Two summer trips

This summer I've been lucky enough to go on two trips. The first was to Vienna to the International Farming Systems Association conference. I haven't been to a conference for a while and it was good to get out and meet fellow researchers and to participate in some workshops and a fieldtrip to the Hungarian border, where we saw the grey horned cattle that have lived there forever, now owned by the National Park. We also met and talked there with a couple of farmers - interesting to hear of their experiences. I chose to focus on climate change in the conference through this workshop . There's a copy of my paper posted here. I also attended a lot of the sessions in this workshop.
The second trip was to mid-Wales for a break. Great place to go in August - green, quiet and quite splendidly scenic.

Our new books and courses

Our books for the new Open University Masters Programme: Systems Thinking in Practice are now all available. The books are:
(i) Blackmore, Chris (Ed.). (2010) Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice. Springer: London.
(ii) Ison, Ray (2010) Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate-Change World. Springer: London.
(iii) Ramage, Manus and Shipp, Karen (2009) Systems Thinkers. Springer: London.
(iv) Reynolds, Martin and Holwell, Sue Systems Approaches to Managing Change. Springer:London.

We have now completed the two core courses of our new Masters in Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) one of which is already being studied by over 90 students. This first core module is " Thinking Strategically: systems tools for managing change" (OU code TU811).
The second core module, "Managing systemic change: inquiry, action, and interaction" (TU812) will be presented for the first time in November 2010.