Dear Members:
This is an update on forthcoming webinars this year, and a reminder of our next webinar this Wednesday the 5th June, from 5 to 6:30 pm (UK summertime) by Rodrigo Fernández Albornoz, on “The heart of the 4th industrial revolution in the brain of Viable System Model. Sketches from Stafford Beer’s legacy.”
We will also have a webinar (workshop type) on June the 26th by Emanuele Quintarelli & Krishan Mathis on ‘‘From systems to entrepreneurial ecosystemic organisations: Exploring Haier’s RenDanHeYi’.
See below details of these last two webinars this semester, and a Table with the list of forthcoming webinars for the second semester 2024.
You can join any of the webinars by following this link.
Topic: Metaphorum’s Webinar Series
Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81943981395
You can watch all the recordings of the 2023 and 2024 Webinar Series on our webinar recordings webpage:
https://metaphorum.org/webinar-recordings
Looking forward to seeing you in the webinars.
Best regards
Angela. Jon and Allenna
Rodrigo Fernández Albornoz
“The heart of the 4th industrial revolution in the brain of Viable System Model. Sketches from Stafford Beer’s legacy”
June the 5th, 2024 (5:00-6:30 pm UK summertime)
This webinar is a continuation of the CYBERSYN WEBINAR SERIES started in September 2023, Sponsored by: Metaphorum, American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), Cybernetics Society, World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC), and ELAPDIS (Latin American Association of Systemic Education)
Stafford Beer stands out for his role as the first developer of models for the diagnosis and intervention of human organizations within industry and the public sector. However his work was greater than that. The goal of the present webinar is to develop the hypothesis that the legacy of Stafford Beer raises the first intuitions related to the foundations of what today is called the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the fundamentals of our contemporary world.
To achieve this, let us first define precisely an industrial revolution. What are its elements and layers? How its evolution is characterized? Then, we will take Stafford Beer’s experience in the Cybersyn project, as a first attempt to promote a popular national cyberculture, in particular focusing on Cyberfolk.
Many of Beer and his team’s reflections on the effective incorporation of people into the project considered prototypes for measuring audiences in real time. They took into consideration content moderation in mass media and cultural products for the promotion of a new relationship with technology. These were articulated in the “5 principles for good government”, a guide designed by Beer that consisted of the description of five elementary situations in which technology served to enable agile social articulation based on the common good.
This view of the common good is especially critical in the main political and sociocultural dilemmas that form part of today’s debates regarding the future of ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the concept of cyberculture remains anchored in a view based on a narrow accelerationist notion of the contemporary social order. This view conceive technological development as a fixed line in the speed of change and not as its direction. This has led us to think that it is more likely that machines will become conscious and dominate us than that we can develop a concept and technological practice of social control based on collaboration.
Rodrigo Fernández Albornoz is a Senior Data Scientist at Globant – Data & AI Studio, Academic Coordinator and Professor of the Data Science Diploma at University of Santiago, Faculty of Management and Economics, and collaborator of Management Analytics & Data Science Research Center (MAD-Sc) at Technic University Federico Santa María, Department of Economics. Specialist in management and team development for data intensive projects, statistical modelling and natural language processing in the industry, public sector and academic research.
Independent researcher and professor in Philosophy and History of Technology, in particular the industrial revolution processes, information theory and technologies, and experimental movements and vanguards in the field of poetic and esthetics of music. Since 2021 is funding of “Banca de Helechos” (@bancadehelechos), a Chilean publishing project of contemporary poetry and collaborates with the Foundation for the Interdisciplinary Development of Science, Technology and the Arts (DICTA), a NGO dedicated with a special focus on interdisciplinary, with the purpose of generating cultural media from projects related to science, technology and arts (www.dicta.cl)
Emanuele Quintarelli & Krishan Mathis
From systems to entrepreneurial ecosystemic organizations.
Exploring Haier’s RenDanHeYi.
June the 26th, 2024, 5:00-6:30 pm (UK summertime)
Emanuele Quintarelli will introduce RenDanHeYi, a truly decentralized organization concept. Then he and Krishan Mathis will explore in an interactive way how these concepts relate to the Viable System Model and look for parallels and differences. Finally, he and Krishan Mathis will explore in an interactive way with the participants, how these concepts relate to the Viable System Model, and look for parallels and differences
How can a global manufacturer with tens of thousands of employees not just survive but thrive in turbulent times? Guided by its CEO philosopher, the Chinese white goods appliance leader went through four decades of strategy, business, and organizational reinvention, rewriting everything we knew about management.
Based on years of direct collaboration with Haier, Emanuele will conversate with Krishan Mathis, to explore RenDanHeYi’s ability to get rid of hierarchical control, top-down people management, centralized budgeting, organizational bureaucracy, distance from the market.
They will compare the foundational RenDanHeYi’s concepts with VSM pillars to show how more and more enterprises worldwide may embrace unprecedented levels of self-management, entrepreneurial initiative, customer centricity, diffused value sharing, and ecosystemic thinking.
Emanuele Quintarelli
For the last 20 years, Emanuele has led global teams across sectors, cultures, and continents at the intersection of strategy, change, and technology to help large complex organizations become not just more efficient but especially more humane. Well-versed in organization design and new organizational models, he’s a practitioner, trainer, and facilitator in Holacracy, Sociocracy, RenDanHeYi, and Whole Scale Change. His purpose is to let the full potential of humanity blossom through purposeful, adaptive, and ecoistic organizations. Emanuele is currently Equity Partner and 3EO Micro-Enterprise Lead at Boundaryless. Quote: ” Making the world a better place, one organization at a time.”
Krishan Mathis
Krishan comes from a long background in Lean and Agile processes. He has worked as a consultant on transformation processes and organisational design for many corporations and SMEs and came to VSM this way.
He is currently working on putting the Viable System Model in context with other models and making it easier to understand. This involves training concepts and tools for representation and visualisation.
Krishan is involved with the Metaphorum Ooperations group, focussing on building a community of practice for VSM trainers
Forthcoming Webinars 2024
| Date | Speaker | Title |
| June the 5th | Rodrigo Fernández Albornoz | “The heart of the 4th industrial revolution in the brain of Viable System Model. Sketches from Stafford Beer’s legacy” |
| June the 26th | Emanuele Quintarelli & Krishan Mathis | ‘From systems to entrepreneurial ecosystemic organizations.Exploring Haier’s RenDanHeYi’. |
| September the 4th | Mark Johnson | ‘The Topologies of Prediction: Management, Cybernetics and AI’ |
| October the 2nd | Stephen Hardwood | ‘Ontological Cybernetics Revisited’ |
| November the 6th | Prof. Fredmund Malik | ‘The Great Transformation 21’ |
| December the 4th | Dr Tuomo Rautakivi and Prof. Dr. Maurice Yolles | Diagnosing Complex Organisations with Diverse Cultures — Configuring Mindset Agency Theory, with an application to ASEAN |
Past webinars 2024 – see recordings at https://metaphorum.org/webinar-recordings
| Date | Speaker | Title |
| 10th January 2024 | Krishan Mathis | Metaphorum’s VSM Training and Certification program |
| 31st January 2024 | Dr. M Zargham | From Viable Organizations to Viable Ecologies |
| 6th March 2024 | Dr. Pille Bunnell. | Language as an Enabling Constraint for Viability |
| 3rd April 2024 | Professor Andrew Pickering | Cybernetics and the Environmental Crisis |
| 8th May 2024 | Dr. Peter Robertson | The Sapient Paradox as the consequence of a cybernetical bifurcation in the evolution. |