Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC.
Planters East York Civic Centre. With frost coming, does the city put cabbages into its planters? I’m not a gardener, so I don’t recognize flora well. (East York Civic Centre) 20111112 1549Pantages fixture. Bentwood hanging electrical light in the Rehearsal Hall of the Pantages Hotel. While the venue name suggests entertainment, the Canon Theatre is down the street. Today’s meeting is technical briefings with the usual PowerPoint. Long room, good sound reinforcement for presenters. (Toronto) 20111115 1540Red eggs for 100-day birthday party. Traditional Chinese symbol and celebration that baby will live. Our sons had one-month haircut parties, a little longer gives new mom an opportunity to catch up more on sleep. Ten course meal followed. (Markham) 20111119 2003Vancouver Chinatown gate on Pender Street. Dusk comes early in Vancouver, on walk from west to east Pender Street. Noticed more Chinese herbalists in 2 block radius than we have in Toronto. Encountered one of East Side Cultural Crawl sites, artist live/work space on third floor of Main Street building. (Vancouver) 20111120 16:36Container cranes, Port of Vancouver. Eastward view from Seabus headed south to Vancouver. Illustrates city as a working port on the Pacific Rim. Ferry route uses Port as landmark, then turns slightly west for Waterfront Station. Rainy morning had short respite before participation continued for rest of day. (Vancouver, BC) 20111121 1054Vancouver Art Gallery, 2nd floor landing. Collection leans towards the conceptual at Vancouver Art Gallery, lots of phenomenology in contemporary and last century works. Tuesday night admission by donation, visited with DY. Photographing art is not permitted, but some building features are scenic (Vancouver, BC) 20111122 1956Stainless steel text, Burrard St. and Cordova St. Public art installation on west face of Vancouver building tower at Canada Place. Liam Gillick (2009) “Lying on top of a building the clouds / looked no near than when / I was lying on the street”. With no spaces between the words, reading the text would be better on a non-rainy day to decipher the meaning. City of Vancouver Public Art Program, presumably in cooperation with the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, where it’s installed. (Vancouver, BC) 20111124 1258
YVR, mountains to north. A clear day in Vancouver, after a week of steady rain. There was snow on the ground when I arrived. (Vancouver, BC) 20111125 1208
Beyond city-building as urban planning is the idea of a Music City. This sees development of cultural life across a wide variety of arts, alongside economic benefits brought to the region. At the 119th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario in March 2024, socio-cultural designer Adam Hogan and musician-designer Ziyan Hossain joined moderator Zaid Khan in conversation. […]
Having reached year 6 of an espoused 10-year journey, the Systems Changes Learning Circle is (again) convening monthly Dialogues on Social Innovation at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto. Starting up in 2019, the Circle was convening regularly in the Climate Ventures space at 192 Spadina Avenue. The pandemic interrupted in-person meetings, and the […]
EQ Lab runs Dialogic Drinks, “the kind of philosophical discussion you have in a coffee shop or bar”, twice per week. Wtih this group interested loosely in questions on leadership, I was invited to host an online session on March 12 (evening in Hong Kong and Singapore, really early in Toronto) and on March 14-15 […]
At the 118th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario in February 2024, behavioral scientist Cameron D. Norman and design strategist Tara Campbell were invitied for a conversation guided by Zaid Khan. The panelists are both alumni of the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program at OCADU. Some time ago, they had conducted a research project on evaluation […]
An article on “sciencing and philosophizing”, coauthored by Gary S. Metcalf and myself, has been published in the Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, following the ISSS 2023 Kruger Park conference in South Africa, last July. There’s a version cacned on the Coevolving Commons. This article started in a series of conversations […]
For the January 2024 Systems Thinking Ontario session, educational game designer Scott DeJong and innovation designer Geoff Evamy Hill joined a conversation moderated by Zaid Khan. Mutual interests in the new field of educational design and games were at the core of the discussion. This was an opportunity for systems thinkers to expand their knowledge on […]
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
How might the quality of an action research initiative be evaluated? — begin paste — We have linked our five validity criteria (outcome, process, democratic, catalytic, and dialogic) to the goals of action research. Most traditions of action research agree on the following goals: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b) the achievement of action-oriented […]
