Category: Practice

Global Perspective

Last month just outside Hangzhou, I was part of an annual “happening” that brought together over 80 burgeoning and experienced visual practitioners from all over China. I could not keep up with the high volume of social sharing on WeChat, where there were dozens and dozens of amazing videos and photos posted. But here are some of my favorites – representing the spirit of beauty, collaboration, and fun i witnessed.

Here, too, are slides from a brief presentation I gave on scribing. The intent was to set some global and historical context for the gathering and community. I expect a bit of clarification and pushback on my accuracy and interpretation of this practice! Please comment and help flesh out this picture.

Note: As of Dec 12, i have amended the file, based on Matt Taylor’s helpful reminder of prehistoric drawings. I also found an old journal from 1983, when I studied for a few weeks in the Dordogne region of France and saw some of the 15,000 year old cave paintings. Funny, my notes are all text – but it was an art program. (Download a .pdf file here)

 

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u.lab 2017

From the Edx / MITx / Presencing Institute MOOC u.lab: Leading From the Emerging Future, final digital images originally scribed on 16′ long blackboard during 60-90 minute live, broadcast sessions…

Co-Evolving session, December 14, 2017:

Crystallizing-Prototyping session, November 9, 2017:

Presencing session, October 19, 2017:

Co-Initiation session, September 21, 2017:

And here are the visual reviews for each phase of Theory U, created on an iPadPro with the ProCreate app, Photoshop, and a Bird font.

For all images on this page… please share as you’d like, respecting the creative commons information here and linking back to this page, so others can find the original images. Thanks!

Jay Wright Forrester

Some learning opportunities come along in disguise – presenting themselves in one form, yet offering a whole other range of information in another. Such was the case when John Sterman, of the System Dynamics Group at MIT, reached out to work together on a timeline of the life and impact of Jay Wright Forrester. (Click on the image above to zoom in or download the printable file.)

At first, we talked about my redrawing a map that John, Nelson Repenning, and others had sketched on a very large dry-erase wall. It seemed fairly straightforward, and I thought the “job” would be a mere translation from one medium to another. The image would be presented at a symposium honoring Jay, where family, past collaborators, students, colleagues, and fans could see the range and extent of his work over time.  

But as with any model, the more we saw, the more we saw! We ended up going through a few cycles of iteration to double check topics, links, and the people included. And even the current printed 4×8′ version seems like just a mark in time for an artifact that could be repeatedly updated as the boundary of the model – of the timeline – expands.

This leads to the real gift, beyond the creative act of figuring out how to cross as few lines as possible… which was receiving this highly unique window into the life of an extraordinary man – someone who, through invention and unending curiosity, set the course for entire, multiple fields, including  Servomechanisms, Computing (including core memory!) and System Dynamics. His influence can probably be experienced by almost everyone on the planet in some way or another, across dozens of advances including: radar, computers, space exploration, the internet, Limits to Growth, climate policy, k-12 education, automated car technology, among much, much else. I know very little about the specifics – just enough to know that, though ripple effect, one life can make a tremendous difference for ALL life on this planet.

The stories shared at the symposium about Jay, and the numerous ways he profoundly influenced people’s lives, nourished a seed of determination in me to get up, stay open, work with rigor, share, and inquire.

We never really know what continues on after a death. Nature renews. People and their identities come and go. As a species, we evolve – albeit in jagged, sometimes accelerated, sometimes stalled advancement. Trial and error and continual learning, as Jay exemplified, all necessary undertakings to keep us forward-bound.

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Jay Forrester’s World Dynamics diagram of the WORLD1 model, 1970 – ResearchGate

Visual Practice Workshop: Bologna

Having experienced a fruitful workshop in Taipei November 2106 (above photos), we are happy to announce an upcoming workshop in Bologna, Italy 15-17 February 2017. Costs: Individuals €1,800 – Students €600 – Scholarship on request.

This workshop is designed for intermediate and advanced visual practitioners and facilitators who wish to strengthen and deepen their existing knowledge, towards developing mastery in their profession and field.

DOWNLOAD FLYER: English – Chinese
REGISTER HERE or contact Alfredo Carlo: alfredo.carlo@thevalueweb.org

THE CALL:

In times of widespread transition, visuals serve as key facilitative aids for collective seeing and navigation. Live scribing–giving form to the content of a social body, in the moment and across boundaries–is a method especially suited to address today’s great challenges. As visual practitioners seeking to meet and influence these current realities, we face a particular need and opportunity to expand our awareness, mindsets, and choices that feed into our outward expression.

THE LEARNING:

Over the three days we will combine theory, exercises, reflection, and peer learning to explore the following topics:

  • Highlights of work from around the world to surface trends and leading examples
  • The call of our times for visuals as a primary means of communication
  • A Model of Practice that grounds inner cultivation
  • Extensive work in areas of Presencing, levels of listening, systems thinking, discernment, and generative scribing
  • Dialogue on what it means to draw from and for an emerging future reality
  • Review of experience with large scale change initiatives

PARTICIPATION:

Drawing will be the primary form of practice. It is not required that participants be skilled scribes – but be prepared to use this expression as the main means of application over the course of the workshop.

GUIDES:

The workshop will be led by internationally recognized practitioners:

Kelvy Bird has been working as a scribe in the fields of human and organizational development since 1995, with a focus on leadership, collective intelligence, and systems thinking. As part of the Presencing Institute’s core team since 2007, Kelvy has helped shape many of the global community offerings, most recently the edX course: U.Lab: Leading from the Emerging Future, for which she provides extensive visual material. In 2016, Kelvy co-edited the anthology: Drawn Together through Visual Practice, and is currently completing her manuscript: On Scribing. At heart, Kelvy is an abstract painter, having received a BFA and BA from Cornell University.

Alfredo Carlo, born in 1975 in Brussels, is a designer of collaborative processes and a graphic facilitator. He’s the founding partner of Housatonic Design Network and since 2011 partner of Matter Group. Together these organizations deliver graphic facilitation and collaborative sessions to facilitate complexity in organisations and in communication. Alfredo is a member of The Value Web, a not-for-profit organization made of an international facilitators and designers network, which helps big and medium organizations all over the world in their processes of research for systemic and complex problems solutions.

Jayce Pei Yu Lee is big at heart, small in size, and organic in spirit. Born in 1972 in Taipei, Taiwan, she studied Typographic Design and Fine Arts while lived in New Zealand for 8 years. She has diverse professional experience ranging from graphic design, visual merchandising, retail marketing, and sales. She devotes her time to creative work and bilingual graphic facilitation (Mandarin/ English) with the MGTaylor Methodology and, since 2010, in collaboration with The Value Web at the Summer Davos in China. She is a member of The Value Web, a fellow traveller of Theory U, and a visual collaborator with the u.lab MOOC since 2015.

LOGISTICS:

Dates: Wednesday 15th February (starts 09.00) to Friday 17th February (ends 16.00)

Venue: Housatonic Studio, Via Battindarno 159/2, Bologna, Italy

Costs: Individuals €1,800 – Students €600 – Scholarship on request.

Fees include lunches & coffee breaks every day, as well as course materials and basic supplies. Accommodation and dinners are not included. Recommended hotel options will be sent with registration info.

REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE or contact Alfredo Carlo: alfredo.carlo@thevalueweb.org

To receive notices about the upcoming North America workshop 17-19 May 2017, please sign up for our general mailing list here.

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Images by Tsunami Lin from the Taipei Workshop, November 2016

“Can’t”

cant

Almost every scribe I’ve talked with shares some apprehension when facing a blank wall at the onset of a session. Many of us are introverts by nature, and need to summon courage to even be at the front of a room, audience at back.

As we try to follow cadence of voice and quickly make sense of streaming words, accents, acronyms, metaphors–and just as quickly choose what to draw–confidence goes down, and questioning of self goes up: “Am I worthy? Why do they want me here anyway? What on Earth am I drawing? Will anyone notice if I crawl up and hide behind this easel?!

The line “I can’t….” creeps in easily and perennially. And unless we learn how to notice this running tape in our heads and abruptly turn it off in favor of another line, it’s really, really easy to get psyched out and freeze. It’s a slippery downhill slope.

I’ve also heard countless people say, “What you do seems so cool, but I can’t draw…” To which I almost always respond “Oh–you would be surprised how little it takes…”

Recently, to strengthen my (physical) core, I’ve enlisted the help a personal trainer, Carl. When he asks me to try a new exercise, of which I can barely do one repetition, I often find myself moaning “Oh, man, you have GOT to be kidding! I can’t…!” He stops me in my tracks: “Once you decide you can’t, you’ve pretty much guaranteed you won’t.”

“I can’t” is a belief.

It festers in (some of our) psyches, ripe to bolt out and take the stage at the slightest challenge. It’s belief that I am, for example: not strong enough to lift a particular weight, not capable of staying fit over time to even be at the gym. Sometimes it’s not about what I can or can’t do, but is about who I am. The line in this case would be “I am, by nature, lazy.”

And here is where judgement comes in, residue from past experience that leads to the formation of belief. Something happened, we felt embarrassed, rejected even. Shame might have set in, reinforcing future choices and outlook.

As a young girl, I played municipal softball with great enthusiasm. Then at some point, I tried out for a local basketball squad, and–after falling flat on my face when attempting a layup–was the only girl who did not make the team. My enthusiasm for sport quickly dwindled. And now, some 35 years later, I have Carl’s voice helping to turn around an old, hardened belief that I am inherently unskilled at physical activity.

Maybe “I can’t” is a kind of stop sign, a temporary pause until we turn the light in our mind green. We face a choice point: collapse into old attitudes, or face this moment fresh, opting new possibility?

Maybe every “can’t” is really a gift in disguise, a twisted offering to reframe within the present to a mindset of “if”?