I’m back (and links to the IRAHS slides)

Time to get back on the blog again. I’m in Singapore for the second week of a trip that started last week in Washington and Ottawa, moving onto Australia this Friday (more on that tomorrow) then back to Singapore at the end of November. I finally get home on 1st December with a side trip from Sydney to Bogota in a couple of weeks time. In a strange perverted way I’m looking forward to the journey.

September was not a good month. Coming to terms with the loss of Max and Paul, good friends and critical thinkers (in all senses) was bad enough. Add to that my first (and hopefully last) attack of gout, a minor operation on my wrist and a whole succession of blood and other tests. I now have a heightened sense of mortality and a deep and profound set of insights into bad tempered characters in 19th Century novels (see illustration).

Singapore this week for their Futures Week and I had the privilege of being asked to provide the summary/synthesis at the end of each of the two days. I’ve loaded the slides here and here and will blog about the content over the next few days. The difference in template is due to my preparing the second one entirely on my iPad2 which I love, and of course that is the other tragedy, the loss of Steve Jobs. I only met him once, during his NeXt days but that is a story for another day. I ordered Gaping Void’s tribute as soon as it was announced, both in memory and I suspect as a sound investment.

For IRAHS delegates you might also find this link useful. It contains videos on the Gaussian/Pareto material, the Cynefin framework mentioned by several delegates and the Children’s Party Story metaphor for complexity. I didn’t use that metaphor in the presentation, but its still the best way I have found to explain both the concept and associated actions. My summary of IRAHS 2010 is still available here. An academic seminar on abductive research and use of fitness landscapes can be found here. Happy as always to answer any questions.