Welcome to the August 2022 Cynefin Retreat archive and virtual participation page. Our 2022 Cynefin Retreat, held in Queensland Australia, focused on the theme of community engagement in innovation – the discovery of lived experiences and how that insight is taken into account in design at various levels. This page contains the recorded plenary sessions, as well as other supplementary and background information and resources.

Additional Resources

• Cynefin Retreats follow the Triopticon method, bringing together divergent expert perspectives in a collective sense-making process. Read up on the  Triopticon method: see the Triopticon wiki page or the YouTube explainer video.
• Two documents referred to in the Retreat (both available for download):
  • our Cynefin Co Citizen Engagement Whitepaper and
  • the EU Field Guide for managing in complexity and crisis.

Recorded Session Videos
The recorded sessions appear here in the order they occurred during the Retreat. Please use the SenseMaker collectors to reflect as you watch, as well as afterwards.

To view recordings, purchase access here.

Session 1: Introduction to the Retreat, Triopticon method & Round 1 Faculty (Eagles)

This opening session includes an introduction to the retreat process and Triopticon method by Dave Snowden, before the first Faculty (Eagle) presentation by Chris Reidy

Session 2: Group discussion on Round 1 (plenary)

In this plenary session, representatives of the Raven groups offer feedback on their discussions and reflections from Round 1, as well as observations from Dave at the end.

Session 3: Round 2 Faculty (Eagles) sharing

Session 4: Group discussion on Round 2 (plenary)

In this plenary session, representatives of the Raven groups offer feedback on their discussions and reflections from Round 2, as well as observations from Dave at the end.

Session 5: Friday, Faculty 3 (Eagle) sharing and responses

Session 6 – Friday large group discussion (Round 3)

Session 7 – Beaver small groups working – feedback

This session includes Dave’s introduction to the Beaver phase, before small group working sessions, then additional feedback from the Eagles, Dave and Bet

Session 8 – Saturday sessions intro, Beaver groups feedback

This video covers the final day – welcome to Day 3 + Beaver small groups working

ABOUT THE FACULTY (Eagles)

Chris Riedy is Professor of Sustainability Transformations and Associate Director Learning and Development at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney. Chris is a transdisciplinary action researcher with a focus on sustainability transformations. He uses sociological and political theory, narrative theory and futures thinking to design, facilitate and evaluate practical experiments in transformative change towards sustainable futures.

Chris is an Advisor to the Transformations Community, a Senior Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance project, co-lead of the Narratives Hub of the New Economy Network Australia, and is on the Editorial Board of Futures and Action Research. He recently led the development and delivery of two short courses on deliberative democracy and is currently completing an Opportunity Assessment of Australia’s energy foresighting and planning capability for the RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre.

Julie Connolly has twenty years of experience in research, including her doctoral and postdoctoral work. She is about to start a new job as the Senior Director Evaluation and Qualitative Research at the Social Research Centre. Julie has led qualitative research, policy analysis and evaluations in mental health policy, refugee resettlement, early years interventions, and employment programs targeting women at a structural disadvantage in the workforce. She has taught research methodologies, including evaluation in Masters level courses at both the Universities of Queensland and Melbourne. She is a published author in political theory, feminist political economy and gender pay equity.

Julie has a special interest in the application of complexity theories to research and evaluation. She is highly skilled at developing methodologies that encompass co-design and lived experience and recently completed a framework for research collaboration with people with disabilities for the Hopkin Centre: Research for Rehabilitation and Resilience and developed a methodology for citizen science for the Climate Justice Observatory at Griffith University.

Cameron Tonkinwise is an international expert in design studies and transition design and the Director of the Design Innovation Research Centre at UTS, incorporating the Designing out Crime Research Project. Cameron has a background in philosophy and researches what design practice can learn from material cultural studies and sociologies of technology. His primary area of research and teaching is Sustainable Design, and he writes and speaks extensively on the power of design to drive systems-level change to achieve more sustainable and equitable futures.

A more recent focus, in collaboration with colleagues at CMU School of Design and an international network of scholar-practitioners, is the field of Transition Design; design-enabled multi-level, multi-stage structural change toward more sustainable futures. This expertise shapes Cameron’s work at the Design Innovation Research Centre at UTS, which has a focus on multidisciplinary social and service design research.