Coevolving Innovations
… in Business Organizations and Information Technologies
Exploring the Context of Pattern Languages
Pattern language is not for wicked problems, said Max Jacobson, coauthor with Christopher Alexander of the 1977 A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction. In addition, the conventional definition of an Alexandrian pattern as “a solution to a problem in context” when applied to social change might better use the term “intervention”, rather than “solution”.
These are two of the major ideas that emerged at Purplsoc 2017 conference last October. A 90-minute workshop was run in parallel with other breakouts.
For about the first hour, vocal participants included Max Jacobson (who had given a plenary talk on “A Building is not a Turkish Carpet“), Christian Kohls (who gave a plenary talk on “Patterns for Creative Space“) and Peter Baumgarnter (one of the Purlpsoc chairs).
As an impetus to discussion, we stepped through slides that had been posted on the Coevolving Commons.
For people who would like the next-best experience to being there, the slides have now been matched up with the digital audio recording, for viewing as a web video.
For devices decoupled from the Internet, downloadable video files are portable.
| Video | H.264 MP4 | WebM |
daviding March 3rd, 2018
Posted In: pattern language, philosophy, systems
Tags: christopher alexander, max jacobson, pattern language, purplsoc
Purplsoc 2015 digests and presentation
The pattern language community — followers of Christopher Alexander’s approach — is distributed globally. I participated in PLoP 2014 at Allerton Park, Illinois last September, and then attended AsianPLoP 2015 in Tokyo last March. I had been eyeing the PUARL (Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory) conference for fall 2015, but then heard that the event was being incorporated into Purplsoc for 2015. I originally couldn’t justify a trip to Europe for the Purplsoc (Pursuit of Pattern Language for Societal Change) 2015 conference, but then its timing turned out to be back-to-back with the ISIE conference. So, just 3 weeks before the conference, I booked a triangular routing to arrive just in time for the start on July 3, in Krems, Austria.
On the Friday, the program started with some plenary session keynotes:
- Hermann Czech, “Remarks about the Truth and the Whole” [digest]
- “Opening”, with Peter Baumgartner; a delegate of the Mayor of the City of Krems; Monica Kil; Christian Hanus; Hajo Neis [digest]
- Wolfgang Stark, “Performative Patterns for Innovation: The Power of Tacit Knowing in Social Systems” [digest]
Saturday morning started with a keynote.
- Takashi Iba, “Pattern Language 3.0 and Fundamental Behavioral Properties” [digest] [slides on slideshare.com]
The rest of Saturday morning had parallel streams. I was in the Pattern applications and practices session.
- Hajo Neis and Perrin Wright, “Up and Out: Oregon Tsunami Wayfinding Survival Language” [digest]
- Taichi Isaku, “The Cooking Language: Applying the Theory of Properties and Patterns into Cooking” [digest] [slides on slideshare.com]
- Hiroshi Nakano, “Japanese Spirituality and Pattern Language” [digest]
- David Ing, Service Systems Thinking: From Environmental Structure to a New Generative Pattern Language [abstract + presentation slides]
By Saturday afternoon, some of the parallel sessions were being juggled. I attended:
- Wolfgang Rang, “Early Experiments with A Pattern Language” [digest]
- Thomas Hruschka and Wolfgang Stark, “EcoBusiness Plan Vienna: An Organizational Pattern Language for Networking Sustainability In and Between Companies” [digest]
To close out Saturday, there was a plenary panel:
- “Christopher Alexander’s Ethics: An Ethic of Design”, with David West, Peter Baumgartner, Christian Kohls, Helmut Leitner, Hajo Neis, and Till Schummer [digest]
Sunday morning opened with a most impressive plenary keynote:
- Howard Davis, “Pattern Languages and the New Productive City” [digest]
The Sunday parallel session on Pattern languages for societal change had one impromptu workshop set up, before the scheduled one.
- Hajo Neis, Takashi Iba and Helene Finidori, “Pattern Languages 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0″ [digest]
- Norihiko Kimura and Takashi Iba, “The Fundamental Behavioral Properties” [digest]
daviding August 10th, 2015
Posted In: pattern language
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