Sharing insights and decision-making experiences


Braidwood is my St Mary Mead and Lake Wobegon.
It is a place where I can ponder events way beyond this small rural New South Wales town and connect with them through events in the town.
This weekend, the Braidwood Festival has been helping me reflect on thoughts about insights and decision-making shared by Jacquie Tran.
Jacquie’s presentation, From insights to decisions: Knowledge sharing in sports analytics, has stimulated lots of interest and conversations. One of the observations Jacquie has made is:

Enter Braidwood into this conversation.

This weekend, the Festival of Braidwood has included an airing of quilts, an Art on the Farms exhibition, and open gardens. All of these have a synchronicity with Jacquie’s discussion. I have two examples from the weekend to illustrate the points Jacquie is making.
The first is from on of the exhibits, an upholstered chair by Heidi Horwood.

In the exhibition catalogue, Heidi writes:

The chair was found in a shed on a farm in Braidwood in a state of considerable disrepair. Many of the fabrics that make the patchwork in this project are very old and sourced in Braidwood. … I love the sense of history in old chairs and imagine the comfort they have brought.

The second is from a the Linden Garden at Jembaicumbene. The gardeners there have transformed the garden in five years. They have planted trees, herbaceous borders and found ways to manage limited resources in a windswept location.

The garden draws inspiration from landscape designer Nicole de Vesian, who at 70 translated her experience as a designer for Hermes to create her garden, La Louve in Provence.
I hope both examples add to the conversation Jacquie has started about insights. In both of them there is a bisociation occuring. Arthur Koestler said of bisociation “The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.”
Having a sense of who we were and who we are gives us opportunities to consider how we will be. I see this a profoundly shared experience.

I wonder what you think.
Photo Credits
Braidwood (Jack Featherstone)
Jack Bourke shearing (Katie Lyons, Art on Farms)
Chair (Heidi Horwood)
Linden Garden (Braidwood Open Gardens)
Bedervale (Keith Lyons, CC BY 4.0)

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