Best,
Kris
Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 682-2290; kriseberlein (skype)
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Dear OASIS,
In the 1950's, an MIT Professor named Jay Forrester, created a
simple icon-based vocabulary for describing how policy effects
complex ecosystems. He called it System Dynamics, and in the
decades since System Dynamics has helped launch the
environmental movement and urban planning in the late 1960's,
business strategy, resource planning, and so much more. Systems
Thinking inspired Donna Meadows to write the landmark book, Limits
to Growth, in 1972, which was the first to predict that
unrestrained industrial production and population growth would
deplete natural resources, destroy the environment, and limit
human potential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
Some of you may have studied System Dynamics in business school.
Many of you may use Systems Thinking without ever realizing
where the ideas came from. That was true for me until 2011, when
an IBM colleague introduced me to a Smarter Cities Simulation we
built for the City of Portland. What I saw there was an
incredibly complex network of formulas, interactions, and
feedback loops that mapped the impact of policies in one area of
city administration to 12 others. It was so fascinating and yet
so incredibly remote for the average person to understand. When
I dived down deep and interviewed the model designers, I
discovered a nuanced world of System Dynamics model development
that was far more Art than Science.
That's why I sponsored the XMILE System Dynamics Technical
Committee at OASIS; to transform a highly specialized cottage
industry into a repeatable, and auditable language of Math and
Computer Science that everyone can learn to read and write and
use and reuse. Over the past three years a small team of devoted
System Dynamics professionals have worked with OASIS and our
partners in the System Dynamics Society to create XMILE, which
stands before you today ready for OASIS standards consideration.
On behalf of IBM and everyone that has worked to create an
industry standard that can transform the world with ubiquitous
Systems Thinking, I urge you to please vote YES for XMILE before
December 14th.
Thank you.
Best Regards,
Steve
Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"