Some years ago a friend of mine, Finn Voldtofte, was hosting some meetings that he had decided to call CIPI – collective intelligence practitioners initiative. He wanted it to be a forum for sharing experiences with reaching that place with a group where the group is smarter than its components – where are sort synergetic high energy occurs. The participants were mostly facilitators and process consultants, but the idea of facilitation was expanded a little, which allowed a researcher such as myself to join them. First time I was there, we were sitting four people on floor in front of Finn’s fire place for a very intense and deep conversation.

I don’t remember the course of events precisely, but the CIPI meetings was the bed from which the Moving the Edge convention sprang. On that link you can read more about it, but the site itself is defunct. The CIPI meetings went on after that, but ended haltingly when Finn died in December 06.

Now the CIPI has been reinvigorated by Martin Ehrensvärd and Maja Rottbøll, and I am happily participating again. The new life that has come to the new circle also invites me to think about the experiences and impact of the first round of CIPI, and how it has influenced present and future.

As I said, CIPI was a life-navigating circle to step into. This was because of the strong theme of our work together – Collective Intelligence. Ever since this series of sessions of conversations, where we were able to reach a very strong shared ‘field’ of intelligence, I have had a vision of working more to develop this capacity in myself and others. I has become a deep part of my identity. It was a massive experience to be able to intentionally create a space where you can know more than you usually can, and see more and reach for more than you usually can.

CIPI was created in order to explore the principles and practices that would create a field of collective intelligence. These principles and practices were collected and explored through observing the social energy in the group and how this energy shifted around and which actions triggered which changes. I think we laded on a list of social and personal practices, which is what each participant in the circle should watch in himself while also atending and remembering the readiness of the social practices. In one way the work was never finished, because it cannot be fully described. But I remember a distinct feeling of going in circles back to revisit the same basic principles over and over again. A feeling of “maybe we actually have a good-enough image of what we need”. A feeling that started a impatient build-up in me. “What would we be able to do now with this insight?”

When I talk about collective intelligence I talk about a intentional practice of personally engaged encounters. Not random stuff happening on the internet. Sure a lot of activity on the web and at large social events can be seen and described as manifestations of a form of intelligence that is beyond the individual. Like wikipedia or linux etc. In my view it is confusing the concept of collective intelligence to spread it over such broad subjects, but right now I do not have a better word for the experience than that.

Basically our explorations were done as a group of people sitting down in a circle and exploring what would emerge. The concept of “magic in the middle” guided us to reach into a shared field, and from there explore any concepts and ideas that would emerge.

As a designer I can see the enormous potential for this form of collaboration in working with solutions to future potentials. We could create circles were people could collaborate from their highest possible capacity. Design is inherently about exploring the unknown or the not-yet-known. It is a curious practice. I see the ideas of collective intelligence as hinting at a new way of doing design. As design spreads into new sectors of life and business, I would love to see this kind of processes unfold in innovation team, in organizational development and ideation processes. The simple but challenging process of brain-storming is actually a kind of collective intelligence practice. Without much demand on the inner work of the participants.

Collective intelligence, in the way we worked and still work with it, can be linked to spiritual practices,  is highly applicable in organzations, innovations, ideations and any other kind of creations – processes where the end point is unknown and the participants must lean forward to reach for new insights and this is best done when building energitically onto what we all bring to the circle.

For those who read Danish you can see more on the current facebook group – some of it is in English, actually

The map and the talk centered around the notions design-thinking and design-doing – as positioned between material and context (doing / what you work with), and between logic and aestehtic (thinking / how you perceive the world and discover the New). Without going into detailed depth with the framework or map, I can just show you the finished map after each direction and quadrant is explained:

After the presenation I had an interesting conversation with the audience on, if we see kaos pilots as a type of designers, then what is then their design material. I think that the notion of material is shared throughout the different design disciplines, but I was unclear to me how the kaos pilots would define their particular approach.

There were several suggestions; maybe it is ‘time’, as the KP are process designers, then what they basically manipulate is the time and process that they facilitate others to go through. Another suggestion was that they, by their own example, facilitate people to see their new potentials. Maja argued that Margaret J. Wheatley has made an image of facilitators building bridges for people to walk into new possibilities. Following that image the KP – and other process facilitators’ design material – becomes the dreams or visions they are able to create, tell and ask people to join. Altenatively – following the same metaphor – the facilitators’ design material is themselves. The facilitator must work hard with him or herself in order to navigate tiny detail in the process facilitation.

For me this is a very interesting discussion- Not because I am overly concerned with how kaos pilots define their field of expertise, but because the design field is evolving rapidly into fourth order design (Buchanan) and one way of describing the design field of fourth order is ‘design as facilitation’. As a researcher and as a practitioner I find it immensely important that we explore where competences and expertise is to be founded for such new development. I am especially interested in the mindset of the designer – meaning how we think while designing or – in a more elaborate way; how we position our consciousness while facilitating creative change processes… – Now that’s interesting.

Concerning the issue of whether Kaos Pilots are or should be considered as designers. Michael Donemann argued no. And proposed that the profession of kaos pilots is that of Animateurs – I’m not completely certain what he means, but I made the link as good as possible, and the imagery that the word generates in my head works well. Denouncing the ever-popular and stigmatized concept of ‘designer’ and using/making up a new category might actually be a good idea for the KP’s. However…

But it makes me think whether it actually makes sense to talk about a designer in fourth order of design. Also looking at the on-going debate on design thinking as design-used-by-(non)-designers-in-strategic-business-context, it might actully be stretching the word ‘design’ too far?? If the fourth prder design’s material is himself, then are we actually talking bout a designer anymore, or are we talking about a group coach? A group coach that can draw a littel better than normal??

Reboot is a gathering of a lot of interesting people who work on the edge of the internet and service design. It’s these people who make the next generation of the stuff that will define our net-everyday the coming years

When you go to the site, you can read some of the proposals that people have made for conference content. Also by me.

The conference is created in the next weeks, and the program is made out of the proposals that we give the organizers on the website. Interesting, yes?

Erik Stolterman’s The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research from International Journal of Design, 2(1), 55-65 - and

Research Through Design as a Method for Interaction Design Research in HCI from the SIGCHI proceedings from last year.

Whenever I read research in this field – as good as the above – I get enthusiastic and eager to participate in the discussion. I made some arguments in my dissertation about the nature of design research, and I am going to expand and pursue these further in the coming months.

But when reading Stolterman’s paper on design practice I also miss being in practice and doing design for clients full time. Although the research projects I work on have practical issues and require design work, it is very different from doing client work. The goal is different and the criteria for success is not necessarily that a design has success in the market place. The goal is often that we explore some interesting form of interaction based on its theoretical implications. This makes for a much more free and undefined design task, and in design (consulting) work it is often the constraints in the project and the direct interactions with a client that make an interesting project.

So, like many other design researchers, I have this dual focus on participating in leading edge discussions of the foundational concepts of design, research and interaction, and at the same time a desire to get out of research and into the dirty reality of designing for clients and the market place.

Thirdly I also have a strong desire to work with social change and collective intelligence in an organizational and social way – disregarding design and technology, and just focusing on facilitating healthy and evolutionary gatherings of people who can make a real difference right now. I tried to combine these foci last year while being an independent consultant, but it was too difficult to explain the span to potential clients.

Having three core interests can be a good thing for being able to see and approach the world from these three different perspectives. But it can also be an unhealthy state, as it it can lead to a state of wanting – regardless of where I am and what I am doing, I want to do something else, which might be able to better fulfill my highest potential.

A clever friend of mine once told me that I should think of the goal as “where my highest potential meets the needs of the world”. So either stay focused and on the edge with whatever one is doing, or look for where one’s diverse interests overlap and create your perfect platform.