Relational Connectedness Session Series | Various Presenters | CMMi Takeover | RSDX-Online Festival 2025

Four Original Sessions hosted by Friends of the CMM Institute for RSDX-Online

Relational Connectedness Session Series | Various Presenters | CMMi Takeover | RSDX-Online Festival 2025

On Saturday, October 11, 2025, the CMM Institute hosted a day of ‘Relational Connectedness’ sessions for the RSDX-Online Festival. The day included the four original session pictured above. The recordings of these sessions can be accessed by joining the Zoom Event using the button here. Read more about the sessions below.

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Reshaping Democracy: Dialogic Systems Change with CMM and The World Café

Sergej van Middendorp and Flavio Mesquita da Silva

9 am EDT (90 minutes)

In this session, hosted by Flavio Mesquita da Silva and Sergej van Middendorp, we explore a difficult question of our time: how do we reshape our democratic systems to be able to deal with the polycrisis and metacrisis? We take the lens of dialogic systems change and specifically look at the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) and The World Café to explore perspectives and ways to address the challenges we face. After a brief introduction of the concepts and the sharing of some experiences with these by the hosts, we will invite the participants’ perspectives into our shared virtual space and explore the patterns that connect our emerging collaborative support networking. We will try to reflexively balance the co-design of our session as a democratic dialogic design experience, while at the same time trying to bring forth new insights that help us go on together after our conversation ends.

This session is part of the CMM Institute’s “Relational Connectedness” Takeover of RSDX. For additional context for this session, read Sergej’s Substack post “Democracy for the Future” and watch this video of Flavio describe the World Café format.

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Relational Construction for System Designers: Designing Better Social Worlds

Sheila McNamee and Celiane Camargo-Borges

11 am EDT (90 minutes)

This 90-minute workshop introduces the Constructionist-Design Framework, an approach that blends social constructionist philosophy with design thinking principles. Instead of focusing on discovery, this framework emphasizes creativity, innovation, and future- forming action. The methods Sheila and Celiane introduce are understood as facilitating generative resources sensitized to the very specific context of any given project. Within this logic, there is no ultimate “best” method or “right” way to design a project; rather, each approach will produce specific (and different) information. At its core lies the power of questions, because the questions we ask shape the worlds we create. Different questions open different pathways, generating new perspectives and new forms of knowledge. This is an invitation to experiment with generative methods, and to translate this framework into your own context.

This session is part of the CMM Institute’s “Relational Connectedness” Takeover of RSDX. For additional context for this session, listen to Sheila’s Episode and Celiane’s Episode of the CMM Institute’s Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast.

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Coordination & Coherence in Systems: An Organization’s Journey of Moving from Pain to Power

Parveen Kaur

1 pm EDT (90 minutes)

This session is designed to share dialogical approaches for supporting increasingly coordinated and coherent meaning making in systems, particularly where significant breakdowns in trust have occurred. Juxtaposed against popular solutions-oriented leadership styles, this approach invites participant-observers to experience a deeper understanding of systemic and interpersonal problems, leaning into the discomfort of exploring- rather than eliminating- tension, as an avenue for promoting meaningful and lasting change in organizations.

Inspired by the 5-D Appreciative Inquiry Model (Define, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver), used in tandem with the Coordinated Management of Meaning LUUUUUTT Model (Lived Stories, Untold Stories, Unheard Stories, Unknown Stories, Untellable Stories, Undigested Stories, Told Stories, Story Telling), facilitator Parveen Kaur will unpack the journey of a service moving from perpetuating pain and anger to establishing Trust, through the power of telling and hearing Lived Stories. This session will engage participants in the use of circular questioning for discovering the balance of power as a central theme throughout this process, prompting reflection on the questions we ask, to whom we ask, and who the listeners are, as forces that shape the fabric of our relationships.

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Inclusive by Design: Invitations, Individuals, and Impact

Abbie VanMeter and Mil Niepold

3 pm EDT (90 minutes)

This 90-minute workshop will explore the urgent need for individuals to cultivate a greater sense of their own ability (and responsibility) to positively and profoundly impact the systems of which they are a part. Focusing on creating the conditions that empower every person to participate in the transformation of systems that are often designed to disempower, Mil and Abbie will offer concrete tools for incorporating inclusive practices into your design, facilitation, and communication. Utilizing a ‘Communication Perspective’- which looks at communication, instead of through it- Mil and Abbie will offer and invite reflections on stories of Mil’s experiences working at the intersection of Supply Chains, Climate Resilience, and Human Rights. By examining Mil’s stories on both the micro- and macro- levels, we will distill universally applicable wisdom for addressing the many, interconnected issues of the polycrisis. We invite you to join this conversation as we learn to align interpersonal intents with systems impacts by considering the co-constructed nature of our social worlds.

This session is part of the CMM Institute’s “Relational Connectedness” Takeover of RSDX. For additional context for this session, listen to Mil’s Episode of the CMM Institute’s Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast.

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