Since 2003, Brazil has had a yearly conference where business people gather and share stories about how they succeed in creating benefits for society and their business. Ilma Barros, the energizer behind this effort, says the initiative has inspired other organisations to increase their societal awareness. The organisers have also discovered that the companies telling the stories scale up their societal efforts after presenting at the conference.
A year after one …

In the dark plenary hall of the Ghent Convention Centre the album cover of Hotel California appeared, along with the beautiful tones of the Eagle’s evergreen. The audience sang along in a harmonious karaoke:
Mirrors on the ceiling,
the pink champagne on ice
And she said ‘we are all just prisoners here, of our own device’
Klaas van Egmond appeared on stage, obviously a professor, an environmental scientist, telling us that the Eagles meant …

Highlight in the already enlightening dialogue between Ken Gergen and Danielle Zandee was their little play about how conversations can degenerate, and how to prevent this – or even turn them into a generative alternative. Subsequently, Danielle asked the audience to think about ways to ‘interweave’ or ‘interlock’ the micro practices into day to day conversations, and make them sustainable. Besides the fact that Ken was struggling with the challenge …

As the Dutch IT firm Schuberg Philis grew, it started to become more of an “organization.” In his keynote address Thurday, information manager Ilja Heitlager explains: “Without realising it, we created departments and hierarchy, inadvertently alienating our experts from our customer. Our people are very skilled and focused, but they were lost. In times of crisis, however, for instance if a machine broke down, multidisciplinary teams were created, with experts …

“AI has the potential to unleash transformational change.” Ron Fry and Gervase Bushe agree upon that. “It has been proven, in practice, but also by research. So the real challenge now is to figure out how to really make that potential come true.” In the second half of their keynote, they explore different things we can do as AI practitioners, to increase the impact of any AI intervention.
Powerful questions
It all …

Klaas van Egmond’s quick review of the past 2,000 years, the catastrophes we’ve brought on ourselves as humanity and what’s needed to avoid a final calamity ended with a standing ovation at the fifth annual World Appreciative Inquiry Conference Friday.
The Dutch professor’s central point? That it is at the centre of four ways of being, individualism and diversity, idealism and materialism, we will find the freedom we most desperately need.Klaas …

Leo Bormans is a ‘man on a mission’. Full of humor and energy, he delivers a keynote on Saturday afternoon on how to put a megaphone on the positive message. How do we engage more and more people in generative conversations and change? How do we get the attention of politicians, business leaders, media… How do we get civilians involved?
Happier societies don’t just ‘happen’
Leo: “It is such an important issue. …