Steady through the waves

We are in an AI acceleration, and this site is where we share what we see. The epicenter of the wave is San Francisco and California. You can read it as hype, a bubble that will burst, and parts of it may. But there are lines running straight back to the last wave from the same place, the internet boom of the late 90s. So we post this with caution and excitement at once. There is a need to be on the frontier, and to help create clarity around something that moves very fast.

Part of that clarity is figuring out your own role, how you fit in when a wave arrives. That is what happened to me during the last one. What brought me back to San Francisco this June was AI: the speed of it, and a pull to be near the edge where the new meets the old. Part urgency, part curiosity.

That is the same pull that brought us, the Kaospilots, to San Francisco in 1995 and 1996. Back then the frontier was the internet. It spoke to something I have carried since I was young, a curiosity for what is new.

That curiosity has a shape. Over the years it has taken the form of David Sibbet and many of the people in the US. Through all the time I have learned from David, the core of the field has stayed the same. He worked with Apple, National Semiconductor, HP Labs, Sun, and Agilent, companies that started and thrived, and at the same time working the edges of collective meaning making and process theory. Always bringing new tools and new approaches. Always a step ahead.

So a trip built around AI also handed me a rare piece of luck: a day and a half to celebrate the work of a mentor who has shaped how I work.

This one is a tribute with a direct line to the AI frontiers of today.

David Sibbet was instrumental in my choosing the path of visuals. It goes back to a series of lectures he and Rob Swigart ran for the Coro Foundation and the Kaospilots in San Francisco. “Leading in Chaos, Overview of Complexity Theory”. Friday October 24th 1996, 52 people, from 19.00 to 23.00. A blank piece of wallpaper, one and a half by six metres, turning into a mural of colour, lines and text. At some point towards the end of the lecture I jumped up and added our school to the timeline.

It was a turning point, just as San Francisco itself was. It led me towards mapping scenarios and using visuals to hold complexity in a conversation with many stakeholders. I had done versions of this before. Through my teenage years I was the one making mind maps, posters and storyboards for anything that needed to be communicated to others. That day I felt I had landed in a way of working that was simply me.

Neither the Kaospilots nor I looked back. I took the skill home, and we introduced it to many across the Nordic countries and through Europe. Almost thirty years of practice later, it was with admiration, awe and respect that I landed in San Francisco to meet the man who has become my mentor over the years.

That first session also introduced me to the whole community of the International Forum of Visual Practitioners. Since 1995 I was the young one, then over the years one of the more experienced, and I still follow the work of that global network today. It has led me to meet and learn from a long list of people.

The work

David has, with his four books and one more in the making, defined the field of graphic facilitation. Today we might call it visual facilitation, and at Bigger Picture we have added the layer of visual collaboration as a way of doing it. But the visual style and the concepts point straight back to The Grove Consultants International and Group Graphics®. David pioneered working with visuals as integral to the group process, facilitating group sensemaking through interactive visualization, naming it Graphic Facilitation.

The Game Plan, the History Map, the Context Map, the Five Bold Steps, and many more. All available as Graphic Guides® at grovetools-inc.com. These have been groundbreaking, not only for us but for many organisations across the Nordics, Europe and, I would guess, the rest of the world. The number of people who have put up a game plan, made sense of something important and walked away inspired must run into the millions. The Drexler-Sibbet Team Performance Model belongs on that list too.

Standing on the shoulders of all this work is our own book. We have tried to take it further, to make it accessible for more people to benefit from the value that comes out of group processes where there is a visual aspect to how people think and talk together.

A day and a half

You cannot imagine the joy of stepping into David’s car. He had generously offered a day, which turned into a day and a half. We talked about the old days and the new, about AI, and about the need for change and inspiration in the times we are in.

We drove down Silicon Valley, all the way to the new Apple headquarters and the Googleplex. We talked about the Institute for the Future, and we met Bob Horn and Paul Saffo.

Bob Horn is another founding father, the author of Visual Language, one of the most thought-through books on a syntax for using visuals in a structured way. At 92 he is still mapping ultra-complex history maps. To see his work, and to discuss what is needed right now to shift teams, organisations and the world towards better work in a time of high complexity, was a pleasure. A conversation among three nerds. I cannot express how magical the ping-pong of learnings, ideas and thoughts felt.

At Priscilla’s we were joined by Paul Saffo, a long-time friend of David and a connection of mine from the edges of the Institute for the Future. We talked about the tech brothers and their work, for good and for bad, where it might take the world we are in, and how to sow seeds of hope. Thank you, Paul, for the inspiration and for the feedback on the AI roadmap.

I found myself imagining the autumn of my own life, and hoping to be as curious, energetic and playful as David. Getting inspired by how the new Apple headquarters looks and feels, and by the clear difference between the Apple and Google campuses.