The Facts:  SoL is a nonprofit global membership organization dedicated to creating and sharing knowledge about fundamental innovation and change. An outgrowth of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT, SoL was co-founded by Peter Senge, author of the groundbreaking bestseller, "The Fifth Discipline", in 1997.

How does your organization compliment the In2:InThinking Network?   SoL is an intentional learning community composed of organizations, individuals, and local SoL communities around the world. A not-for-profit, member-governed corporation, SoL is devoted to the interdependent development of people and their institutions in service of inspired performance and meaningful results. SoL serves as a space in which individuals and institutions can create together that which they cannot create alone.

Tell us about your membership. What does it mean to be a member of your organization and how does one become a member?   SoL seeks to engage people who want to develop their capacity to create organizations and communities worthy of their members' commitment. We are researchers, practitioners, and capacity builders working to create a shared knowledge base of theory, tools, and practical know-how.   When you join SoL as a Connections member you gain access to this knowledge base. You are also invited to join a community that values confronting and challenging traditional mental frameworks in order to achieve significant personal and organizational change and make a difference in the world. Together we are developing the capacity to think and act differently in pursuit of remarkable results.   Join today at www.solonline.org.

What exciting developments are on the horizon for your organization?
SoL "Academy on Wheels" planned for the week of September 24th in Detroit.

A recent marketing study involving SoL's member organizations and potential member organizations indicated that more and shorter length opportunities for capacity building in locations other than Boston are sorely needed. In response to this need and in celebration of SoL's 10th anniversary, we plan to offer SoL's "Academy on Wheels" (working title) to expand our offerings to current and potential members. This event has been initiated by SoL's Fundraising Committee in cooperation with SoL's Council of Trustees. DTE, one of our long-time member organizations, will host the initial session in Detroit during the week of September 24, 2007. We expect other sessions to follow in 2008.

In looking forward to 2012, the council has identified three major goal areas: increasing organizational participation in SoL, an expansion of product offerings and an increase in working capital. This prototype event is in support of all three.

This week-long event will consist of an array of half-day and full-day electives offered by SoL members. Registrants can participate for as little as a half-day session and as much as the entire week. We expect to run multiple concurrent sessions.

This event is also a fundraiser. Our goal is to net $50,000 from this first event.

We plan to open registration for this event in early June, The final design of the Academy on Wheels will be determined by the end of May based on input from DTE and representatives of SoL's organizational membership committee, product development committee and fund-raising committee.

Capra has described the system as "an integrated whole whose essential properties arise from the relationships between its parts." He goes on to further explain the need to understand that the "Web of Life" needs to be viewed as "a whole that is more than the sum of its parts."  Systems Thinking proposes a context of a larger "whole" interpreted by an interconnected blended synthesis of new scientific, mathematical, and biological discoveries. These discoveries have been exposed in sections of single context of connectedness among established theories, paradigms and ideas associated with bifurcation, cybernetics, tektology, feedback loops, nonlinear mathematics (including chaos theory, hypercycle, and anthropocentric systems and networks. Capra stresses that humans are included in this Self-Organizing network and cannot live separate from the earth's environment. All members of an ecological community are interconnected in a vast and intricate network of relationships, which we call the "Web of Life."

The author also explains the importance of autopoieses, which is the organization of the living referred to as "self-making." The material is further developed by the Chilean neuroscientists Huberto Maturana and Franciso Varela (a former student of Maturana), autopoieses is a general pattern of organization that is common to all living things regardless of the nature and make-up of their components (or composite structure).  Maturana explains "living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition."  To elaborate further, the author sees living systems-organisms, social systems, and ecosystems and completely connected. If an astronaut viewed the earth from space they would recognize a complete system of atmospheric, geological and aquatic systems linked together in a cycle of life. When asked the very complex question of "what is life?"
Capra simply answers that it is "Something made up of pattern and structure."

There are many illustrations and diagrams for models that describe feedback loops, networks of enzymes, dissipative structures, patterns of hexagonal Benard cells, Belousov-Zhabotinskii reactions, Oceanic algae, an evolutionary Daisyworld, an Ueda attractor, fractal geometry and Julia sets. If you have never heard of any of these the book is worth reading just to find out what they look like to create a cognitive roadmap for the reader.  The Web of Life opens up many possibilities and cognitive ah-ha's while at the same time captivating first time readers with a constant positive exposure to Systems Theory.

Eric Sevareid
1912-1992, American Broadcast Journalist

Robert Louis Stevenson
1850-1895, Scottish Essayist, Poet, Novelist

• The history and application of systems thinking
• How do social systems allow us to understand and overcome long term problems in today's environment?
• How can you effect change within the system in which YOU play a role?

Music is an international language.  For example, there could be a Dutch musician and a Chinese person, and the Dutch person could play happy music and the Chinese person would know the music is happy.  Music brings us together because we have music festivals and friends and family can come together and dance.  The last way music brings us together is that if two people like the same music they may become friends.  Music takes away differences that we couldn't do ourselves.

Well said, Ellis.