Si Conference 2022

This past Friday and Saturday saw the 3rd Si Conference here in London. After a six month preparation journey for myself and our London Hub team - with its ups and downs - it all seemed to come together beautifully with two days of sunshine, in a great location, with an amazing group of people, connecting and talking ideas that have huge potential.

There were keynote speakings, panel discussions, presentations and workshops on all things systems innovation. 100+ people joined from all over the world, Toronto, Jakarta, USA, Mexico and?Dr Sharon Zivkovic?who won the prize for the longest journey, 37 hours from Adelaide in Australia.

This is my third time organizing these conferences, each time it has been like drinking from a firehose, you meet so many people and hear so many ideas all within 48 hours, I feel dizzy at the end. However it is great to get a sense of what is going on in the world of systems change, what people are thinking about and want to talk about.?

Most of all it is cool to see all the different perspectives. There were people coming from so many different domains; from peace building and international development, to government, public sector and policy making to civil society organizations, funders, finance and private sector, to design and innovation agencies. Some people just starting their journey into the world of systems innovation, some far along on it.

A number of people who joined this time said the general vibe and discussion was deeper and more reflective than in the previous one we did before the pandemic.?

Stephen Gray's presentation on power, Louis Klein's question "what's love got to do with it?" and Indy Johar's reflection that ultimately it was about reimagining the human condition and what it means to be human, raised more fundamental questions than previous events.

Personally, I saw a theme about people recognizing the limitations of tools and that ultimately things like systems maps and other models were there to enable people to have important discussions and recognize their different perspectives.

Many of the speakers - Per, Stephen, and Anna - noted the growing interest in the area of systems innovation, and it was good to have speakers who are working inside established institutions - like the European Union or OECD - joining to present on what they are doing in this space.

Most of our community and all the hub teams I have been working with have grown since the pandemic. This makes all the new connections I/we have created virtual ones, so it was so good to meet people I have been working with for over two years - often on a weekly basis - in person and know that they exist.

Big thanks to everyone who joined and to our great Hub team?Adela?Glyn-Davies,?Ben?Attle?FRSA????Mrunali?Bhangale,?John?Mortimer,?Hannah?Lyons-Tsai,?Farah?Colchester,?Jacqueline?Lim???

We did our best with the session recordings, will be?publishing them on our youtube channels soon.

For those in London our?next meetup will be in just 3 weeks on the 9th June

It was lots of work, with ups and downs, but definitely worth it, already scheming the next one...