Pre-Syntegration

This stage was based on distant communications using the SISN Web-site as the main channel of communication.  Other forms of communication, however (e.g. mail, fax, telephone...), were also sporadically used.  Participants were asked to contribute individually with 'statements of importance' (SI) for the syntegration.  These statements being relevant to the general focus of the opening question.  The infoset (e.g. the members of the network) had from the 21/02/01 to 09/03/01 for this purpose.  The process facilitators were responsible for editing the statements in order to avoid unnecessary repetitions and inconsistencies. The 130 edited statements, with the names of their originators, were made public on SISN Web-site by 10/03/01.

At this stage all kinds of lateral communications took place; the so called "problem jostle" was carried out in this way.  From the 12/03/01 to 07/05/01 members of the network elaborated statements of importance into 'aggregate statements of importance' (ASI).  By 07/05/01 we had 33 ASI, each supported by at least 4 members of the network.

The last activity before the 'local syntegration' was the hexadic reduction. This activity consisted of the following sub-activities:

  • Elision of ASI: Participants were asked to consider all the ASI and produce triads of 'related ASIs' (e.g. which three among the general list of ASI seem to be talking about the same topic or could be related to produced a new aggregated one?). The facilitators edited these elided ASIs and submited them to the infoset using the SISN Web-site.
  • Voting: Infoset members were then asked to vote their support for the elided ASIs.  The first 12, now called Consolidated Statements of Importance (CSI), were the primary candidates to become topics for the face-to-face syntegration. In our case these became the 12 topics for further research.
  • Discussion of 'borderline issues': The infoset were asked to consider any statements that were close in number of votes received for the 12th accepted statement, to determine if it/they can be elided with others of the 12 accepted topics.

The facilitators published the final 12 topics for the face-to-face syntegration on 15/06/01. The network then had the chance to ponder these topics for the following three weeks and to share documents, papers and other information relevant to them in advance of the face-to-face Syntegration.