Confluence
These posts are about my book Confluence.
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The Confluence Workbook, among other things
Readers, I have several things to tell you about: a workbook, a podcast, a FAQ, sales, plans, and reviews. The Confluence Workbook As I worked on Confluence over the past two years, thinking my way through the examples you see in the book (and many other examples that didn’t make it into the book), I… Read more
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Confluence: The Book
It’s done. The new book is ready for you to read. It has an Amazon page with print and Kindle versions, plus a web site (at cfkurtz.com/confluence) with downloadable excerpts and exercise materials. You should also be able to order the book at your local book store (ISBN: 978-0-9913694-1-6). Confluence is about the ways in… Read more
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What I have been up to
Hello people. It has been increasingly bothering me that my last blog post was over a year ago. I wonder if people might think I have vanished off the face of the earth! Not yet. I have been working on a book. I have been working on it harder and more exclusively than I usually… Read more
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Mail bag: Stepping stones
Hello readers. I have been very busy in the past few months with paying projects. This has been a wonderful thing for my prospects of continuing to do this work! But it has led to the neglect of this blog, and of the book project. I have a few partially written blog posts in development,… Read more
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Into the archives again
Somebody once told me that somebody else said something interesting about me. “Keep your eye on her,” they said, “She’s a crackerjack.” I’ve always wondered what that meant. Am I a confection or a conflagration? Can I be both? Is there a prize? Here’s a joke my dad used to tell. On the wedding day,… Read more
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Four in the braid
Last week I went to a workshop at a thinktank in DC on social networks and behavior, desirable and otherwise. Something happened there. You will like it. Maybe not today, but soon. Coming to the braid As I participated in the conversations about social networks I did what I always do: I saw patterns. I… Read more
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Full confluence
This blog post is wildly out of date! Confluence turned into a book. See cfkurtz.com/confluence for details. Read more
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Whose truths are these?
I keep seeing people arguing and speculating about the creation, history, authorship and ownership of the Cynefin framework, and I feel increasingly obliged to say something about it. To keep quiet seems an injustice to all parties. So I’ll answer a few questions I keep seeing come up, once and for all, to the best… Read more
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Uncanny 2.0
I’ve been thinking all week about the uncanny framework I wrote about last week (it seems to want to be called that). I have to say, this has been a slippery beast to fight/dance/play with! I keep being reminded of Jacob wrestling with the angel, and of holding onto greased pigs, and of fish slipping… Read more
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Deeper confluence: Explanation in the uncanny world
I’d like to introduce yet another new framework for sensemaking in this post, one I’ve been pondering for a while. This morning I woke up and said to myself, “It’s time.” So here we go. EDIT: The framework described in this post has been superseded by an even better, shinier framework described in the next… Read more
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Identity and harmony in meshwork and hierarchy
This is yet another post on sensemaking (but it has stories in it!). What got me started on the exploration I want to tell you about was something Dave Snowden said in one of his posts about the history of Cynefin. He said “To use Cynthia’s words we now have a hierarchy and meshwork conflicted… Read more
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Another sibling comes home
You people just have to see this. It is connected to the recent series of posts on sensemaking. (Anyone who is only interested in narrative without the sensemaking: our regular program will resume soon. Anyone who has no idea what sensemaking is: the Wikipedia page on it is pretty good.) So Stephen Shimshock (whom I… Read more
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Practicing sensemaking with stories
Recently a correspondent asked me what he should do to prepare for a sensemaking workshop he was planning. I said the best preparation I knew of for a productive sensemaking workshop is another sensemaking workshop before it. Meaning: it takes practice. This is true both for learning to use sensemaking frameworks and exercises and for… Read more
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Better confluence diagrams
A comment on my last post (thanks commenter) was that the scan of my 2001 diagram for the confluence model was unreadable. (That’s because my chicken scratches were barely readable to me and I was embarrassed to show them in detail!) So rather than put up a bigger scan, I copied it over to PowerPoint.… Read more
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Confluence
Here is a series of recent discoveries regarding models and frameworks for narrative sensemaking. I’ll tell it as a story. (Narrative sensemaking, for those unfamiliar with the term, is where people, usually a group of people, begin with stories, or elements of stories, and consider them in such a way that larger patterns emerge among… Read more