This page started in January 2023.
David Beatty 19 August 1943 – 12 January 2024
Remembering David Beatty from Allenna Leonard
Dr. David Beatty was among Stafford’s first friends and colleagues in Toronto and was instrumental in organizing his multi-university 1984 semester appointment that met at the McLuhan Centre at the University of Toronto and also organized the first Toronto pre-Syntegration experiment in the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse and its first complete event for the World Government Organization (with which he continued to be involved). He continued as one of the founding Board members of Team Syntegrity and remained involved in promoting and organizing Syntegrations. During this time he also held several university faculty appointments. David also participated in several of the early Metaphorum Conferences – always with a focus on enabling young people. Most recently, he was part of the team designing and implementing Metaphorum’s e-Syntegration experiment during the pandemic, being part of Joe Truss’s Book of Codes team and a number of other activities from his base in the Netherlands. He will be much missed by the community.
David celebration service invite
David at the Book of Codes Workshop 2019.
November 2023
‘It is with enormous sadness that we announce that Pam Sydelko passed away this year in November 2023.She graduated this year with her PhD, under Gerald Midgley and Angela Espinosa. Pam published two papers in the European Journal of Operational Research, which give credit to the value of her contribution to Systems Thinking and Organisational Cybernetics.Pam worked at very senior levels , using the Viable Systems Model to coordinate the work of several major institutions in the United States. As part of this process she developed a way to co-design a multi-agency through an interactive VSM game, which proved to be highly effective.She will be greatly missed in our Metaphorum community’.
15 August 2023
We are sad to announce the passing of Alfredo Moscardini, on August 15. Alfredo was one of Metaphorum’s founding officers and host of its first official conference in Sunderland. Our hearts go out to his family, friends and many collaborators.
17 January 2023 Javier Livas-Cantu
It is with sorrow that we inform the Metaphorum Community of the death of Javier Livas-Cantu on January 17 of this year at age 76. Javier was a Mexican constitutional lawyer who became interested in cybernetics and came to the 1981 SGSR (Now ISSS) Conference in Toronto to meet Stafford. Many conversations followed, culminating in Javier bringing Stafford to Mexico City for the better part of 1983 to assist his attempts to introduce cybernetics into the Mexican government. Although these efforts were not ultimately successful, they did help Javier advance his cause of fair voting and government improvements in Mexico. Javier was very passionate about Stafford’s theories: he wrote articles (See “The Cybernetic State’ Apple Books LinkedIn YouTube), made videos and recorded podcasts in both Spanish and English over decades and participated in several Metaphorum conferences – most recently in Huizen in the Netherlands and Leeds, UK. He was a dear friend and an important member of our community and will be missed.
Allenna, Angela and Jon
Javier was active in Metaphorum. Here he is in the 4 January 2023 webinar with Vanilla Beer
Tribute from his son https://youtu.be/-ui-U1pmsUw