Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC.
Prince Edward Viaduct at dusk. View west from Danforth, towards towers at Bloor and Yonge. Red sky at sunset suggests sunny day tomorrow. Temperature just above freezing means winter pants, park and cap for cycling. Approaching the shortest day of the year, getting dark (Toronto) 20111202 1636Vegan Raw Festival. Christmas Cannelloni, with zucchini was wrap, red pepper and arugula for festive colours, cheese of cashews, agave, lemon juice and beetroot. Delicious. Free samples courtesy of Jennifer Italiano and her chef, from Live Food Bar (Toronto) 20111203 1438Scrap Metal Gallery entry. “1. If this sign is on, the gallery is open. 2. If this sign if off, the gallery is closed but we forgot to turn the sign off. 3. If this sign is off, the gallery is closed. 4. If this sign is off, the gallery is open but we forgot to turn the sign on.” An installation titled “This Sign (For Scrap Metal), 2011, by Micah Lexier. Contemporary art at its finest, in a new private gallery in the back courtyard of 11 Dublin Street, in the Bloor Street West / Lansdowne Avenue neighbourhood (Toronto) 20111210 1505
Alpine Skis On Skytrain. Symbol of west coast living. Have seen riders with skis and snowboards on Skytrain as well as Seabus, because public transportation to North Vancouver slopes from home is so easy. (Vancouver, B.C.) 20111220 1554
The idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates.
Should we do, or not-do? Russell Ackoff, over many years, wrote about (negative) potential consequences: There are two possible types of decision-making mistakes, which are not equally easy to identify. (1) Errors of commission: doing something that should not have been done. (2) Errors of omission: not doing something that should have been done. For […]
The final publication of the October 2016 Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium workshop "Some Future Paths for Design Professionals: DesignX and Systemic Design" was published as “Systemic Design Agendas in Education and Design Research” in FormAkademisk, following 2 years of rewrites, reviews and revisions.
Federated wiki is deployed on a node.js server, an environment which has become available on some cPanel shared hosting providers. Here are some instructions written while restoring a wiki site originally installed in 2014-2015 on a cloud provider.
Reading The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis, reminded me of a PhD course at UBC with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, before they were recognized as Nobel prize candidates.
Before judging democratic systems over authoritarian, examine the functioning of governments through its diplomats, where plutocracy has an alternative in meritocracy, says @mahbubani_k @longnow @asiasocietysfx. [1:19:30] … when people compare the American government with the Chinese government, they say: “This…Read more ›
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
Talk at @gtalug on Let’s Learn Tech Online @torontolibrary with @p2pu @CiscoNetAcad @TorontoESS. Linux Unhatched online course conducted in groups of 8 to 12, meetings twice per week in person. Non-technical facilitator encourages peers to work out understanding together. Found…Read more ›
The WordPress O2 plugin with P2-Breathe theme results in a Facebook-like or Twitter-like streaming interface. The idea was first presented in 2013, evolving from the P2 theme in 2009 (originally launched as Prologue in 2008) when hosted on wordpress.com. “Beau…Read more ›
Talk at the Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow, announced at http://www.che.ac.uk/tim-ingold-talks-about-the-sustainability-of-everything-10th-sept-2016/ Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLv9Gk7XrI and https://vimeo.com/182572764 This digest was created by editing the text transcript generated by Youtube. View the video yourself for a more authentic reproduction. Lapses, grammatical…Read more ›
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
Many who cite #KurtLewin haven't read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the "refreezing" part of "unfreezing → changing → refreezing" emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.
Human organizations may learn from wolves, with groups of 2 to 6 taking down elk, and cooperative expert groups of 9 to 13+ taking down larger bison. #DanielMacNulty, #AimeeTallian #DanielRStahler #DouglasWSmith (2014).
Meeting effectiveness is reduced after 7 people are involved, say @BainInsights consultants #Blenko, #Mankins, #Rogers. Follow the Rule of Seven for meetings. Who should come to a meeting is always a sensitive issue, and the basic precept is often “The more the merrier.” But more is rarely better when it comes to making decisions. Our […]
