I caught the news last week. Bummer. He was a major influence on my work, and on that of many who I respect and learned from.
Many Pattern Language design elements show up a lot in the cohousing neighborhoods I live in and help folks build, resident-led planning that helps these elements of humanity rapidly emerge.
It turns out this whole concept of pattern as lens can serve many different disciplines, and act as an attractor/filter/selector for people who “get it” and are curious enough to go beyond the surface of “what is” and explore some of the “why” and deeper context and connections. The whole aspect of holding something lightly, sketching the outlines rather than trying to capture the ultimate hi-res photo, lends itself to many insights.
I got to be a small part of a great team of group facilitators and group-process teachers, team leaders and method mappers who co-created a pattern language around productive meetings and successful group culture, best encapsulated in the CC-licensed open Group Works card deck.
There’s lots of things you can do with a tool like that, from helping practicioners of one method find common ground and language with others, to using it Tarot style to provoke further thought and insights, but my favorite activity remains going to events, spreading cards out on a table, and seeing who gets engrossed… it makes a lovely “facilitator detector.”
My wife Betsy Morris (who, with an urban planning PhD, has been into this stuff longer than me) has found her tribe in the international academic conferences centered around the concept, Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP, this year a virtual “PLoPourri”) and PUARL.
