CFX 2021: Cumulative Effects Conference Seeing With 3 Eyes

We need better design

“I think designers are the alchemists of the future.”
Richard Koshalek, President, Art Center College of Design

The desks creak under the weight of referrals piling up in the stewardship office.  Hard drives are full – we have to move to external drives or the cloud to store it all.  And every week, another one or four more come in!  The impact assessments, notices of intent, and invitations to consult pile up, week after week.  Just answering the emails often takes 2 hours a day. The questions not only affect today, they affect all of the future.  Nobody knows what the cumulative effect will be yet in our gut we know this is unsustainable.  The deadlines are difficult if not impossible to meet and still be able to do a professional, well considered evaluation.  

In another city, the proponent is uneasy.   They’ve followed the rules and the guidelines, they were fully compliant with the checkboxes and lists, they spent more than a million dollars on consultants jumping through a long line of regulatory hoops, the experts say there are no significant cumulative effects to worry about.  They consulted, they convened boards – they invested in communities.  They’ve done all this on speculation – and still no certificate and no social licence.

Prosperity is locked down.  We are missing out on economic opportunities but what’s the alternative – not care for the environmental systems that sustains us?  Why is this happening?  Are the developers just greedy?  Are the land stewards just obstreperous? This is not good.

More importantly, it’s not good design.  

Business as usual is intent on pounding the square peg into a round hole.  It’s a war of brute force vs granite resistance.  The solution set is binary – winners or losers.  We’ve designed a zero-sum game with an option for negative-sum. 

Good design, where we can unlock prosperity while caring for the Earth requires the ability to go beyond ordinary sight.  We need to use our third eye, often called foresight to create good design.  Those who can do it are called “seers” and are able to design the future.  

Good design is essential for success.  As Daniel Pink, author of several provocative, bestselling books about business, work, creativity, and behavior wrote, “as more people develop a design sensibility, we’ll increasingly be able to deploy design for its ultimate purpose: changing the world”.

The theme of CFX2021 is "Seeing With 3 Eyes: Interconnection, Innovation, & Ideas" is about changing the world with good design – writing our own story if you will.  The 3 eyes are a bit of a play on words, acronyms, and good design.

Interconnection: Maybe more than ever in our life times, COVID 19 has made us intimately aware of the cumulative effects of living in an interconnected world.

Innovation: Demanding situations motivate us to respond to change and innovation is often where we find a path forward.

Ideas: When we can engage in conversations about challenges or opportunities we often recognize a new path to solving it or capturing it. The CFX Cumulative Effects Conference Series is where new ideas are born.

Cumulative Effects (CFX) are outcomes resulting from the interconnections land and ocean use, people, our environment, geopolitics, and the economies we create.  Being able to see these interconnections gives you and I the power to shape our future and that's why we're bringing together top systems thinkers from around the world directly to you.

We are thrilled to present to you the CFX2021 Live program! Taking place online May 5-6, 2021. Early bird registration for the 2021 Cumulative Effects Conference is now open for you at www.cfxconference.com

Our organizing team reached out and listened to attendees, experts and speakers and has been working for months to bring you the best online ‘cumulative effects’ event anywhere. 

Here's what I want you to do.

Don't take my word for it.  Go to the conference website and see for yourself the unrivaled caliber of the speakers, the depth of the topics, the live engagement opportunity you now have.  Click on the agenda to learn more about the speakers and the topics. This is a power packed live intensive.

Conference website: www.cfxconference.com

• World Class Speakers
• Cumulative Effects Solutions
• A Global Experience

 Wait!  There’s more!  With your registration you'll get immediate access to the video library of previous CFX Conference Series Event Presentations.  That’s right, you don’t have to wait till May 5.  Can’t catch CFX2021 live? Although your best experience will be live, we have you covered. The entire event will be recorded and uploaded into a secure private website for you to watch and experience on demand.

We look forward to welcoming you online and are grateful to be on this journey together!

Further Details on the I’s

Interconnection:

Maybe more than ever in our lives, COVID 19 has made us intimately aware of the cumulative effects of living in an interconnected world.  We have been reminded of how powerful the cumulative effect of widespread collective action can be to combat a common enemy. 

We have also been painfully reminded of the negative consequences of acting without regard for this interconnectedness. 

CFX 2021 puts you in the virtual room sharing a uniquely global perspective on the interconnections of people, our environment, geopolitics, and the economies we create.  

Innovation:

Demanding situations motivate us to respond to change and innovation is often where we find a path forward.  We live in a world of constant change and emerging threats .Our survival has always depended on our ability to adapt, find new solutions and work-arounds, to research, to refine our processes and revamp our mindset. 

CFX 2021 creates an opportunity for each of us to take a deeper look and see things from different perspectives than our own.  Invariably this leads to a better understanding of what’s happening, how all the parts of the system are connected, and stimulates our creative energies to innovate.

Ideas:

So often great ideas pop out of conversations about challenges or opportunities and one of us recognizes a new path to solving it or capturing it. So it’s crucial to have spaces like the CFX Cumulative Effects Conference Series where challenges can be discussed openly and without fear so new ideas can emerge. 

When we create new solutions together this always strengthens our collective resolve to work together for a common benefit and the ability to achieve something far greater than we could have on our own..

CFX 2021: Cumulative Effects Conference Seeing With 3 Eyes