CONVERSATION WEEK IN NEW YORK CITY
March 23 – 29, 2009

Contact: Ron Gross at grossassoc@aol.com

Website: www.socratesway.com/conversationweek.html

Imagine thousands of New Yorkers coming together in public spaces throughout the five boroughs…discussing the ten most important questions facing the world today…and comparing their insights with those of comparable groups throughout the world, via the Internet.

That's going to happen during Conversation Week 2009, as part of the global program sponsored by www.conversationweek.org.

From March 23-29, 2009, New Yorkers will be offered a wealth of opportunities for street-level conversations in informal groups, using the city’s publics spaces such as its 329 parks (including “vest pocket” ones in every neighborhood), 81 branch libraries, 567 churches, 56 campuses, 111 office building atria, and other available venues. This project will build on successful precursors in Seattle, Paris, Vancouver, and other cities, and on the success of a pilot in Manhattan last year.

Twenty-five events are already scheduled for 2009.

These conversation groups will be maximally visible, open, handicapped-accessible, and hospitable to all. They will enhance neighborhood life with friendliness and mutual respect. They will also stimulate Big Talk – cultural, intellectual, political, and civic.

"We the people need to find our voices again," says Ronald Gross, project coordinator, who co-chairs the University Seminar on Innovation, at Columbia University. "Let's revive the great American tradition of discussing the challenges we face, passionat but respectfully."

The project will also display for a worldwide audience, an image of New York City as a modern-day Athens, where citizens engage with one another in convivial, productive, and exhilarating discourse.

As the vanguard of the global Conversation Week initiative, participants will have the added excitement of being part of a worldwide event. Thousands of people in over a hundred different countries will be choosing one among 10 important questions to discuss during that week, and in the aftermath anyone will be able to go on-line and find out how other groups throughout the world handled their question.

This non-profit project is sponsored by the Conversation Café (www.conversationcafe.org). The project coordinator is Ronald Gross, co-chair of the University Seminar on Innovation in Education, at Columbia University (www.columbiaseminar.org).