Toronto, Ontario; Richmond Hill, Ontario; Don Mills, Ontario; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Berkeley, California; San Jose, California; Mountain View, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Gatos, California
David Crombie Park: Two hours before @nuitblancheTO starts, still preparing for public art installation at many locations across the city. Set up and teardown for outdoor venues are easier in daylight, with most visitors attracted in the darkness of night. (Nuit Blanche Toronto, David Crombie Park, The Esplanade, Toronto, Ontario) 20161001
Kevin Cooley 2016 Fallen Water – Niagara Escarpment:
Video installation @BrookfieldPLTO @nuitblancheTO Kevin Cooley 2016 “Fallen Water – Niagara Escarpment” closing tonight. Biking around downtown at dusk, an hour before official start of the event after night falls. (Allen Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place, Financial District, Toronto, Ontario) 20161001
2 St. Clair Avenue West: View northward on Yonge Street from shows trees of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and the towers along Eglinton Avenue and beyond. Before 1973, the subway only ran to Eglinton Avenue, called North Toronto, and Rosedale up to St. Clair Avenue was the affluent residential area. This intersection isn’t the destination that it used to be. (2. St. Clair Avenue West, Deer Park, Toronto, Ontario) 20161005Darling Building: Fireside @TorontoJS with @mhartington @devgirlFL @macdonst @tazsingh hosted by @cfndrs has large screen version of flames. Answered questions on Ionic and Phonegap/Cordova, much of the audience was new to mobile development. Session started with attendees rearranging the room from computer working spaces to a seats facing the stage. (Ci. Strategy+Design, Darling Building, 96 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20161005Premiere Banquet Centre: Not a banquet, instead reservation of dinner for 12 in the extended family calling for a larger table. West coast visitors and rest of family were uptown, so opportunity for a leisurely dinner to catch up on news. Our children have moved away, so we’re bridging information across ties. (Premier Banquet Centre, Leslie Street, Richmond Hill, Ontario) 20161009UToronto iSchool: Exploring polydisciplinary interests @ischool_TO @prof_lyons @duffwm @snousala, @daviding, with @jpovaska behind the lens. Lots of coincidental threads that could be tied together from Toronto to Shanghai and Europe. (University of Toronto Faculty of Information, St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20161012OCADU RSD5: Workshop @RSDSymposium @OCAD U Toronto led by @snousala on Design X and Systemic Design precedes Emerging Practices meeting at Tongji U Shanghai by only a day, can’t be in two places at one time. Organic approach to discussing led to five groups with different perspectives on the future of design. Further digesting into findings is taking more time offline. (Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium, OCAD U, Toronto, Ontario) 20161013
Riverside laneway: Commute to @RSDSymposium for @snousala @jpovaska from east side has been 25 minutes west over Don River bridge early in day, then back with headlights in the dark later. Warm and sunny weather on first and last day makes seeing the city near sidewalk scale enjoyable. The terrain had been mostly flat. (Laneway between Booth Avenue and Logan Avenue, south of Queen Street East, Riverside neighbourhood. Toronto, Ontario) 20161015Osaka Restaurant: All you can eat sushi, closing out 4 days of conference, universities and incubator visits. Flights tomorrow morning. will probably fall asleep en route. An exceptionally busy month of intensive collaboration. (Osaka Restaurant, Don Mills, Ontario) 20161015SFIA BART Station: Morning arrival at SFO, unexpectedly rainy. Beating traffic through San Fran and over bridges via easy public transportation. Will have experience of Bay Area north for the next few days. (San Francisco International Airport BART station, California) 20161016Italian Colors: Relaxed dinner at initiation of a new joint writing project. Deep thinking needs unpacking time to contemplate ideas approached from multiple angles. Arrived on early flight from east to west, were should be sharper after a good night’s rest. (Italian Colors, Montclair Village, Oakland. California) 20161016Oakland Hills: Dinner including 2 babies and 1 toddler, adults served lactose-free, dairy-free and vegetarian diets. Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, dessert of gluten-free cheesecake, vegan chocolate cake and limoncello reflects California variety and quality of food. Network of researchers, but little talk of day jobs, more about visiting and living in the Bay Area. (Oakland Hills, California) 20161017Campanile Tower: Campus tour by an alumnus who attended Berkeley when tuition was token. View over campus to the southeast. (Campanile Sather Tower, U.C. Berkeley, California) 20161018NextEV: Leisure + recreation area on second floor, to give a break from Silicon Valley thinking. Tour of new offices, ribbon cutting was last week. Academics coming up the curve on technologies to be released over next few years. (NextEV. N. First Street, San Jose, California) 20161020Rengstorff: Gratitude to nephew for providing temporary home for researchers, and venue for dinner with local family and friend. Menu included poached fish because farmed Canadian salmon because cheaper than at home, and yam noodles with fresh oyster mushrooms and woods ears. Evening scheduled a little early, full day meeting tomorrow. (Rengstorff, Mountain View, California) 20161020Santa Teresa County Park: Afternoon walk to clear minds from conversation on cognitive systems and service systems. Singing chairs art installation past small gate on trail outside IBM Research Almaden building. Mary Edson, Gary Metcalf, Stuart Kauffman, Susu Nousala, Stephen Kwan, David Ing, Jim Spohrer. (Santa Teresa County Park, San Jose, California) 20161021Fremont Street: Doing cultural anthropology in Las Vegas on a Saturday night. First registered for World of Watson conference, then Viet dinner, fire-breathing praying mantis at Downtown Container Park, and joined the crowds watching zipliners overhead and street performers on the ground. With many people dressed for partying, sometimes hard to separate visitors from vendors. (Fremont Street, Las Vegas, Nevada) 20161022St. Mark’s Square: Dinner on the plaza next to the stage with musical trio that appeared three times in the course of a leisurely meal. Escaped from conference at Four Seasons, when concentration lost after 9.5 hours of sessions. Walked from The Linq to The Wynn Resort, noting the signature scents at each property. (Mercato Della Pescheria, St. Mark’s Square, Venetian Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada) 20161023McCarran Airport Concourse D: Unusually rainy day in Las Vegas, lightning had been striking ground at a distance. Morning flight delayed into afternoon. Continuing hop back to the Bay Area, will still change beds a few more times before going home. (McCarran Airport, Concourse D, Las Vegas, Nevada) 20161024Doppio Zero Pizzeria: After strolling Castro Street, decided on a non-Asian dinner. Three thin crust Neapolitan style pizzas plus an order of spaghetti, spinach salad and fries with truffle oil meant both eating too much and still taking leftovers home. Opportunity for newsy conversation, although hard surfaces make for a noisy restaurant. (Doppio Zero Pizzeria, Castro Street, Mountain View, California) 20161024Accelerated Discovery Lab: Discussing @rarar @snousala trajectories of design and research, appreciating generational evolution as interactive technologies have risen. Puzzle includes design at user interface level, and in enterprise systems. (Accelerated Discovery Lab, IBM Almaden Research Centre, San Jose, California) 20161025IBM Almaden Research Center: Service science @snousala @cher95112 evolving with rise of data science. How do communities of practice in design relate to innovation? (IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California) 20161025Los Gatos: Outlining @The_ISSIP perspective @yassimoghaddam @snousala beyond technology platforms and business model platforms, service ecosystems connected through APIs. Finding some common themes with other conversations today. (Los Gatos, California) 20161025Barrows Hall: Talk @SocSciMatrix Tove Frymker visiting from Lund U. at CCRM Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. On “From collective improvisation to collective problem solving”. Existing definitions are unclear, taken for granted. At beginning of field research, looking for feedback. (CCRM, Social Science Matrix, University of California Berkeley) 20161026Faculty Club: Lunch elevated to salad bar at Faculty Club, as appointment with niece intersected with follow-up from morning meeting. It’s okay to have meals there, just don’t sit at the Nobel Laureate table. Enough time to catch up on news before she had to go to class. (Faculty Club, University of California Berkeley) 20161026School of Information: Drop-in @snoussala on @rjglushko in office, the day before he’s leaving for Hawaii. Shirt to match the mood. Last time we met in person was at the dawn of service science. (School of Information, South Hall, University of California Berkeley) 20161026Hotel Kabuki: Corner suite with balcony wrapped around, view north into Japantown. West of city centre, walking distance to conference at USF over weekend. Dropped off colleague at SFO airport after 17 days of traveling together, she does it with carry-on luggage. Hotel is on Japan Plaza. (Hotel Kabuki, Post Road, Japantown, San Francisco, California) 20161028USF McLaren Center: Opening #puarl2016 @hajoneis Seth Wachter @pbaumgartner theme of The Regenerative City. Multiple sessions on pattern language, more emphasis on urban planning and architecture this year than Purplsoc 2015. (McLaren Conference Centre, University of San Francisco, California) 20161028USF Cowell Hall: : Presented paper at #puarl2016 conference in one of four parallel tracks. Audience ranged from newcomers to the body of work, through to a coauthor with Christopher Alexander of the original 1971 A Pattern Language book. About 100 attendees at this conference. USF is still lively on a Saturday with singing and music competing in the main room through a thin room partition wall. (Cowell Hall, University of San Francisco, California) 20161029USF Kalmanovitz Hall: Context on Max Jacobson #puarl2016 paper on @EdRobertsCampus, saying architect recognised experts are the vision-impaired and wheelchair users of the facility. no pattern language for them. More important than beauty is the collective space welcoming interaction between parties in the facility. Jacobson was a coauthor with Christopher Alexander of 1977 A Pattern Language, then practicising architect with Murray Silverstein for 35 years. Had been teaching at USF as adjunct for past few years. (Kalmanovitz Hall, University of San Francisco, California) 20161030USF Kalmanovitz Hall: Pattern language on federated wiki @michaelwmehaffy #puarl2016, not frozen in text inside book. Search hits for pattern language in architecture is one-tenth that in software development. Proposes extending the 1977 A Pattern Language content online in the living form originally described in the work itself. Mehaffy dissertation including real-time updating of charts with federated wiki was defended at TU Delft in November 2015. (Kalmanovitz Hall, University of San Francisco, California) 20161030Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: Tom Sachs (2007) Apollo LEM as part of YBCA Space Program Europa exhibition. A short distraction late on Sunday afternoon, before walk and dinner in Chinatown. Tomorrow making the jump back into Eastern Time at home. (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Mission Street, Dan Francisco, California) 20161030SFO Gate G98: Rigo 23 (1999) “Thinking of Balmy Alley” is a 378×240 inch ceramic type mosaic hanging in the atrium on the wall above the doors to Gate G98. The artist, residing in San Fran, was inspired by a mural (since destroyed) painted in 1993 by the artist and local youth in Balmy Alley, located in San Francisco’s Mission District. This work is lit by daylight through a window to its right. It is part of the collection of the SFO Museum, if travellers will take a moment to look up from their destination-oriented travel. (Gate G98, San Francisco International Airport, California) 20161031
Douglas Austrom and Carolyn Ordowich shared some reflections developed jointly with Bert Painter (Vancouver, BC) on some draft humanistic principles, the three Tavistock perspectives, and a meta-methodology with Systems Thinking Ontario. Proponents of Socio-Technical Systems design refer back to the 1960s-1980s research of Fred Emery and Eric Trist of the Tavistock Institute. Calls to reinvent […]
Doug Schuler joined the monthly Systems Thinking Ontario meeting for a conversation about the potential for patterns and pattern languages to help address wicked problems on a large scale, via technology, loose coordination, and social commitments. Doug was exposed to the original A Pattern Language in the mid-1970s. It aimed to generate towns and buildings […]
Literacy has been proposed as an understanding of a small number of pervasive principles appropriate to making informed personal and societal decisions. Systems literacy includes an understanding of systems that influence you, and your influence on systems. Peter Tuddenham has been leading an initiative on Systems Literacy across a variety of systems organizations, particularly with […]
The Creative Systemic Research Platform (CSRP) Institute, led by Susu Nousala and Jelena Sucic, is distinctive in approaching systemic design from a bottom-up, longitudinal perspective. The co-presidents were able to join us in conversation at a Systems Thinking Ontario session, remotely from Finland and Switzerland, at a significant time disadvantage. Many approaches to systemic design […]
To appreciate how systemicists worldwide collaborate, Gary S. Metcalf joined Systems Thinking Ontario for a conversation. Gary served as president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences 2007-2008, and of the International Federation for Sysrtems Research 2010-2016. From 2003 to 2018, he was a graduate instructor in Organizational Systems and Research on the faculty […]
While the term “theory of change” is often used by funders expecting an outcome of systems change for their investment, is there really a theory there? The November 2020 Systems Thinking Ontario session was an opportunity for Peter H. Jones (OCADU) and Ryan J. A. Murphy (Memorial U. of Newfoundland) to extend talks that they […]
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 ›
For the @ArchFoundation, #TimIngold distinguishes outcome-oriented making from process-oriented growing, revisiting #MartinHeidegger “Building Dwelling Thinking”. Organisms are made; artefacts grow. The distinction seems obvious, until you stop to ask what assumptions it contains, about the inside and outside of things…Read more ›
In web conference, #HermanDaly says #EcologicalEconomics used to get attacked from the right, now it's from the left. Panel @revkin @jon_d_erickson @ktkish @sophiesanniti #TimCrowshaw #KatieHorner livestreamed #sustainwhat .Read more ›
Complementing the idea of a @longnow , @nfergus provokes the challenge of a #shortthen as the online social media platforms distract the larger perspectives on history.Read more ›
In his system of system concepts, Russell Ackoff made the distinction between reformation and transformation in many of his lectures. Here are two written sources. From Redesigining Society (2003) … Systemic Transformation A system is transformed, as contrasted with reformed, when its structure or functions are changed fundamentally. Such changes are discontinuous and qualitative, quantum […]
While Ackoff’s definitions of goals, objectives and ideals have been republished (and rewritten) multiple times, the 1972 definitions were derived from his original dissertation work. Accordingly, in addition to the human-readable definitions, some mathematical notation is introduced. — begin paste — OUTCOMES 2.30. End (an immediate intended outcome) of a subject A in a particular […]
The fifth way of knowing, as described by West Churchman, is a Singerian inquiring system. (This fifth way of knowing is more colloquially called Unbounded Systems Thinking in Mitroff and Linstone (1993)). The book On Purposeful Systems (Ackoff and Emery, 1972) was derived by Ackoff’s dissertation that was controversially coauthored with West Churchman. Purpose can […]
Understanding Process-Function Ecology by Ashwani Vasishth leads to luminaries in the systems sciences, including C. West Churchman, Eugene P. Odum and Timothy F.H. Allen.
As an irony, the 2020 book, The Innovation Delusion by #LeeVinsel @STS_News + #AndrewLRussell @RussellProf shouldn’t be seen as an innovation, but an encouragement to join @The_Maintainers where an ongoing thought network can continue. The subtitle “How Our Obsession with the New has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most” recognizes actual innovation, as distinct from […]
An online social network reproduces content partially based on algorithms, and partially based on the judgements made by human beings. Either may be viewed as positive or negative. > The trade-offs came into focus this month [November 2020], when Facebook engineers and data scientists posted the results of a series of experiments called “P(Bad for […]
