Now more than ever our lives are divided and polarized. 

The possibilities for people to respond to events of this era depend upon their ability to improvise and learn together within their complexity. One way to tend to this ability to commune is through the Warm Data Practice

Too often, attempts to solve these complex issues are unwittingly perpetuating the very same problems. The quest for solutions, despite our best intentions, is inherently informed by the same patterns of thought that are creating the illusions of separation.

This course offers a deep dive into the Warm Data theory and practice toward a shift in perception. Through storytelling, archival documents, poetry, multitudes of texts spanning from ancient wisdom to modern complexity theory, a multiple description of the movement, rhythm, and resonances of life comes into study. This is both a felt sensorial inquiry and one of intellectual rigor.

Diving deeply into Warm Data practices, we are more likely to perceive the possibilities of ‘readying’ for change to meet the brokenness of the existing structures and systems. Possible actions are shifted with a change in perception.

Whatever your occupation, whatever you do in life, whoever you are, engaging with Warm Data practices offers the possibility of acting, feeling, thinking, and knowing differently.

In order to interface with any complex system without disrupting the circuitry of the interdependencies that give it its integrity, we must look at the spread of relationships that make the system robust. Using only analysis of statistical data will offer conclusions that can point to actions that are out of sync with the complexity of the situation. But information without context and interrelationality is likely to lead us toward actions that are misinformed, thereby creating further destructive patterns.

Grounded in over a century of deep theoretical roots and a lineage of systems thinking, the Warm Data practices transform complexity science into an experiential approach of profound mutual learning and relationship building.

There are two warm data practices made for today’s fragmented world — Warm Data Labs and People Need People (Online). 

The Warm Data Lab is created to help release and revitalize sensitivity to the sacred processes of life that have been fragmented by the last several hundred years of history. 

People Need People (Online) adapts this practice to offer uniquely rich and storied online communication, in contrast to the common experience of polarized and divisive digital communication patterns. 

There is no goal in a People Need People (Online) session or a Warm Data Lab as they are not about solving identified problems. Instead, they allow movement through many aspects of memory and perception that can alter the underlying assumptions about who I am, who you are, and what life is about. 

These sessions have been designed to deepen the collective perception of complexity through personal stories and the study of life’s process. Together these groups of people are building relationships that build relationships that build relationships— a vital ingredient of how systems change happens. 

One of the most profound experiences of Warm Data is the observation that ‘Your story changed my story’. The joy of Warm data is in how this change shows up unpredictably and profoundly. This is fundamental to the theory and the practice of Warm Data.

• Abductive Process (C.S. Peirce)

• Aphanipoiesis (N. Bateson)

• Differences of Abstraction (A. Korzybski / B. Russell)

• Epistemological Frames (G. Bateson)

• Complexity Theory

• Conscious Purpose (G. Bateson)

• Double Bind (G. Bateson)

• Interdependency and Change in Complex Systems, Mind (G. Bateson)

• Multiple Description (G. Bateson)

• Nth Order Agency (Transcontextual Anticipation) (N. Bateson)

• Patterns that Connect (G. Bateson)

• Requisite Variety (R. Ashby)

• Schismogenesis (G. Bateson)

• Side-by-Siding (N. Bateson)

• Simultaneously Implicating (N. Bateson)

• Symmathesy (N. Bateson)

• Transcontextual Process (G. Bateson)

• Joining an international network of Warm Data hosts.

• Gaining access to an online Warm Data platform to share insights.

• Meeting online monthly with other Warm Data hosts from around the world for practice sessions, organizing projects, contributing and having an open invitation to attend regular theory booster session, reading salons on Bateson and other materials.

• Completion of this course comes with an open invitation to join this course again and again, free of training fees (in-person trainings still have modest venue fees).