London, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario; Mountain View, California; San Jose, California; Oakland, California; Alameda, California; Vancouver, British Columbia; Boston, Massachusetts
Restaurant solarium: Pendant lights above booths, in Greek restaurant for lunch. Comfortable, casual space on a grey, rainy day. Music from the 1970s sets mood for baby boomers. On the way home from Michigan, venue chosen serendipitously. (Four Seasons Restaurant, London, Ontario) 20151201Armenian lunch: Zataar, beef manakeesh, kishek with sujuk, moutabbal, tabbouleh, then a half order of mixed BBQ platter. Extraordinary flavour when the food arrived hot to the table, declining as it cooled in the approaching winter. Celebration of DY’s birthday deferred to weekend when family could be together. (Paramount Fine Foods, Yonge Street, Toronto) 20151206Terminal 1 Christmas: December not yet cold, so holiday cue is a reminder of family times to come at end of month. Departing on flight to California, so thoughts of snowflakes even farther away. (Toronto Pearson Airport Terminal 1, U.S. gates, Toronto, Ontario) 20151208The Milk Pail Market: Grocery shopping at an institution with a history of local produce back into the 1970s. Found Comice pears, plus many other fruits and vegetables to stock up nephew’s refrigerator. They’re known for their cheese selection, which isn’t an attraction for me. (The Milk Pail Market, Mountain View, CA) 20151208Santa Teresa County Park: Facing east, the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton is far away in the distance. Walked out from IBM Almaden towards summit, along road where cars are blocked from water reservoirs and power transformer stations. (Santa Teresa County Park, San Jose, CA) 20151209Julian Street Inn: Designed by Christopher Alexander in 1988 in the style of a country inn, a shelter for the homeless demonstrates the practical side of a Berkeley professors known as an architectural theorist. Down the street from San Jose Arena (now SAP Center) that was completed in 1993. (Julian Street Inn, San Jose, California) 20151209Deepening systems knowledge: Lunch with Ian Mitroff @MitroffCrisis discussing complexity vs. complicatedness, and ways of teaching systems thinking to students. Ian had a copy of “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter on his shelf, and said that he would read it on my recommendation. (Oakland, CA) 20151210San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art: With Jack Park @gardenfelder, viewing Jim Campbell (2011) “Exploded View (details)” of 1152 LEDs hanging by wire, electronics showing low resolution images from various perspectives in a 360-degree walkaround. Artist had former career as a Silicon Valley engineer, now designs pieces where lights are programmed and often constructed in three dimensions. (San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, California) 20151111East Ocean Restaurant: In line for Sunday dim sum, sampling Chinese restaurants for future nuptial festivities. In California East Bay, have to drive across multiple cities to reach authentic banquet scale venues. (East Coast Seafood Restaurant, Alameda, California) 20151213Cows near the summit: IBM leases some of its land to cattle ranchers near Santa Teresa County Park. Early morning arrival for meetings had greeting of mooing, just across from the parking lot. (IBM Almaden, San Jose, California) 20151215Accelerated Discovery Lab: Former library space has been repurposed so that researchers and industry practitioners can collaborate in a central, open space. Workshop on Mycroft Cognitive Mediator moved out of windowless meeting room for an hour, in a change on scenery. Presentation includes Labbook prototype currently under research. (IBM Almaden, San Jose, California) 20151215Rainy Vancouver waypoint: Direct SanFran-Toronto flight cancelled, so earlier flight via Vancouver makes up some time. Luggage missing, should eventually be delivered to house. Domestic security inspected zhong rice dumpling wrapped in banana leaves, recognised by ethnic Chinese screener. (Vancouver International Airport, British Columbia) 20151217Queen Street Viaduct: Dusk on Christmas Eve, biking westward to see how much the city is shutting down for the holidays. Unusually warm for December, prospects for snow anytime soon seem far away. (Queen Street Viaduct, Riverside, Toronto, Ontario) 20151224Serano Bakery: Family-run Greek neighbourhood bakery, for crusty whole wheat bread and taramasalata. An exercise destination, biking uphill in below-freezing weather, past two artisanal bakeries who offer products at twice the price. Large store with sweets for dessert. Will sample with family at dinner tonight, and judge whether we’ll become repeat customers. (Serano Bakery, East York, Ontario) 20151228MIT Sloan School of Management: In 1982, I was #2 on a list of 1 for a PhD program in Management Information Systems at the MIT Sloan School, applying with a Masters degree from Northwestern U. with high recommendations. Went to UCLA PhD program, dropped out first day, then to U. British Columbia for 2 years before dropping out. Really need to finish this PhD at Aalto U. in 2016, as have been around graduate schools for so long. The MIT decision going another way would have been a completely different life. (Siteman Dining Room, MIT Building E-62, Cambridge, Massachusetts) 20151231
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston: Tara Donovan (2003) “Untitled (Pins)” is a precise cube of size 17 straight pins. Behind, right, is Philip Taaffe (1983) “Untitled III”, a linoprint collage on muslin on canvas. On left is Shannon Ebber (2011) “XIS” archival pigment prints. Exhibits on 4th floor of gallery, quick stop of Silver Line bus from downtown to airport. (Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston) 20151231
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 […]
