Back to school, teaching and learning at 2 universities.
Toronto, Ontario
Scrap Metal Gallery: Installation @ernatmack (2019) Wither, billow, waist? hanging at #ScrapMetalGallery has a feeling of lightness, with translucent fabrics. Some other pieces in the show are made of heavy moving blankets. Dark, rainy day outside, art lovers come as individuals or duos for a destination visit. (Scrap Metal Gallery, Dublin Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190111OCADU Graduate Programs: Overview of #SystemicDesign toolkit by @redesign @OCADU_SFI class. Second lecture of term started with current thinking from the #SystemsChanges Learning Circle http://coevolving.com/commons/20200115-ocadu-systems-changes-different-from . Immersive approach to recasting language and reifying #SystemsThinking leads students to get more comfortable with ambiguity. Group had collectively decided to reschedule evening class to afternoon, so weeks following shouldn’t be dark outside. (OCADU Graduate Programs, 205 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200115OCADU Graduate Programs: Friday morning class on #SystemsThinking @OCADU_SFI runs in parallel with late Wednesday session. Presented same slides http://coevolving.com/commons/20200115-ocadu-systems-changes-different-from , pacing content in synch. Larger group, larger room, interactions with part-time graduate students is a little different from full-time colleagues. These students have a long day, likely before homework over the weekend. (OCADU Graduate Programs, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200117Systems Thinking Ontario: Topic of “Inferring Systems Thinking” at the 75th monthly meeting of #SystemsThinking Ontario, reviewing and reflecting on the titles, readings and discussions beginning in 2013. https://wiki.st-on.org/2020-01-20 If we’ve met that many times, what could we surmise that we’ve discussed, and what might be missing? Not everyone attended every session, but we shared collective wisdom. Some input gathered for future sessions. (Systems Thinking Ontario, Strategic Innovation Lab, OCADU, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200120Climate Ventures: Tight queuing for podium for 16 Earth Tech companies @ClimateCSI inauguration social. Accelerator https://climateventures.org/earthtech/ have an intensive 6 months. #BarnabeGeis posed if the darkness currently perceived is a womb, where there’s light in the birth ahead. Not-yet-elevator stories about each startup, introducing to partners, advisors and allies. (Climate Ventures, Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20190121Koffler Centre of the Arts: Exhibiting “the chrysanthemum has opened twelve times”, @artkarentam, conversing with #ShellieZhang @KofflerArts. Talk began with inspiration of formal photograph of grandfather, leading to exploration of history of staged images sent back to families in Toisan. In addition to photos, installation of portrait studio settings and backgrounds.constructed in collaboration with father and mother. (Koffler Centre of the Arts, Shaw Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20190126
PyData PyLadies Toronto: Joint @PyDataTO @PyLadiesToronto meeting including @sereprz on Improving Law Interpretability with NLP. Unsupervised Machine Learning, using spaCy on Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act data. Extract burdens (obligations), identify subjects, cluster subject (looking for homogenous groups in vector space. Used GLoVe (global vectors for word representation), with dimensionality reduction for sparse data. K-means clustering and evaluation through TD-IDF. Understood presentation, as a result of taking Big Data classes at Ryerson Chang School. (PyData Toronto, PyLadies Toronto, Intelliware, Adelaide Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200129
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 […]
