The 2026 Problematique Dialogue applies the Banathy Conversation Methodology. This event is scheduled to convene at sLab at OCAD University, in Toronto from Sunday, May 10, 2026, and ending on Friday, May 15 (just before Victoria Day holiday).
Participants in the Conversation can plan for the event with more detailed descriptions under:
Engaging (including Connecting, Agreeing, Gathering, Exploring, Reflecting, Recollecting)
Booking (including Lodging, Registering, Routing)
Equipping (including Apple-Platform, Google-Platform, Alternative-Platforms)
The Conversation centers on Gathering, Exploring and Reflecting, in-person, over six elapsed days. Activities preceding and following the colocated event are conducted on Google Workspace.
"Within the time of one generation, we could observe a reversal of attitude so that descent becomes good and twentieth-century growth ideas become bad. As turndown progresses, people will see what works when resources are scarce. [….] In a sense, descent can be a kind of progress."
Odum, Howard T., and Elisabeth C. Odum. 2011. A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies. University Press of Colorado, p. 196.
We live in an era of deglobalization. From a systems perspective, this is a reversal of the 20th century trend towards complexification, towards decomplexification.
"There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about societies becoming more global. The standard of living and the quality of life commonly improve when societies become smaller and less complex (Tainter 1999). When they become less complex, societies often become less complicated, and that is a good thing."
Allen, Timothy F. H., Joseph A Tainter, and Thomas W. Hoekstra. 2003. Supply-Side Sustainability. Columbia University Press, p.422-423. https://doi.org/10.7312/alle10586.
Tainter, Joseph A. 1999. “Post-Collapse Societies.” In Companion Encyclopedia of Archaeology, edited by Graeme Barker, vols. 1–2. Routledge. Reprint, Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203017593.
Can we be creative in finding ways to do more with less?
sLab invites individuals and groups to apply as participants for the first Problematique Dialogue at OCAD University. We will convene at OCAD U Graduate Programs (205 Richmond Street West) in Toronto. This immersive experience begins on Sunday. May 10, 2026 at 5:00 pm, and runs through Friday, May 15 at noon.
The fee for attending is nominally $150CAD (or 100CHF, or $125USD). Scholarships or bursaries will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The targeted maximum number of participants is 32 (i.e. 4 teams of 8 learners).
Pre-conference collaboration and post-conference proceedings will be coordinated on lab.csrp.institute. Participants will be granted Google Workspace accounts for access to shared drives, online meetings, and chat.
The 2025n1-Banathy Conversation was convened in Fairfield, Iowa. The 2024 Banathy Conversation was held in Lugano, Switzerland from September 29 to October 4.
Interested parties can contact David Ing, for more details.
Gunderson, L., E. Universitry, A. Kinzig, C. Folke, S. Carpenter, and L. Schultz. 2006. “A Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems.” Ecology and Society 11 (1): 13. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art13/
Rocha, Juan C., Garry Peterson, Örjan Bodin, and Simon Levin. 2018. “Cascading Regime Shifts within and across Scales.” Science 362 (6421): 1379–83. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat7850.
Lawrence, Michael, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Scott Janzwood, Johan Rockstrom, Ortwin Renn, and Jonathan F. Donges. 2023. “Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement.” SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 4483556. Technical Paper 2023–1. Rochester, NY, July 11. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4483556. https://cascadeinstitute.org/technical-paper/global-polycrisis-the-causal-mechanisms-of-crisis-entanglement/
Ing, David. 2022. “Systems Changes Learning: Recasting and Reifying Rhythmic Shifts for Doing, alongside Thinking and Making.” Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics 20 (7): 11–73. https://doi.org/10.54808/JSCI.20.07.11.
Rosen, J. (2022). Robert Rosen’s Anticipatory Systems Theory: The Science of Life and Mind. Mathematics, 10(22), Article 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/math10224172
Systems inquiries inviting international participants for a residential learning experience had have a long history in Austria.
Under the auspices of Bela H. Banathy, meetings starting in 1982 were led by the International Systems Institute in partnership with the International Federation for Systems Research started.
The International Federation for Systems Research continued biannual events from 2000 to 2014.
Official Proceedings of the IFSR Conversations are available as open access from 2000 to 2014.
The 2016 Conversation was published as a Book on Demand. Chapter 3 is available as an open access accepted manuscript.
The Banathy Conversation, as implemented by CSRP Institute, derives from the original intents of early convenings.
"Bela Banathy defined a conversation as being:
a collectively guided disciplined inquiry,
an exploration of issues of social/societal significance,
engaged by scholarly[1] practitioners in self-organized teams,
who select a theme for their conversation,
which is initiated in the course of a preparation phase that leads to an intensive learning phase." [Dyer (2016), p. 5]
[1] "Conversation methods as described here are no longer restricted to those involving “scholarly practitioners”. The techniques described are equally applicable to any context where the aim is to draw on the creative capacity of everyone involved. Hence it can be applied to a business context where there is genuine openness to contribution from all."
CSRP Institute draws on the techniques and experiences of Banathy Conversations, extending pre-residential and post-residential activities with Internet communications technologies.
Dyer, Gordon. 2016. “Guidebook for Designing and Sustaining Effective Conversation.” International Federation for Systems Research. http://archive-ifsr.org/publications/conversations/, cached at drive.lab.csrp.institute.