christopher alexander is best known for his work on pattern languages. this work influenced the classic, design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software, by eric gamma, richard helm, ralph johnson, and john vlissides, as well as the software patterns community and its hundreds of patterns books and a half a dozen or so conferences a year (plops).
alexander is an architect whose real interest lies in understanding the nature of beauty and its objective reality. this project has held his attention for over 30 years and culminated in the publication of his gargantuan four-book essay, the nature of order. in it he attempts nothing short of proposing a new scientific method and cosmology to replace the cartesian / reductionist / mechanistic approach to science; and while he's at it, he proposes a *common sense* way to understand the incomprehensible mathematics of quantum mechanics. (along the way he also unifies science, art, and the spiritual.)
nature of order focuses on centers, life, and wholeness, the fundamental process, and structure-preserving transformations. alexander views core structure-preserving transformations as important principles and essential to his process, specifically for adding life to things we build. he measures or evaluates the results based upon the fundamental 15 geometric properties that tend to accompany the presence of life in nature. core to this is an evolutionary process which proposes that complex systems do not spring into existence completely formed, rather they evolve through a lot of small steps. he discusses a series of 10 structure-enhancing actions that he claims will always intensify the life and wholeness of a thing.
this workshop will examine these evolutionary generative processes by alexander and how they can be related to other areas such as building and sustaining creative collaborative groups. this workshop - not the workshop itself but the ideas in it - will leave you confused, profoundly smarter, reeling, in despair, and suffused by joy about what is possible for us.

innovation is seen as paramount to the success of everything from new products to national economies to the betterment of society. but what is key to fostering innovation? scholars have noted that there has been a fundamental shift in recent years from knowledge being contained within corporations and firms to being contained within an ecosystem of partners [1]. there are a number of advantages to being in such ecosystems, including abundant human capital, culture of work, tacit knowledge, the close proximity of a workforce, government support, etcetera [3]. but little is known about the emergent collaboration between parties that occurs in these ecosystems and how it plays a role in innovation. a recent report on the global innovation index highlights the collaborative “flow of ideas between innovation actors” within so-called innovation ecosystems as crucial our understanding of how to support innovation [4].
scalable startups, particularly those in the information and communication technologies (ict) industry often sprout in general proximity to one another in these sorts of startup ecosystems or hubs, most notably in places like silicon valley, tel aviv, los angeles, seattle, and new york— the top five noted by the startup genome project [5]. for many years silicon valley in particular has been the go-to, drawing entrepreneurial immigrants from all over. but the global scope and scale of these ecosystems has been changing. a combination of infrastructure developments, accessible platforms, and easy to use tools have dramatically lowered the barriers to entry for technology startups globally. alongside this, other structures have spread the soft infrastructure, the “know-how” of doing a startup, making the processes more accessible and uniform to hackers and would- be founders all over. in this workshop, we would like to explore how coins can support and aid in connecting startup ecosystems globally.
recent work [2, 6] has illustrated how technologies such as social networks have allowed entrepreneurs in other areas around the world to learn from one another remotely, gaining the skills, mentoring, and connections they need. bridging geographical and cultural boundaries opens up new possibilities for configurations, new combinations of ideas, and new contexts. there are lots of ways in which ecosystems are structurally suited to promote innovation— through physical proximity, social connections, and mechanisms that enable cross-pollination of ideas, serendipity, sharing of expertise and experience. how do we harness that in a way that is not so geographically bound? how can we support entrepreneurial innovation through collaborative innovation networks? connecting ecosystems would seemingly play an important factor in this. by engaging entrepreneurs, stakeholders, and researchers across borders, we hope to gain an understanding of how startup innovation practices and ideas circulate and how they are adapted and appropriated throughout the globe— and how we can support them through coins.