More relaxed pandemic restrictions allowed extended family gatherings, and the beginning of international travel.
Toronto, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; Brussels, Belgium
Ontario Place Marina: Placid lagoon with exhibition pods overhead, first opened in 1971 and now underused. North section of docks with boats still in the water, leaves haven’t yet turned to autumn colours. Exhibition Place beyond, with BMO Field a splash of colour amongst towers. (Ontario Place Martina, Lakeshore Boulevard West, Toronto, Ontario) 20211001Delicious Shawarma & Falafel: Unusually warm fall Saturday made outdoor dining on a covered patio feel like travelling to tropical climes. Fast food counter served takeout falafel wrap and beef shawarma with garlic sauce and fries in large quantity. We wore masks inside ordering, no vaccination passport required. (Delicious Shawarma & Falafel , Birchmount Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario) 20211002Collision Gallery: Popup @culture_to #ArtworxTO exhibition with #LauraGrier in Take Space for Self Care in Urban Centres. Wood panels smudged with ink in the performance of caring activities, staged by the windows overlooking Tembo, Mother of Elephants, and the Commerce Court Courtyard Fountain. Venue semi-hidden in the financial centre, received a personal briefing from the curator, with offers of tea and blanket for warmth. (Collision Gallery, Commerce Court Courtyard, Toronto, Ontario) 20211008Riverside neighbourhood: Thanksgiving dinner with Peking Duck, since the only family member who really liked turkey is now vegan. Yee family from Vancouver now represented with one cousin a Toronto resident, and the other visiting from university in Montreal. Celebration started by writing in small handmade gratitude books, circulated around the table. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20211011Regent Park Athletic Grounds: Semi-spontanous organization in a field large enough for at least three soccer games. Occasional runner around the outer track, then a couple putting down small orange cones to mark space at the sound end of the field. Dusk arriving within the hour, neighbourhood residents get a little exercise before it’s totally dark. (Regent Park Athlectic Grounds, Shuter Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20211012Riverside neighbourhood: Post-pandemic, it takes my sister and brother-in-law to come in from Houston, to bring my father down from Scarborough for a visit. It’s been years since our sons used to see their grandfather every month for dim sum. Entertaining at home with takeout food allows more time for conversation, when we’re all on workday schedules. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20211013Playter Estates: Salon hosted by @redesign + @playthink, in advance of systemic design conference in a few weeks that will be centered in Delft, across the Atlantic Ocean. More social than topical, amongst colleagues who haven’t met in person in many months. As with many parties, everyone ends up in the kitchen. (Playter Estates, Toronto, Ontario) 20211016Wellesley-Parliament Square: Street corner wall has water babbling from top over brick and slabs, fronted by green bush, and obscuring the parking lot behind. Minor decorative amenity at the south end of a complex of high rise towers, as the densest population district in the city. Proposals to redevelop the area since 2018 would probably repurpose the surface parking lot, and presumably remove this mundane feature. (Wellesley-Parliament Square, Rose Avenue, St. jamestown, Toronto, Ontario) 20211019Willison Square: Midweek evening in Spadina Chinatown, restaurants are open for business but few pedestrians. Weekly family dinner out for a change, checks at the door for double vaccination and identification. Noticed lighted art installations on the drive home, we would be more conscious tourists if this wasn’t our home town. (Willison Square, Spadina Chinatown, Toronto, Ontario) 20211020Playter Estates: Local preconference hosted by @redesign, in advance of @RSDSymposium. Last session @aupward on progress @FlourishingBiz with origin story, and challenges with publishing in academic journals. All-day meeting an opportunity to meet active researchers in person, I arrived late afternoon due to prior commitments. (Playter Estates, Toronto, Ontario) 20211023Centre for Social Innovation: First return to CSI building in almost 2 years, murals are brighter than i remember. We decided to scope out the readiness for a regular Systems Thinking Tea, in the Climate Ventures space, having continued core team meetings triweekly. Looks like community mostly hasn’t returned to shared offices, doors are locked by 5pm. (Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20211028Maple Leaf Lounge, YUL:. Hot entrees under chrome warmers, but service to passengers seated in the lounge, quickly delivered by an app with an NFC locator. Sated, so that we might sleep on the 6.5 hour flight to Brussels. I miss the old days when the international lounge was more freewheeling. (Maple Leaf Lounge, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, Montreal, Quebec) 20211130
Eglise Sainte Alix: Walked up a slow incline towards a quiet neighbourhood square for provisions, as we’re jet-lagged in suburban Brussels on the Sunday of a holiday weekend. Fruit stand, bakery and small grocery store offer the basics. Mother Alix Le Clerk (1576-1622) had a vision of education for for all girls, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant, following the rules of St. Augustine. She was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1947. (Église Sainte-Alix, Woluwe Saint-Pierre, Brussels, Belgium) 20211031
As the book on Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 was taking shape in March 2023, I was invited not only to serve as an editor, but also to contribute as an author. The edited volume is the final deliverable for the In4act project centered at the KTU School of Economics and Business in Kaunas, Lithuania […]
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 […]
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 ›
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
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) […]