Southern Illinois University Carbondale recently held the Synergetics conference, a symposium revival of Buckminster Fuller’s work, faculty, and former students at his last major home institution. Invited speakers included former Design students and faculty Bill Lunderman (Colgate) and Larry Busch. Invited speakers included me, Jennifer Rice (Fruitful Strategy), and Steelcase’s Melissa DeSota. Keynote was Thomas Zung, Fuller’s architect collaborator and archivist. This year they are also saving domes and putting a large one up at his former residence, and recovering his legacies. placing our current sustainability thinking in line with his lifelong dream of a world that works for everyone. A slide in my talk Collaborating for Complexity credits Fuller as the first philosopher of Thrivability, the reach beyond sustainability that we strive for in socially systemic innovation. Collaborating for Complexity: SIUC Synergetics View more presentations from Peter Jones In Critical Path Fuller said: “The success of all humanity can …
Organizational evolution: Are values really accessible in design?
In expanding roles as social designers and process facilitators, can we help communities and organizations change an enduring and robust values system? If we are outside of the social system being intervened, can we really help change values, or is this an inside job? I’ve been part of an online argument about this question. Systems thinkers have said (forever) that we need to identify and clarify the values of organizational participants to make progress on long-term problems. Essentially the argument is that institutional evolution must be guided by a clear articulation of the values base, or the status quo will overtake the envisioned innovations. Another position is that values clarity and desirable changes are worked out in the progress toward resolution of wicked problems. In a group situation with diverse perspectives, people learn each other’s positions in the authentic responses to concerns. Values are inferred from authentic responses to action, …
Thank You for Sharing
Michael Brenner proposes Shut Up Wednesdays, and I like this idea. We all talk too much these days. With two huge cohorts of talkers (Boomers + Millenials), “social everything,” and the general anxiety to look good when all is crashing down around us, I find myself overwhelmed by trivial chat. Here’s the key blurb on speechlessness: Never before have we had so many means to communicate. Never before has there been more clatter and clamor. Never before have we communicated less. Especially in our political life. The shrillness of this year’s overwrought electoral campaign is a powerful reminder of the difference. It’s all about feeling rather than thought — either emoting to stimulate the feelings of sympathizers or emoting to grate upon the feelings of enemies. That certainly is true of most Republicans and their Tea Party hit men. Thought and ideas be damned. It’s the primal scream — twisted …
Making Sense of Sensemaking with Dr. Brenda Dervin
Sense-making in Collaborative Practice: Can Media Design Support Sensemaking in Professional Practice Collaboration and Decision Making? This conversational workshop is designed as a “dialogue” between a panel of 5 question-askers and Dr. Brenda Dervin. The framing for the conversation has been developed by the panelists. Through a series of questions and answers, Dr. Dervin will attempt to build a bridge between her approach to Sense?Making Methodology and the different approaches to sense-making/sensemaking that ground the panelists’ questions. We envision a two-hour workshop-conversation inviting researchers and practitioners working in problems information seeking, interprofessional practice development, and other joint decision making challenges. Why has sense?making/sensemaking recently emerged as a lens through which we describe human experience with information, decision making, and complexity? Haven’t people always tried to “make sense?” If so, what have we learned from our attempts to describe the phenomenon of sensemaking in research and practice? Multiple disciplines have recognized …
