Debora Hammond, "Conference Welcome and Opening Remarks", ISSS 2006 at Sonoma State University, Sunday, July 9, 2006, 7:30 p.m.
Deborah Hammond, ISSS President 2005-2006, 50th Annual Meeting of the ISSS, Sonoma State University, July 9, 2006, 7:30 p.m.
These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting,
based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience.
These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but
only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical
errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions
about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have
been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the
Systemic Business Community ( http://systemicbusiness.org ).
Introduction by Debora Hammond
Begin week with history, end week with futurists
- ISSS roots in fall 1954, Stanford Center for Advanced Studies and Behavioral Sciences
- Society for General Systems Research first at the AAAS meeting in 1956
- Rocky history, because it tried to do something different
- Has survived, thrived
Thanks to Enrique Herrscher, who chaired Cancun 2005
Recognize Jim Kijima, who will be hosting Tokyo 2007
Conference partners: ASC, Ackoff Centre
Will introduce:
- Larry Robinson, former mayor of Sebastapol, will recite a poem
- Lou Kauffman
- Johnnie Pourdehnad
Larry Robinson
- We're like bugs in a bowl
Lou Kauffman:
- ASC and ISSS, studying the same things
- Common boundaries cancel, and bring us below both considerations
- Acknowledge Pille Bunnell, who did all of the work putting the two organizations together for this meeting
Johnnie Pourdehnad
- Ackoff Centre and Center for Organizational Dynamics at University of Pennsylvania
- In 2004, hosted the International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management, had 250 participants from 24 countries
- Coincided with Ackoff's birthday: Checkland, Mitroff, Jackson, Maccoby, etc.
- Agenda was to bring together thought leaders together, in the business transforming with government and industry
- Implicit to encourage sustainable conversation: we failed on our long-term goal
- Practitioners and theorists must need to have a continuous dialogue
- Propose to do this through blogs, pooling financial and intellectual presence together, as a whole systems weblog
- Would like to see open academic and case resources to professors and students, including all journals
- Providing access to systems thinking resources, one-stop shopping
- Proactive marketing community, possibly as a source of income
- Since the inception of the centre, have supported almost every systems thinking programs worldwide
- We should present ourselves for the world
[Debora]
In April, in the IFSR, seems to be something in the air
Relevance of focusing on the past?
- Song by Utah Phillips: The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, "Bridges"
Have gained insight by studying the work of our elders
William Stafford poem: The Way It Is:
- Associated with the red thread
- A concrete symbol of what Bateson meant in the pattern that connects
- Over the week, look for the red threads
- Lives becoming fragmented, red threads are what tie us together
- Systems movement has become increasingly fragmented
Last year, the students took on the task of the red thread
This year, will have a red thread room in Amici
- Have a red thread team, bringing back ideas from the afternoon sessions
- In addition, will have a Dreamscape
Interpersonal dimensions of relationship, have become interested in the institutional structures
- How we treat one another
- Kenneth
Boulding addressed this on communications in organizations: humilities,
respect, different points of view, sense of humour
- Structures seem to support the antagonistic
- Boulding: the integrated function, a critical third force in society, between the exchange and the coercive
- Community, cooperation, connection and participation
- Recently, integrative function has diminished
ISSS: practices that connect
- From control to collaboration, hierarchical to participatory, objective to intersubjective
- Need to create more opportunities for conversation
- Need to commit to active inclusion in decision-making
- Was in a working a group on rethinking the "and" between nature and community.
- Why include them? They don't want to know anything about the system. They are the system.
