I don't love using Jeff Bezos as an example of anything virtuous, and the anecdote in this post may just be apocrophal, so let's treat it like that, but this is a useful quote: A group that gathers but doesn’t know how to fight without ‘un-gathering’ won’t remain a group for long. A group that can’t disagree and commit will disagree and dissolve.

Play MapTap - the daily geography game! Find 5 world locations on a 3D globe with historical stories. Free browser-based daily game for geography lovers.

Last night I visited Meaford with my mom and her partners to hear The Irish Descendants, an iconic Newfoundland band. They are touring a new album of Stan Rogers covers, and between those pieces and the Irish Descendants' own repertoire, I think I sang along with just about every tune they played. Afterwards we headed across the street to…

Play MapTap - the daily geography game! Find 5 world locations on a 3D globe with historical stories. Free browser-based daily game for geography lovers.

Crossing Otter Creek near Smiths Falls, Ontario on the VIA 643. I'm on the VIA train from Ottawa to Toronto. We've just passed through Smiths Falls, streaking past paper white birch trees, golden fields, blazing orange maple trees, marsh reeds turned red, scarlet sumac all under a clear blue sky. I'm listening to The Great Lakes Suite by Rheostatics…

Gabriele Bammer and Jean Boulton identify a role and a set of capacities needed for research teams, and they call that role a "complexity entrepreneur." This style of operating in a complex world requires engendering a milieu in which people regain confidence in working with intuition, making sense of subjective and evolving information, and are able to hone the skills of judgement.

Independently-owned book and gift store with 2 locations in British Columbia. Shop all the latest bestsellers, unique puzzles, art supplies, & more!

Play MapTap - the daily geography game! Find 5 world locations on a 3D globe with historical stories. Free browser-based daily game for geography lovers.

It's Bandcamp Friday, the first Friday of every month, where 100% of sales on Bandcamp go to the artist. Today I pre-ordered the new album from Martyn Joseph (The Bruce Cockburn of Wales) "Revolved and Evolved" and the new release from Bowen Island's own Le Ren "Don't Be Funny Without Me." which is getting some…

Play MapTap - the daily geography game! Find 5 world locations on a 3D globe with historical stories. Free browser-based daily game for geography lovers.

Some good links on complexity Roope Kaaronen's: The Ecology of Design. A nice introduction to path dependancy, affordances and ecological psychology. Alicia Juarrero being interviewed by Jim Hutt on her book Context Changes Everything and on how constraints create possibility landscape and constraint regimes. The Vampire Problem is a thought experiment that demonstrates why it is so hard to act in uncertainty.

It is a quiet morning here on Nexwlelexwm/Bowen Island. The equinox has come and gone and the mornings are darker and cooler. We have stopped changing the clocks in this part of the world, so the mornings will only ever grow darker by the clock until the solstice.  I'll be walking in pitch black in a month or so.  My partner is the walking champion of our household, taking her morning and afternoon walks everyday as a non-optional part of her morning.

The Squamish welcome figure at Sw?aywi (Ambleside Beach) in West Vancouver Once a month I fill in to lead worship at our little Bowen Island United Church. I love the chance to do so, because I get to sit with a piece of scripture and reflect on it. Over the years here I've shared a few of my sermons and today, the…

Bring Active Living Upgrades to King George Park | 乔治国王公园 | ਕਿੰਗ ਜਾਰਜ ਪਾਰਕ !

Kelly Foscroft-Poirier hosts a session during an Art of Hosting we did at Tseshaht back in 2019. I had a lovely call today with Sean Andrew, a colleague in the world of hosting, complexity and systems change work. At one point we were both sharing stories about what the Art of Hosting workshop meant to us as experienced practitioners. We both came to the Art of Hosting approach after years of facilitation and practice in other domains.

One of the projects I'm engaged in is a rigorous exploration of my own theory-informed facilitation and hosting practice. I have been keeping extensive field notes of my work, in a hand written journal, that contains observations about myself and the group I'm working with in real time. It is an effort to refine my practice along the lines of the triangle I've been working on, to notice deeply the ways in which Structure, Interactions and Design coalesce into a container.