Opening Up Systems Thinking

9434891621_c3e3b0b506_oI am a member of a small number of LinkedIn groups.
I am always interested in receiving alerts from the groups but tend to be a peripheral, passive participant in discussion forums.
Last week, a bulletin update from Systems Thinking World showed me how a group might flourish with active participation. In the bulletin, Gene Bellinger wrote:

We’re currently trying to figure out a repositioning for Systems Thinking World which will likely result in a name change. If you haven’t noticed it there’s a rather active discussion on the topic at http://linkd.in/1d4JjeR You are encouraged to chime in on this one.

I was particularly interested the use of Insight Maker to map some of the Systems Thinking domain. Insight Maker is a free, web-based, multi-user modeling and simulation environment.
I was fascinated too by news that the 2013 Conference will be an Open Space. The Open Space conferences:

have no keynote speakers, no pre-announced schedules of workshops, no panel discussions, no organizational booths. Instead, sitting in a large circle, participants learn in the first hour how they are going to create their own conference. Almost before they realize it, they become each other’s teachers and leaders.

Whilst mulling over the discussion of the epistemological re-positioning of Systems Thinking World, I received an alert to Oscar Berg’s post Our future relies on our social networks. In his post, Oscar discusses Harold Jarche’s insights into the social imperative and observes “What is new is that we have extended our capability to build and sustain our social networks using information technology, for example online social networking platforms”.
Oscar mentions Esko Kilpi too. Esko wrote last year about interactive value creation:

In the networked economy, information products and services can now be created and co-created in a human-centric way, by voluntary, interdependent individuals, interacting with each other by utilizing free or very low-cost social media.

I took this to be the essence of the Systems Thinking World discussion.
As a result of my peripheral participation this week, I have: learned about some fundamental epistemological and ontological issues in systems thinking; been introduced to Insight Maker; found a new description and set of practices for unconferences.
This post is the start of my more active contribution to the discussions.

Photo Credit

Networked Individualism (Catherine Cronin, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
 
 

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