Young SIETAR’s Annual Congresses aim to foster participants’ professional growth, personal development, and understanding and appreciation of local culture and intercultural issues.
This year, to try to achieve this even better, we have chosen to ‘unplug’ ourselves from the well-worn “traditional” conference format (pre-planned individual workshops tightly scheduled in parallel), and apply a highly inclusive and participative conference format that draws on current best practice.
The conference consists of a facilitated learning process that combines well-known participatory knowledge creation methods such as the World Café, Open Space Technology, and Appreciative Enquiry with periods of ad-hoc workshops offered by participants based on demand for information, theory or skill-development as it emerges.
In short, we have designed a conference that will align more closely with your interests and needs, while drawing on everybody’s insights and expertise.
What might that look like?
Day 1:
The Learning Process will begin with Day One’s immersion into the local culture, where you will get the chance to experience Cairo and its people 
“one on one”. As well as deepen your understanding of local cultural issues, we expect these experiences to fuel our conversations with additional “questions that matter”, such as:
- Am I as interculturally competent as I think I am?
- How comfortable am I with stretching my comfort zone?
- Where is the challenge and how can we move forward?
Days 2-4
Experience has confirmed that conference learning outcomes increase significantly when participants engage together in meaningful conversations about the issues that matter the most to them, and so this is exactly what we have planned for you at the beginning of Day 2:
Welcome to Young SIETAR’s Cairo Cafe... sit and relax. Imagine you're sitting in a cozy cafe, at a table with friends, colleagues and perhaps some strangers, too. You may have noticed the tables are covered with paper and that writing²drawing materials are available. You will find questions or issues on each table waiting to be explored.
Feel free to discuss, draw, write, paint or just be silent as you wish – but contribute. Now is the right time and place for issues that matter and questions you always wanted to ask and discuss but you have never had a chance or time to. In a few minutes you will change tables and you will meet new people, and as you share what you’ve discussed so far, new questions will arise and fresh ideas will flow into the conversation.
The facilitators will keep the process focused and productive, helping us produce a visual map of our questions and answers. In the afternoon, we might break into smaller groups, where various participants facilitate mini-workshops, give lectures or invite focused conversations (Open-space Style) on specific issues. Note that throughout the conference, a number of invited guests will be there as participants (just like you – there as experts who are willing to talk ‘with’ rather that ‘at’ other participants).
As the process unfolds over the following two and a half days, you can expect to cover considerable ground as we collectively address our most meaningful questions as they emerge from the process, sharing and exploring our ideas, values, knowledge, know-how, practices, and personal behaviors.
Methods employed will be various and varied in terms of learning style preferences, and group-managed mechanisms will be put in place to capture and share our learnings. Each day will be orchestrated to include moments of large-group, subgroup, and individual work and reporting, as well as free time.
As a participant, the only requirement is a commitment to active participation and a temporary suspension of any belief you may hold in a knowledge hierarchy that places you at the bottom, or at the top.
We look forward to your involvement!
For more info on the World café and the Open Space Technology, visit the following links:
http://www.theworldcafe.com/
http://www.openspaceworld.org/
http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-worldcafe.html
http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-Openspace.html
For more info on participatory knowledge creation and to explore why these meeting facilitation methods are essential to the toolkit of those working with multicultural groups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_inquiry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_action_research
