Collaboration SIG: Dialogue Mapping -- Collaborative Technology for Wicked Problems February 27, 2006

*February Meeting of the SDForum Collaboration SIG*

***UPDATE: DUE TO FLOOD WARNINGS TONIGHT IN MARIN COUNTY, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. WE WILL RE-SCHEDULE AT A LATER DATE. SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION.***

Cognitive studies have shown that, when faced with a complex and novel problem, humans use a fundamentally chaotic ("opportunity driven") process to organize information and solve the problem. This insight helps clarify the situation when a problem is "wicked": proposed solutions primarily serve to illuminate hidden aspects of the problem, stakeholders disagree about what the problem is, "immutable" constraints change, and there is no definitive solution. Seen in this light, the measure of "collaborative technology" is the capacity it gives a group to overcome communication problems and to make sense of a dizzying array of conflicting points of view and inconsistent "facts."

This sense-making process happens in conversations, mostly in face-to-face meetings, but meetings are repetitive, boring, and ineffectual. This talk presents Dialogue Mapping, a new approach to meetings and collaboration in which collective intelligence is achieved through framing powerful questions and conducting a comprehensive and creative exploration of their possible answers. The methods have been proven in strategic planning, product development, aerospace project planning, environmental planning, policy formulation, and system design.

*Speaker:* Dr. Jeff Conklin (http://www.cognexus.org/id17.htm)

*Cost:*

$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members

*Website:* http://collaborationsig.jot.com/DialogueMapping