Lessons Learned for World Café Methodology

• Check the discussion and gently but firmly ask the participants not to lose focus on the final purpose, to speed up and keep up with the timing or not to go too deep or too specific;
• Prepare a concise information corpus for participants;
• Refer to local and sectorial topics, to which participants are interested in because relate with their experience and can be useful for them;
• Use new participative methodologies to attract participants;
• Promote a greater participation of general public in projects financed by European funds to help filling the gap between science and society;
• Take into consideration that despite their willingness to participate, often practical barriers impede the participation of people to participative events;
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event;
• The methodology is well adapted to the purpose of the workshop, to let participants contribute to the discussion and to strengthen the links between participants;
• Define the length of your workshop according with your foreseen audience and local habits;
• Plan further, periodic or even annual meetings on the same topic, with old and new participants, to make them feel part of a process (special), and ensure follow-up;
• Develop information-based decision support tools, with automated intervention systems;
• Consider holding virtual discussions to help some of the stakeholder groups (e.g. citizens) to attend these kind of events;
• Consider societal challenges (as defined by the EC) during the participative events, in order for the results to be easily related to them
• Ask to the participants to obtain in advance the necessary authorization from the Institutions they represent, to propose actions during the workshop;
• Involve student when possible;
• Protect the deep sea from mining, create laws that impose that deep sea mining is a non-profit activity and concert the deep sea into world heritage site;
• Provide strong incentives to promote the circular economy;
• Stakeholders are concerned that the authorities and the private companies will decide to advance with DSM without proper public consultation and without knowing sufficient about the deep sea;
• Identify motives for policy makers and implementers to participate in the workshops as they are reluctant in participating;
• The society believes that RRI will never be in full effect without strong political will;
• Disseminate information about opportunities, threats and risks on the studied topic;
• Follow-up on motivated participants of how that used the knowledge obtained in workshops for their private and professional projects;
• Create decision-making processes that are participative, transparent and allow for public deliberation;
• Improve efficient communication, generate plural debates and disseminate reliable data and information to convert vision into reality;
• Develop partnerships for science outreach actions;
• Improve science literacy and research applicability to increase awareness on coastal risk situations;
• Adapt local strategies in order to be in agreement with research outcomes;
• Find moderators with experience on methods used for event moderation;
• Plan local actions in agreement with its local circumstances instead of promoting larger-scale policies;
• Include key local stakeholders in the planning and implementation of local strategies;
• Include more education aspects of citizenship, sustainability and ecology on schools;
• Organize more science dissemination events targeting the general public;
• Promote citizen science to involve the general public on research;
• Develop more partnerships with the Media and NGOs in order to reach bigger audiences;
• Develop and organize more actions similar to this workshop, in order that different stakeholders meet and discuss their ideas more often and get used to think outside their boxes;
• Invite stakeholders to provide their feedback through the platform on the reporting documents;
• Create a relaxing but effective work experience and joint decision-making with the world café methodology;
• Follow up with the participants with periodic workshops using the same methodology;
• Raise awareness on aquaculture in the Azores;
• Promote education, training and more equal incomes for fishermen in the Azores;
• Consider opportunities of synergies between the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in the Azores
• Beware that the high level of qualification needed in aquaculture and the small scale of the region market are two contraints of the synergie between the fisheries and aquaculture sectors in the Azores.
• Promote researchers qualifications to find new bio aplications for products answering societal needs
• Promote the reinforcement of policies and adoption of coherent legislative frameworks to develop Marine Biotechnology
• Promote the involvement of public authorities on local, national and European levels.
• Consider ethics when dealing with the legal frameworks to assure marine biotech sustainability and social awareness
• Raise awareness among the general public to make informed choices and have an active social participation
• Have business and industry professionals consider producing socially and environmentally acceptable marine bio-based goods and services
• Foster collaboration among companies in the Marine Biotech value chain and social and environmental actors
• Foster stakeholder engagement, capacity building, behavioural changes and production and consumption pattern shift with Science education
• Use Open access to boost innovation and increase the use of scientific results by all societal actors as well as to develop public trust and engagement.
• Consider the distinction between the actions of making information available and the actions of making the information understandable by its potential users when dealing with Open Access,
• Develop new capacities for studying and a performant monitoring system of water quality
• Take actions in order to update the actual legislation
• Attract participants by sending invitations via e‐mail, followed by phone calls
• Present and explain of the method used
• Increase awareness regarding water quality
• Create a common DATABASE – for centralizing all the data and studies regarding biodiversity
• Develop partnership between different stakeholders
• Disseminate the results on MARINA platform
• Develop a network of common interest
• Create links between participants for future partnerships
• Conduct studies of renewable energy on the Black Sea coastal area
• Improve the legislative framework to encourage the capitalization process of renewable energy
• Upgrade the transport infrastructure for reneweble energy
• Use public-private partnerships as a new economical instrument
• Promote the meaning of the term "renewable energy systems"
• Build a costal protection system that cand harness the wave energy
• Develop educational programs to prepare specialists in the "renewable energy systems" field
• Rising the public awerness regarding the benefits of renewable energy by promoting the renewable energy methods
• Encouraged all the participants to work on all the solutions during the session.
• Use a method that encourages participants to work together in order to have an interactive group.
• Attract different stakeholders in order to have a homogeneity and complementarity of the group, to obtained complex inputs.
• Try to approach of potential participants and their engagement in convergent discussions with the future topic of the event.
• Consider a discussion phase that is long enough for all participants to be fully aware of all the implications of the proposed ideas without adding to much overall time to the duration of the workshop.
• Provide free and easier access to the results of the studies
• Translate in easy-to-understand messages research outputs and results for better dissemination. Consider using science mediators
• Identify or create a unique Body entrusted with the control of a process to ensure coordination and synergy of all stakeholders involved
• Ensure a ministerial umbrella to facilitate the educative process in school by scientists or scientific mediators
• Claim for an alignement between legislation and the changing scientific situation and technologic innovations
• Provide scientific education in all the scholar cycles: it is crucial
• Promote local communities and their traditions for societal relevance of the scientific outputs
• Check carefully the voting process, to avoid selfish or non correct behaviours which could distort the results
• Ensure the confort of the room (space around the tables, temperature, light etc) to reduce the stress and fatigue of the participants and to improve the results. Provide some small "gift" or surprise them somehow, to create afriendly environement for the discussion
• Define a clear agenda and respect it, but do not hesitate to be flexible and modify the schedule to reach the final results.
• Give the prticipants a nice amount of time to present themselves and their work/field of interest, in order to facilitate connection and cohoperation after the WS
• The participants did not followed up on the platform as they declared they were willing to do: there are too many platforms, they get lost or do not have time to explore another one
• The methodology is effective to build a common vision and give space to many different voices
• Provide the participants with the legislative aspects of the topic. If you are not an expert ask for it, because this is a critical aspects to generate RRI driven action
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology har been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event
• There is a serious need for regulations and legislations about the release of bacteria at sea
• Check carefully the voting process, to avoid selfish or non correct behaviours which could distort the results
• Consider the best way of collect votes, the n. of votes available for each participant, the rounds of votes, etc.
• Provide a synthetic, max 5 pages, info pack about the topic before the WS
• During the recruitment phase, ensure the methodology has been clearly explained and understood, to avoid misunderstanding during the event
• Create a biological inventory
• Enhance control mechanisms of your R&I outputs, according to ethical rules.
• Improving education/training
• Improve legislation
• Explore the questions that are relevant to the real-life concerns of the group
• While interpreting the results consider that participants can have different information and data about the topic: the "real" situation can be difficult to identify.
• Send an official invitation letter signed by the director/president of the institute organizing the workshop to facilitate the recruitement
• Use a (silent) rapporteur to get what has not been spoken by the group
• Apply different participatory method during the event to mantain a high level of attenction
• Present the topic approached from the beginning of the workshop
• Explain clearly the MARINA project goals
• Present the RRI concept with clearly examples and learn about RRI
• Offer a clear explanation of the methodology used to be as clear as possible to the participants
• Use methods for involving the active participation of the public and giving them the opportunity to express their opinions
• Raise public awareness on the real problems
• Mobilize stakeholders for active involvement
• Promote the hot topic and the results (media, partners, stakeholders, etc)
• Develop and implement awareness and educational campaigns
• Provide as much information as possible to the subject before the workshop
• Provide the results on MARINA platform
• Offer free access to the specialized information and share knowledge
• Send the final results of the workshop to the participants
• Use keynote speaker to introduce the topic thanks to specialists
• Ensure a good representation of professionals (industry related to the topic, policy makers, journalists) to have a balanced dialogue
• Ensure that participants can exchange and meet new people
• Recruite participants by telephone to ensure a great effectiveness of recruitment
• Define the date, finalise the hot topic and have comminucation material two months ahead
• Give participants more time to contribute to the ideas at other tables
• Enable each group to take the floor to present their results
• Involve senior/retired scientific experts to communicate on marine biotech. in layman's terms to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with the topic
• Train and convince policymakers, implementers, and investors to develop biotechnologies
• Add marine biotech. in school programmes to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with marine biotechnologies
• Train policymakers through communication tools and adapt legislation to facilitate the creation of a dynamic knowledge-sharing mechanism
• Start a survey to establish the relationship between local communities and the coastal areas and share results with politicians to put marine biotechnologies on the national agenda as an economic and sustainable opportunity
• Build a network to report challenges to policitians to put marine biotechnologies on the national agenda as an economic and sustainable opportunity
• Get media cover and social media presence to influence policy and decision makers
• Start a regional programme and raise awareness of tourism actos to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with marine biotechnologies
• Organise Open Days in companies to ensure that the general public becomes familiar with marine biotechnologies
• Facilitate collaboration between fundamental research and industry/market to create a dynamic knowledge-sharing mechanism
• Convince investors to facilitate the creation of a dynamic knowledge-sharing mechanism
• Connect all stakeholders through education and communication
• Make an inventory of innovations and tools, and facilitate collaboration and networking for the development of biotechnologies in France
• Make lists of actions and players, record skills, know-how and economic potential, identify best pratices and make full use of them to put marine biotechnologies on the national agenda
• There is the need of a international coordination to identify the possible impacts of innovations
• Equip urban open areas for open debates where local communities can meet frequently in order to exercise the rights guaranteed by Aahrus convention to develop sustainable decisions in a collective and legal manner
• Inform in a wider manner all societal actors about the issue
• Use your participatory event as a flywheel to organize other similar events
• Send a personalised invitation to ensures a better buy-in of targeted participants
• Start with a roundtable process so that everybody know each-other, and everyone can share their personal perspective of the subject
• Have participants rank the priorities and discuss from the highest to the lowest to co-construct a common vision
• Ensue that all participants stay until the end of the workshop to have coherent results
• Put in place a mutli-stakeholder dialogue to efficiently reduce plastic pollution
• Develop messages that make the problem tangible for everybody for instance by translating facts and figures into something simple and impactful.
• Implement trainings and guidance for careers around marine biotechnologies to reduce marine pollution
• Develop new tools and infrastructures of research on marine resources, particularly in inaccessible depths, but also for monitoring the marine environment, stocks of biomass or still unwanted algae
• Organise a European "Grenelle" of Marine Bioethic to do an inventory of knowledge, regulations and current projects and processes as well as to define indicators and good practices for the development of marine biotechs
• Develop a "Social and Solidarity Economy" type of framework in the field of marine biotechnologies.
• Raise awareness and spread information about marine biotechnologies to the different groups of stakeholders
• Ensure that all voices have an equal footing in the debate during the workshop
• Collect and share information and good practices to raise awareness on marine biotech and to reduce marine pollution
• Put in place a certification label of projects to draw guidelines for the sustainable development of marine biotechs
• Train educators and information relays on marine biotechnologies to develop them in the field of marine pollution

See also...

Workshop Methodology