Ben Roberts

Via the Conversation Collaborative, Ben Roberts works as a group process artist to make virtual engagement come alive through stand-alone events and in conjunction with in-person gatherings.

Over the past ten years, Ben has been among the pioneers in adapting large group conversational processes such as World Cafe, Open Space Technology, and Appreciative Inquiry to the virtual realm, as well as integrating in-person and virtual formats within a single conversation, gathering or engagement.  He uses these and other processes to support collaboration, build communities of practice and purpose, and host large scale conversations in service to the work being done across multiple dimensions of local-to-global systemic transformation.

Ben’s hosting work began in 2009 when he organised a weekly discussion salon  at a local coffee house in Newtown, Connecticut (USA), where he lives with his wife Kim.  A year after the launch of the salon, he decided to make convening and hosting both in-person and virtual gatherings the full-time focus of his work. His experience as a convener and change agent has come to fruition over the past year through the Now What?! global gatherings on “the art of being fully human in the time of crisis.”  The most recent edition of Now What?! ran from March 23-April 30, 2020 and the next one will take place sometime between September 22 and November 20, 2020.