Card Sessions: How To Play
Cards considered in light of great questions.
Card Sessions: How To Play
In a network, we play^n to win^n.
How can we coordinate our human, joint efforts, homesteading our future, seven generations to come?
Here’s how to play:
1. Gather
Gather a small group around great questions and adopt a play disposition.
2. Consider
Consider the cards in light of the questions, engage in joint understanding.
3. Annotate
Highlight the text of the cards, add comments, capture group insights.
4. Conclude
Card session generative closure when agreement on actionable insights, together with needed and possible next steps.
Here’s how to play:
2021 May 3
1. Gather around a Question
Gather in ways conducive to the coalescing of a small group genius around a center, generative, driving, exam — Question.
2. Consider and Place
Cards considered in light of questions. Add cards to card session board. Consider cards, board, center question and any and all related, relevant questions.
3. Converse and Annotate
Comment and annotate, until insights turned actionable and alignment around direction and agreement on next steps.
Ok, so we’ve got a question:
How can we coordinate our human, joint efforts, homesteading our future, seven generations to come?
Small groups can gather around their own great, generative question.
Now for the cards, to be considered in light of the question — see the cards in the comment threads over at the CMM place. There’s seven card decks in development, one that can be played in CMM and soon, in apps near you.
In the CMM comment threads, you will find some of the Understanding Cards, in the Understanding Deck of Cards.
Ok, you and your group have got a few cards:
- Consider the cards in light of your question.
- Highlight the text of the cards, add comments, capture group insights.
Card: Understanding
Understanding
What if understanding is our ability
to hold space for the possibility of
knowledge, as it emerges, unfolds,
directs and discloses its relevance to
unexplored aspects of things known?
There’s almost as many different ways to continue playing, as there’s unique individual abilities and needs. However, for the sake of brevity and clarity, this here Understanding Card Deck and the Card Sessions, they’re designed for
Play^n(disposition) -> Game^n(process) -> Win^n(preferable outcome)
Play^n -> Game^n -> Win^n
One way to apply this type of game, is to gather a small group together around one great, generative question, with all participants bringing a Play^n disposition to the table, holding space for a Game^n group genius process.
A small group conversation, where emerging, unfolding, cultivating and evolving lines of inquiry, forms a path (and, sometimes, paths, diverging, converging), trim-tabbing away from probable and towards preferable (Win^n) outcomes.
Situational awareness -> knowledge -> preferable outcomes.
In between cards, combinations, intersects, weaving lines of inquiry, Game^n can branch out to Zettelcasting, when this helps weaving intelligence, ability, agency and need.
The large finite pattern, pattern language, underlying Questions and Cards, is what enables machine parsing.
How Do I Work This Think, Thing and Gathering?
Card session generative closure is when there’s agreement on actionable insights, together with needed and possible next steps.
Zettelcasts, notes, annotations, paper and hypertext, can help form a fluid, flexible and evolving sense-making and meaning-making approach, adding contextual intelligence around Questions, Cards and Conversations.
Good Measure
- the generative review of card sessions is knowledge
- cards are social computing interface
- card decks are frames
- labs are reframing in service to understanding
Taking Thought
Card: Taking Thought
- cognition in a sense of context (contextual intelligence)
- cognition in the light of autopoiesis
- cognition in service to discernment
- cognition in the light of anticipation
- cognition in a context of action
“We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only guide it by taking thought.”
— Alfred North Whitehead
Generative Review: Anticipatory Systems
The process of generative closure, can be seen, understood and engaged in, in ways co-extensive, co-extending, cultivating and co-evolving, with the instigating, situating, forming and stewarding anticipatory systems.
