Coordinated Management of Meaning

Relational Construction for System Designers: Designing Better Social Worlds

Sheila McNamee and Celiane Camargo-Borges

This 90-minute workshop introduces the Constructionist-Design Framework, an approach that blends social constructionist philosophy with design thinking principles. Instead of focusing on discovery, this framework emphasises creativity, innovation, and future-forming action. The methods Sheila and Celiane introduce are understood as facilitating generative resources sensitised to the very specific context of any given project. Within this logic, there is no ultimate “best” method or “right” way to design a project; rather, each approach will produce specific (and different) information. At its core lies the power of questions, because the questions we ask shape the worlds we create. Different questions open different pathways, generating new perspectives and new forms of knowledge. This is an invitation to experiment with generative methods and to translate this framework into your own context.

Additional context: Sheila’s Episode and Celiane’s Episode of CMMi’s Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast.

Reshaping Democracy: Dialogic Systems Change with CMM and The World Café

Sergej van Middendorp and Flavio Mesquita da Silva

In this session, hosted by Flavio Mesquita da Silva and Sergej van Middendorp, we explore a difficult question of our time: how do we reshape our democratic systems to be able to deal with the polycrisis and metacrisis? We take the lens of dialogic systems change and specifically look at the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) and The World Café to explore perspectives and ways to address the challenges we face. After a brief introduction of the concepts and the sharing of some experiences with these by the hosts, we will invite the participants’ perspectives into our shared virtual space and explore the patterns that connect our emerging collaborative support network. We will try to reflexively balance the co-design of our session as a democratic dialogic design experience, while at the same time trying to bring forth new insights that help us go on together after our conversation ends.

Additional context: Sergej’s Substack post, Democracy for the Future, and video of Flavio describing the World Café format.

Inclusive by Design: Invitations, Individuals, and Impact

Abbie VanMeter and Mil Niepold

This 90-minute workshop will explore the urgent need for individuals to cultivate a greater sense of their own ability (and responsibility) to positively and profoundly impact the systems of which they are a part. Focusing on creating the conditions that empower every person to participate in the transformation of systems that are often designed to disempower, Mil and Abbie will offer concrete tools for incorporating inclusive practices into your design, facilitation, and communication. Utilising a ‘Communication Perspective’-which looks at communication, rather than through it—Mil and Abbie offer and invite reflections on stories of Mil’s experiences working at the intersection of Supply Chains, Climate Resilience, and Human Rights. By examining Mil’s stories on both the micro- and macro-levels, we will distil universally applicable wisdom for addressing the many interconnected issues of the polycrisis. We invite you to join this conversation as we learn to align interpersonal intents with systems impacts by considering the co-constructed nature of our social worlds.

coming soon