Our invitation

Join us to explore the changes we are all living through. We invite you to bring your curiosity and your stories.

What happens in a People Need People Online session?

People Need People Online, a Warm Data session in an online format, is an elegantly simple experience underpinned by profound theory. Participants share stories and observations across multiple contexts. Through small group discussions people generate a high level of interaction and input. Insights and questions are then shared in a process of collective sense making.

This event is a series of five People Need People Online sessions through January and February. The experience deepens with repetition so you are welcome and encouraged to come to as many of the sessions as you can, however attendance at all of them is not essential.

A bit more background

“How do we think our way through the messes we’re in when the way we think is part of the mess?”

– Nora Bateson - Originator of Warm Data Labs

In these turbulent times many of us are looking for control and certainty. The problem is that way of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. And as Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Living systems, including people, aren't able to be controlled with certainty. Nature is not a machine, it’s a morphing web of interdependencies in which everything is constantly learning and responding, often in ways we don’t expect. We humans keep trying to fix our problems only to find we’ve not only failed to fix them, we’ve created a bunch of unintended and often worse consequences. Overlapping crises are now producing emergencies we’re struggling to address, including heat waves, droughts, bush fires and pandemics. COVID-19 has shown how one tiny virus can change our lives completely, disrupting our families and our political, economic, cultural, educational and medical systems.

Engaging with complexity requires different ways of perceiving, ones that engage us not only intellectually but emotionally, physically, culturally and creatively.

Warm Data sessions foster living responses to our challenges; responses grown in the fertile soil of an interdependent web of relationships. They’re an entry point into this way of seeing and being. People who have participated in Warm Data sessions speak of feeling more alive, reflective, connected and aware of the rich complexity of the world around them; of living, working, parenting, gardening and being in community differently.

You are warmly invited to a heartfelt, caring exploration of the systems change we are living through. We are no longer striving to see and make change; we are in it.

Some participant reflections

"Sense is deeply personal but without sharing it, making it vulnerable, allowing it to be molded by different perspectives and then ultimately taken back and owned there is no sense."
- Nicholas Tan - Warm Data session participant

"I like the circular thinking of warm data. Conventional statistical analysis of problems to be solved offer, at best, linear responses which frequently miss the mark of what is really needed. Exploring the relationships and possibilities between diverse inputs creates new connections, insights relevant to those who are impacted."
- Laurel Freeland - People Need People Online participant

"Thank you so much for letting me share this experience from the other side of the world. It's fascinating to see the similarities and the differences, the differing perspectives and experiences, expressed in deeply thoughtful and trusting ways. The facilitation was supportive but not limiting and the structure really worked to open up new ideas and directions."
- Jacky Smith - People Need People Online participant

Reference Information for further exploration

"Finding a Way: Will Peoples' Responses to the Emergencies of the Coming Decades be Warm? Or Cold?" by Nora Bateson and Mamphela Ramphele
Nicholas Tan's longer description of "My first warm data lab"
An article sharing descriptions of Warm Data through several participants' perspectives
ABC Radio Interview with co-host Fiona Brooks - Warm data reference is at 24 minutes: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/perth/programs/focus/big-talk/12662076