Conversational Confluences at the ASC Conference: Abbie VanMeter talks with 8 participants about their experience and what cybernetics means to them.
American Society for Cybernetics Conference: Podcast live from Ouro Preto, Brazil
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Dialogics & Facilitation
This collection of articles explores the role of dialogue and structured facilitation, examining how meaning emerges through interaction, the dynamics of participation, and methods for guiding complex conversations that foster collective sense-making, co-creation, and transformative change.
Coordinated Management of Meaning: Fellowships
Application deadline: AUG 28, 2026. CMMi Fellowships are centred around a project or paper that apply CMM concepts (making social worlds together in communication).
On Collaborative Hardball as a new negotiation with Susan Coleman
Abbie van Meter and Susan Coleman discuss Susan’s new book, Collaborative Hardball: Using the Power of a New Negotiation as Women to Change the World and what a “new negotiation” looks like for women and everyone.
Realised Worth Newsletter
Newsletter for people who are researching or otherwise engaging in volunteering. RW Institute studies what makes a volunteer experience produce lasting change in how people see themselves, what they believe, and how they act.
Abbie van Meter asks Jenn Chan, “What can you imagine for a better world?”
Jennifer Chan, CEO, Department of Imaginary Affairs, discusses the relationship between communication, stories, and imagination for designing better social worlds.
From truth out of adversity to truth in good faith
Our scepticism about political truth claims and the implications of cultural diversity lend added weight to the need for restorying what we might call truth.
Wayfinding—towards justice and democracy
My particular focus in theses posts is on the public sphere, particularly on the functioning of our two major public institutions, the government and the law. How well is the governing and regulating done?
On Unlearning Ableism
PODCAST. Jamie Shields and Celia Chartres-Aris explore disability through the lens of a communication perspective and unlearning our internalized ableism as a necessary step for all of us.
Co-Creating Social Worlds Symposium
FEB 27–28 | New York City, NY, USA. Making change through dialogue, collaboration, and relational practices in times of division. Waitlist.
What if…? Robyn Penman’s substack is live
Robyn Penman is a scholar and long-time observer and critic of our social world asking “what if…?.” to open a path to a new world of being with others.
Reader’s Block and Mental Stuckness
Francis Laleman’s poetic and evocative story about three novels and a book about trees.
RSD14-CMMi: Relational Connectedness
OCT 11, 2025 | ONLINE. A space for designers to explore the question of how we would go about designing better social worlds through our communication, relationships, and the larger systems in which we are a part.
Three social mechanisms leading to fake interdisciplinary collaborations / 伪跨学科合作的三种社会形成机制
Also in Chinese | Lianghao Dai: Fake interdisciplinary collaborations are a form of performative scientific behaviour that claims to be interdisciplinary but lacks knowledge integration across disciplines.
Coordinated Management of Meaning Institute (CMMi) at RSD14-ONLINE
OCT 11 2025 | ONLINE. Relational Connectedness. CMMi at RSD14-ONLINE is day for designers to explore the question of how we would go about designing better social worlds through our communication, relationships, and the larger systems in which we are a part. Check out the CMMi articles featured below.
CMMi—Co-Creating Social Worlds in Relationship with Others
Abbie VanMeter: CMM has evolved into an important perspective and practice that foregrounds relationality as central to meaning-making, is increasingly applicable in everyday life, and remains rooted in a strong theoretical foundation.
CMMi—On Relational Construction with Sheila McNamee
CMM community conversations—What are you constructing in your relationships? Sheila McNamee’s work is focused on dialogic transformation within a variety of social and institutional contexts including psychotherapy, education, healthcare, organizations, and communities.
CMMi—On Designing Complex Conversations with Celiane Camargo-Borges
CMM community conversations—How do we understand the complexity of who we are and who we are becoming? Abbie and Celiane use social construction as a framework to explore forming futures, intent v. impact, “good” design, and sustainability transitions.
CMMi—Predictions, Expectations, and the Neurobiology of Sensemaking with Rachel Lilley
CMM community conversations—Abbie and Rachel are two ’embodied minds’ exploring the neurobiology of sensemaking. Rachel Lilley’s RSD13 keynote and Sightlines article are available on RSDsymposium.org.
CMMi(ish)—Design Thinking and Social Construction
Camargo-Borges and McNamee’s 2022 book introduces the constructionist research design process as a framework for research that is creative, transformative and innovative. The link goes to the first 19-pages.
Preparing interdisciplinary research teams for transdisciplinary co-production
How can interdisciplinary teams engage with societal actors in transdisciplinary research? Emma Ligtermoet, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Cathy Robinson, Zaynel Sushil, and Peat Leith introduce the Context-Centred 4Ps Framework—shared exploration of positionality, purpose, power, and process through equity, trust, openness, and reflexivity.
On Emergent Sensemaking and Social Cohesion
CMM Podcast: Abbie and Karina Solsø discuss emergent sense-making the tensions of plurality by embracing not knowing and creating social coherence through the responsibility of ethics.
About Bearing the Unbearable
(And how the unbearable exists because we let it.) “I am here I tell her. I take ownership of your suffering. It is me.”
A Pedagogy of Small Steps
Considering “mindful observation of the smallest of things. Mindfully observing what presents itself around us. Drop the hurry and haste. Staying mindful slows us down, permits us to better focus — and focusing better enhances the chances we have of getting somewhere. Smaller is better because slower is better.”
About the Creation of Abundant Space
So it must be that I sit down today and make space for a piece about making space, which is the third deverbal noun out of the six that the framework of Host Leadership entails, and since I have been writing about two of them already, it seems that I must go on and proceed.
Networks Storybook Playbook
How do we make the invisible work of networks visible? A step-by-step guide to translating the complexity of networks into clear, compelling narratives.
Gripped By Tears, For No Reason
Coming out of the Ides of March and Eryk Salvaggio’s post on future fatigue reminded me of Francis Laleman’s fatal mellow-heartedness.
Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, Communicating
Preview of Robyn Penman’s new book by Sheila McNamee, “we are asked to consider a complete reconceptualization of justice. What if we inhabit a space where justice is something we make together rather than an abstract, ideal standard for resource distribution, legal decisions, and for moral conduct?”
Exploring multiscalar networks: What makes networks effective and transformative?
Resources from June Holley’s Network of Networks talk. Second session is March 27—several networks of networks will share their experience.
Podcast: Stories Lived. Stories Told
Abbie VanMeter and guests look at patterns, contexts, stories, and relationships—and the role of curiosity, mindfulness, collaboration, and dialogue to create better social worlds for ourselves.
Meeting of the Waters: At the Relating Systems Thinking and Design conference
RSD13 featured a paper and workshop incorporating the theory of the coordinated management of meaning within the river of conversations. The CMM Institute plans to further strengthen these relationships, fostering transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.
Textbook: Interpersonal Communication 8th edition is out
Eight edition of Arthur Jensen and Sarah Trenholm’s textbook is available. It offers guidance on human interaction and is reviewed as “the text I wish I had as an undergraduate student.”
Cybersystemic Media Design to Counter Cognitive Warfare: Toward a Peace Plan
As a knowledge weaver between the SDA and the systems societies, I often attend both the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) and the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) conferences.