Meet new collaborators and learn Complexity Science by doing
Complexity Science is an interdisciplinary and inclusive framework for studying, designing, and controlling Complex system behavior, such as global pandemics, extreme weather events, electoral politics, economic recovery and poverty, and much more. Over the course of one weekend, you will experience Complexity from a variety of perspectives, while developing solutions to real-world problems in a team setting, such as:
Many of the teams formed from our previous Complexity Weekends (May 2019, May 2020) have resulted in productive collaboration and continued work to this day.
In-line with social-distancing policy during the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, this weekend event will be entirely virtual
Friday, Oct 16 - Sunday, Oct 18
(Please plan to participate in the full virtual weekend experience)
Gain exposure to an interdisciplinary perspective on Complexity Science and its application
Work on important problems in small groups, with guidance from experienced mentors and domain experts
Join a cohort of colleagues, cofounders, and mentors - everyone is open to learning by doing with a diverse team
"There's no love in a carbon atom, no hurricane in a water molecule, no financial collapse in a dollar bill" - Peter Dodds
Aristotle described complex system behavior as when “the whole is more than the sum of the parts.” Complex systems consist of many components interacting with each other and their environment to produce networks of interaction, which generate novel information that makes it difficult to study components of these systems or subsystems in isolation or to completely predict their future. The main goal of Complex Systems Theory is to understand the relationship between these networks of interaction and the "emergent" properties of the system as a whole.
Our global community of practice is focused on creating immediate and lasting impact by applying Complex Systems Theory to the pressing problems of our time.
This Complexity community of practice is for you if you are:
Can you commit to making your team a long-term success? Teams will be working over the weekend to accomplish a goal together, but the real impact is by working through deep time.
All backgrounds welcome - your perspective is needed!
(No direct experience in Complexity Science is required to participate)
Participants will be working in teams over the weekend to accomplish a goal and fulfill a purpose together. We need to make sure everyone who registers can make these time commitments over the weekend (to the extent that their timezone permits).
As a global community of practice, we welcome participation from all time zones and plan around the reality of a global virtual event Oct 16-18. We focus on forming teams across timezones by allowing for teams to form and evolve over the course of the entire weekend, and by promoting asynchronous teamwork (you'll have time to co-create with your team no matter what timezone you're in).
5:00 pm - 9:00 pm Pacific Time
Get to know the other participants and facilitators, learn about Complexity Science, and co-create Shared Truth with others.
9:00 am - 4:00 pm Pacific Time
Form a team with other participants, choose a complex problem, and get to work.
The weekend experience is designed to be live and interactive (not just a series of talks)!
9:00 am - 4:00 pm Pacific Time
Share your team's hard work and vision, make an impact, and stay connected.
Dr. Tom Carter has been a professor at CSU Stanislaus since 1981, starting in the Mathematics Department. In 1982, he helped found the Computer Science Department. Over the years, he has played a central role in the creation and development of the Cognitive Studies program at Stanislaus State, and has been involved with the University Honors program. His central areas of focus recently have been complex adaptive systems, large datasets, and bioinformatics.
Facilitators will guide and mentor teams during the conference, supplying Complexity Science references, impactful connections, problem-solving frameworks, tooling, relevant data sets, and more. Their mission is to guide the "how" of the Weekend, by enabling teams to embrace diverse perspectives between teammates, to interface with system stakeholders to gather feedback, to draw inspiration from the Complexity literature, and ultimately to accomplish initial goals together (whether that be a research proposal, a business plan, or another outcome). Many teams that form at a Complexity Weekend event go on to do great things together, and stay connected to our Applied Complexity community of practice through monthly virtual events.
Causation • Algorithmic Information Dynamics • Information Theory • Complex Networks • Randomness
Dr. Hector Zenil has degrees in Logic (MPhil, Paris), Computer Science (PhD, Lille), and Epistemology (PhD, Paris). He specializes in complexity in causality and has published over 100 papers as a Senior researcher & faculty member at the University of Oxford; and as a lab leader of the Algorithmic Dynamics Lab at the Unit of Computational Medicine of the Karolinska Institute (awarding institution of the Nobel Prize in Medicine). He is the Editor of Complex Systems, the first journal in the field founded by Stephen Wolfram in 1987.
Python • Systems Engineering • Political Economy • Blockchain • Data Science
Michael Zargham earned his PhD in Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 where he developed novel methods for decentralized dynamic resource allocation in networked systems. Zargham is the founder of engineering research and design firm BlockScience, which specializes in estimation, decision, and control of complex societal and economic systems. He is affiliated with the Vienna University of Economics and Business in the Interdisciplinary Institute for Cryptoeconomics.
Complex Systems Thinking • Design • Learning • Leadership • Futurism
Sudebi is a narrative designer, creative facilitator, educator, futurist & writer. She designs experiences, engagement, and environment that allow people to think and dialogue. By making their thinking and interaction visible to others, she helps people discover their own designs and narratives using different modes and media. She is focused on social, environmental, and cultural issues, inter-weaving design thinking, imagination, complex systems thinking, pedagogy, crafts, visual and performing arts, oral history, ethnography, and research to co-create inclusive possibilities.
Sociology • Conflict Resolution • Democracy • Law and Justice
Strand is trained in the disciplines of civil engineering, law, and conflict engagement, with degrees from Stanford and Georgetown Universities. After more than 20 years on various law faculties, she moved to Creighton’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. She researches law’s emergence from civic relationships, systemic justice and injustice as emergent properties, and how current institutions operate to reproduce inequity. She practices building relationships and facilitating conversations to create civity (www.civity.org).
Awareful Systems • Organization Development • Complexity Thinking
Barb is a registered architect, award- and grant-winning artist collected internationally, activist, and advocate. She co-litigated pro se (Latin: "for oneself") a precedent-setting zoning case where she learned about regulatory agencies and facilitating change in large, complex systems. For her gifted-with-learning-differences son, she taught herself enough neurology, psychology, and pedagogy in order to be an effective advocate. She now applies her knowledge into how thinking affects eco-systems.
Agent-based Models • Entrepreneurship • Economics • Limits of AI
Steven E. Phelan is Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Fayetteville State University, part of the University of North Carolina system. He received his PhD entitled "Using Artificial Adaptive Agents to Explore Strategic Landscapes" in 1998. He has since published several articles on the application of complexity science to management and economics. His first book, "Startup Stories: Lessons for Everyday Entrepreneurs", was published in July 2020.
Research • Mathematics • Cryptoeconomics • Token Engineering • Complex Systems Engineering
Kris researches Cryptoeconomics and Complex Systems Engineering. With a formal education in technical-economic Mathematics at the University of Technology in Vienna and five years working experience in banking and software integration, he understands the financial and regulatory background at the intersection of real-world and cryptoeconomics. His focus at the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at WU Vienna is the development of token engineering research streams, the creation of network design and incentive mechanism structures, and valuation and modeling of crypto assets. His specializations are agent-based economic modeling, game theory and optimization methods, as well as monetary and environmental policy economics.
Cryptography and Security • Governance • Blockchain • PMML
Anish has so far worked as a medical doctor, a bioinformatician, a strategy consultant, and a cryptographer. He has spent half of his career researching cryptographic algorithms and protocols at three different research groups, including Microsoft Research. He has advised and worked for various banks and financial institutions, including AIB, HSBC, Lloyds, and Zurich. He was also an early advisor to Ripple and Ocean Protocol, a reviewer of the Ethereum Orange paper, and one of the founding members of the UK Digital Currency Association. He is an adjutant faculty at Harbour Space and the head of research at the Information Sciences Institute at SRH Berlin.
Neuroscience • Microscopy • Communication • Education • Collaborative Drawing
Alexandra has a background in translational neuroscience studying brain injury in early development. She is now pursuing a PhD examining how immune molecules regulate the proper establishment of connections in the brain. Her research is inherently interdisciplinary, and she hopes to bridge even more fields through Free Energy thinking and collaborative drawing.
Human Computation • Collective Intelligence • Crowd AI • Technosocial Platforms • Wicked Problems
Pietro Michelucci is the founding director of the Human Computation Institute, a multidisciplinary innovation center that develops scalable, crowd-powered systems to address “wicked” societal problems. More recently, he is investigating complexity science as a way to make problem-solving systems behave more predictably and effectively in the real world, and applying that to a project called "CrowdMeter" (toward a sustainable "new normal" during COVID-19). For more info, visit: https://crowdmeter.app
R • Machine Learning • Big Data for Healthcare • Biomedical Signal Analysis • Computational Fluid Dynamics
Dr. Menon's research is focused on artificial intelligence and data science as applied to modeling imaging and time-series data in various domains. He ran the MeDCaVE Lab, which focused on robust algorithmic analysis of biomedical imaging data augmented with quantitative, physicsâbased modeling of cardiovascular mechanics & hemodynamics. He has advised 10+ graduate students so far, resulting in over 100 peer-reviewed publications, and has served as faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Yoga • Vision • Mission • Relationship Management • Care
Alex envisions a society built on a strong foundation of community spirit and commitment. This begins with people – mind, body, and heart. Her contribution to this vision is sharing what she knows, loves, and practices – Yoga.
Biomimicry • Design • Economics • Behavior • Ecology
Richard is an award-winning designer with a background in behavioral economics and real estate, with further study in urbanism. He has worked with multi-national organizations around the world on complex challenges, in real estate finance, urbanism, asset management, and product design. Richard rarely gets bored and finds common links between a host of subjects from art, science, nature, and design. Based in York in the UK, Richard spends his quiet time with his wife and two young boys.
Python • Agent-Based Modeling • Neuroscience • Bioinformatics • Optimization • Data Analytics
Bleu is interested in solving complex problems using data sources that are large and diverse. Her PhD research leveraged informatics to understand the biological identity of neural cell subtypes. More recently, she has been using augmented intelligence and agent based modeling to solve problems at industry scale. She has also been exploring how the exploitation of environmental resources establish networks fo information transmission.
Entrepreneurship • Creativity & Innovation • Facilitation • Diversity • Education
Monica Kang, Founder and CEO of InnovatorsBox®, is an educator at heart, transforming workplaces and communities with the power of creativity. Using innovative services and products, she works with industries worldwide including Fortune 500 companies, higher education, government, and nonprofits. Monica is the author of 'ReThink Creativity', has organized for Startup Weekend over the past 5 years, and previously worked in nuclear nonproliferation.
Anthropology • Technology • Human Evolution • Archaeology • Human-Environment Interaction
Jenn Huff is a quantitative anthropologist and archaeologist who works on deep time questions about human evolution, human migrations into new landscapes, exchange networks, risk & uncertainty, technology change, and human-environment interactions. She is currently working on a book that looks at human evolution and recent cultural perspectives to explore how humans cooperate; and what that means for us in the past, present, and the future.
Agent-Based Modeling • Visualization • Self-Organization Theory • Applied Complexity • Wildfires
Stephen Guerin is President of RedfishGroup in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an R&D consultancy applying the emerging science of Complex Adaptive Systems to create living software systems. He is the CEO and Inventor of the SimTable, a spatial augmented reality sand table for sharing GIS agent-based modeling for wildfires, flooding, and hazmat evacuations. Stephen is also Faculty at the Complex Systems Summer School at the Santa Fe Institute. His work centers on visualization and modeling of self-organizing systems.
Decision Science • Incident Management • Data Science • Disasters
Sean is the CEO of Disaster Tech, a public benefit company applying data science for decision-making before, during, and after disasters. Sean has served as Director for Incident Management Integration Policy on the White House National Security Council and is a U.S. Navy veteran.
Social Innovation • Programming Languages • Artificial Intelligence • Machine Learning
Steven has expertise across various domains and focused in programming languages. He applies this background to Earth Computing, supporting distributed computing with reliable networking, and to his own startup, Teamifier, supporting relationships through innovation and vice versa. As a consultant, Steven performed technical and strategic analyses for organizations from startups to research labs of global Fortune 500 companies. He distilled his knowledge of the vocabulary and culture of Silicon Valley as an author of the acclaimed book, Valley Speak.
Science Communication • Evolutionary Biology • Paleontology • Philosophy of Science
Michael is a philosopher and artist whose work anchors our current crises and imagined futures in deep time and a nondual articulation of evolutionary dynamics. Michael splits his time between art, music, writing, parenting, hosting Future Fossils Podcast, social media for the Santa Fe Institute, and community management for The Long Now Foundation. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelgarfield
Human Systems • Complexity Thinking • Ecosystems • Organization Development • Complexity Practice Models
Denise is an author, consultant and entrepreneur, who finds inspiration working in complex human ecosystems. She is co-founder and principal consultant with Complexity Space Consulting and chairs Plexus Institute. Her work and research focus on complexity thinking practices and models for organizational development, strategy, and innovation. Her book "Complexity Works! Influencing Pattern-Based Change in Teams & Organizations" introduces a scalable framework for applying Complexity language, distinctions, tools, and lenses.
Collective Behavior • Computer Simulation • Decision-making
Jacob is a theoretical biologist, with a background in physics and engineering. He takes a quantitative approach to study the behavior of animal groups such as fish, birds, ants, and honeybees. He is interested in how groups process information, adapt to their environment, and coordinate to function together.
Business and Operations • Law • Technology • Sociology
Scott David has worked as an attorney for 30 years designing consistent, integrated, and enforceable narratives for harmonically-coupling incommensurables. He has advised global clients about creating rhetorical containers for intangibles of various sorts (financial instruments, derivatives, software, IP, data rights, information privacy, risk, etc), so that they can be transferred, traded and generally moved around.
Open-source Intelligence • Organizational Sensemaking • Systems Warfare • Distributed Teams
R.J. spends his time infusing complexity science into military and intelligence research to generate best practice for remote teams, civilian or otherwise. He is a serial contributor within the Defense Community, working with complexity-oriented organizations on DARPA grants, research, and inter-agency collaborations. He currently represents Remotor and COGSEC in the information warfare subdivision of a working group on expeditionary warfare in addition to sitting on several other committees and working groups in the IEEE, Department of Defense, and Private Sector.
Design Theory • Applications • Innovation Ecosystems
Alistair Brett works on applying complex adaptive systems principles to practical problems. He has 25 years of global experience in technology commercialization. Alistair has a PhD in theoretical physics which helps him to think in terms of system models. He works closely with Denise Easton and Barb Siegel at the Plexus Institute.
Design-led Innovation • Transformative and Emergent Leadership • Executive Coaching • Futurism
Probal is the co-founder and CEO of the design-led collective, Depicentre Consulting. He works on the interfaces of business, learning, design, analytics, innovation, and storytelling. With leadership experience across seven countries strengthening his ability to manage cross-cultural & cross-functional virtual teams in complex organizations, he has a passion for aiding content- & culture-driven organizations in making economic, social, ecological, and educational impact.
Accounting • Finance • Storytelling • Education • Collaboration • Wellbeing
Jax mothers a toddler, loves accounting and finance, and instigates fun projects. She is trained in political economy and business administration and has worked in the charity, commercial, and government sectors in Asia, the United States, and Europe. Her projects include climate innovation, unconventional learning, and bringing accounting and finance to The People. She now resides in London and emanates energy universe-wide.
Information theory • Theory of computation • Mathematical logic • Complex networks • Epistemology
Felipe is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC), Brazil, under the supervision of Artur Ziviani. His current research project aims at theoretical analyses on emergent information, complexity, and randomness in networked complex systems.
What will I get out of participating?
Join our global Applied Complexity community of practice, and come away with a healthy exposure to the depth and breadth of Complexity Science from a variety of perspectives. Meet new collaborators, co-authors, mentors, and friends while learning together through a hands-on online team experience. Work toward solutions to the most important problems of our time.
Who is this conference for?
This conference is intended for those who are interested in Complexity Science and are eager to have an immediate and lasting impact while so many Complex systems around us behave in ways that are volatile, harmful, or unsustainable.
What are the prerequisites for attending?
A healthy curiosity and willingness to work outside of your usual expertise and comfort, and a willingness to share your expertise with others. Conference engagements will occur exclusively in a Keybase team for the conference cohort, which will be shared with registrants (you can download Keybase and generate a username here: https://keybase.io/download). All sections will be held in English.
Should I do anything to prepare for the conference?
Don't worry about being unprepared, as no one is an expert in all the various fields intersecting with Complexity Science. If you want to consume anything beforehand, perhaps the "Intro to Complexity" course materials from the Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Explorer platform would be best. We'll have facilitators on hand to help with whatever blocks your team as you work toward a solution to your chosen problem.
Should I come with a problem in mind that I'd like to work on already?
Feel free to come prepared with a complex problem you’d like to gather a team around to solve, or let the creativity flow as you interact with the diverse set of Complexity Thinkers during the event. The choice is up to you.
Who will own whatever is created at the conference?
Participants own their work. Solution proposals generated during the event will have explicit co-ownership defined by the teams themselves, and are private by default. Participants will be given the opportunity to opt-in to having their proposals summarized into a one-pager emailed to all attendees after the event and posted on the Complexity Weekend website. Teams are encouraged, but not required, to present their results at the end of the Weekend. Any degree of open-sourcing is celebrated, but not required.
How can I become a facilitator?
We are currently seeking facilitators for our next Complexity Weekend event (in May 2021). Please contact [email protected] if you are interested.
How does the Complexity Weekend community sustain itself financially?
Our community of practice is supported by a combination of individual and organizational contributions. If your organization would like to contribute money or other resources to aid in our mission to empower teams to tackle the world's toughest problems through Complexity Science, please contact us at [email protected]
Applied Complexity community of practice