Dear Peter, thanks for your thoughts and references to follow up!
With conferences in my mind during the summer I particularly enjoyed RSD in
Banff. Somehow the timetable managed to be full and not rushed, with lots
of papers but also lots of space for processing them, and without the
feeling that I was missing too much as there were not too many parallel
streams. Not sure how you managed that!
I particularly enjoyed the workshop group I joined, which was titled
"intentionally left blank" (named after §17 of Bruce Mau's Incomplete
Manifesto for Growth) and which gave some extra room for reflection on
everything else. That group also had a good mixture between researchers
such as myself and practioners, as did the whole conference. The large
contingent from the Albertan government helped the sense of place which is
often missing in an international conference.
After editing this issue, my thoughts are less about what formats might be
better or worse but about the importance of whichever format is used for
what goes on and what is possible at an event and the value of being aware
of this. In design in particular, the designing of a conference is, of
course, also an opportunity to explore design ideas, and perhaps this is
why its such a challenge. In his enjoyable essay "Voices at the conference
conference", John Chris Jones calls this "context design":
“All such ‘softwares’ as conferences, courses, computer systems, legal
systems, political systems, public services, societies, groups,
communications and the like are more contexts than products and all suffer
the marks of neglect, total neglect, by the imagination, the artistic mind,
the impulse to make life beautiful. […] Is it possible to design, to make
pleasant, beautiful, not only the results of industrial and human processes
but the conditions in which these processes occur?” (p. 279)
“‘Why […] can’t designers design a conference?’ […] I have what feels like
an answer: ‘Because they are IN IT’ […] Is it that design skills and
methods as we know them are suited only to the designing of objects outside
of ourselves and that a new kind of design method is needed if the level of
designing is raised from that of object to activities? […] To design an
event of which one is a part, an activity one is going to live oneself,
sounds exactly like deciding what to do in life anyway. […] So designing
becomes a way of ordering life, or remaking a culture while living in it.”
(p. 284f)
Best wishes
Ben
- Jones J. C. (1984) Voices at the conference conference. In Essays in
design (pp. 277–301) Chichester: Wiley. (Reprinted from: Evans B., Powell
J., Talbot R. (Eds) Changing Design, Chichester: Wiley, 1982: 347–367).
On 22 November 2015 at 15:44, Peter Jones | Redesign <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Ben - I just saw this special issue show up in the Constructivist journal
> email. Scanning through several of the articles, it’s a timely theme, and
> so many useful insights and contributions from the (well known)
> contributors. The discussion follows the Research through Design conference
> in particular, which I don't know well as an event.
>
> I can say these very issues and conversations are raised in the planning
> and choices for our 150-200 person RSD event, held in Oslo and then Banff
> this year. http://systemic-design.net/ With Harold Nelson as one of our
> founders and planners, he's inspired our team to propose forms of dialogic
> engagement within the conference to create opportunities for shared
> inquiry. We've experimented every year with different arrangements of
> knowledge and story sharing, paper presentation and discussion management,
> and plenary approaches. I can't say we've perfected the process, but we
> plan, review "do" and debrief with a second-order mindset.
>
> One of the inspirations for the constructivist approach to convening
> intellectual meetings emerged as the observation that the breaks and
> discussion periods were experienced as among the most fruitful engagements.
> The assumption seems to be that this unplanned space allowed for a
> serendipitous emergence of something new among participants. This very
> observation at a 1982 organizational development conference is what led
> Harrison Owen to propose a "conference of coffee breaks" known as Open
> Space. One of my OD colleagues was at that meeting and remembers that was
> exactly how it happened, and Harrison has done Open Space ever since.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology (Good OST is as
> constructivist as it gets)
>
> I've participated in a self-organized conference called The Overlap on and
> off since 2007, and that might be a good example of a successful, radically
> "semi-structured" meeting. Its limited to 50 people interested in a theme,
> meeting in a circle, for two days, with a lightweight structure and
> self-organizing activities. I haven't yet seen a good "radically
> constructive" academic conference yet, but I have attended many
> self-organized workshops, some good, some experienced as disorganized
> perhaps. Once you entertain a group larger than 50 or so, it seems that the
> multiple purposes that draw people to conferences cannot all be met with an
> open format. People with research to share want an audience and feedback.
> Academics want breaking insights. Practitioners want methods and approaches
> tested by research they might lead in projects. People come for the keynote
> talks, and to meet with each other (on breaks and dinners, ...). And there
> are always a good percentage of new people who don't share the concepts in
> language. RSD considers all these interests and tries to balance them. But
> we do feel we fall short on the space for open dialogue, as the time
> allocation just isn't supportable when we are also committed to paper
> sessions.
>
> You and I have also met and delivered talks at ISSS http://isss.org , and
> I think these are among the more open conferences to changing formats and
> delivery modes. I'd be interested in your observations regarding these
> points and your suggestions for design conferences perhaps, whether any
> general principles are emerging for you after coordinating the essays and
> proposals in the special issue.
>
> Best, Peter
>
> PETER JONES, PH.D.
> ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
> OCAD UNIVERSITY
> http://designdialogues.com
> http://slab.ocadu.ca
>
> E [log in to unmask]
> T 416.799.8799
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ben sweeting [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: November 20, 2015 5:10 AM
> Subject: Composing Conferences: New special issue of Constructivist
> Foundations
>
> Dear All
>
> You may be interested in this special issue of the journal Constructivist
> Foundations which has just been published, edited by myself and Michael
> Hohl (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Germany).
>
> The issue explores alternative approaches to the format of academic
> conferences and how this relates to the content discussed in them.
>
> While these issues are relavent across disciplinary boundaries, the main
> areas of focus are design and cybernetcs/systems, both of which are fields
> which are in self-reflexive relation to their conferences: the organisation
> of a design conference is something we design (John Christopher Jones
> understood it as part of what he called "context design"); the activities
> of a conference are one example of the sorts of process that are studied in
> cybernetics and systems science.
>
> There are articles by Abigail Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace & Joyce
> Yee based on the "Research Through Design" conferences held recently in the
> UK; and by Johan Verbeke based on the Sensuous Knowledge conferences
> amongst others. In the introduction, Michael and I reflect on Ranulph
> Glanville's interest in conference design, an aspect of his work that
> bridges between his two main areas of interest in design and cybernetics.
>
> These issues raised also reflect back on the epistemological issues with
> which the journal is concerned, and suggest connections between a
> constructivist approach to epistemology in terms of knowing rather than
> knowledge, and applied fields such as knowledge management.
>
> The journal is open access and free for both authors and readers.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Ben
>
>
> Constructivist Foundations offers free access for readers and does not ask
> author processing charges. Further details can be found on
> http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/
> Constructivist Foundations 11(1)
> Special Issue "Composing Conferences"
>
>
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