your heart and personal experience.

Brevity: Go for honesty and depth – don’t go on and on.

Based on comments from one of last week’s participants after the dialogue, I’ll suggest the following format for this Wednesday, slightly revised from the one I had sent out previously: We would convene at 6:00 PM and do the check-in, confirm the topic for discussion, and then by 6:30 PM we’d be in break-out groups of 3 to 5 participants. Those groups would have exactly 45 minutes to discuss the topic. Notice that because the groups are small, each person will have a little more time to make their contributions. Then by 7:20 PM we’d be in the reconvened group sharing just the highlights from each of the group discussions, knowing we must adjourn by 8:00 PM. Again, I should mention that this break-out format did receive enthusiastic interest when it was suggested last week. Moving the future dialogues to a different venue has also been suggested, and I’ll follow up on that on Wednesday.

My own first choice for a topic on Wednesday will be the second in the list below. I haven’t received enough feedback to confirm a topic from the longer menu, so we’ll have to decide on the topic in those first thirty minutes. Accordingly, I have shortened the list to three, including one topic that Brian Seaman suggested in a very recent email. If you would like to add to this short list, be prepared so that we can consider your suggestion and make a decision in the allotted time.

1. Think about a young person who is important to you in the present. This should be somebody born no further back than the turn of the 21st century so the cut-off date is January 1, 2000. Think about what you would like to place in a time capsule for this young person to find in 30 years' time. What might those items be? This could include writing, in the form of prose or a song. This could be your own creative work(s) and/or the creative work(s) of others, living or dead. These could be photos or articles. Why did you choose to include what you did in the time capsule?

2. How can we improve our skills as dialogue artists and thereby enhance the value of the Wednesday dialogues?

3. We know the value of our café dialogues but is anyone else in Calgary doing them? What would be some brilliant ways to spread the culture of dialogue in Calgary? If someone asked you to take charge of an initiative which by the end of next year could result in half the coffee shops in Calgary having frequent dialogue events, how would you achieve that outcome?

Arthur