Experience

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  CogNexus Group

  • Napa, California

  • Founder, President

    • Jan 2012 - Present
    • Napa, California

    CogNexus Group works with strategy and policy teams on confronting and managing wicked problems – situations involving disputed knowledge, divergent stakeholders, and, often, a history of failed solution attempts. We bring new skills, tools, and theory to our clients, engaging the whole system in the pursuit of shared understanding of the situation and a growing confidence in the power of lightly structured dialogue. Consistently, the result is shared commitment to inclusive objectives and a road-map for achieving them. Our approach does not ask stakeholders to change -- it creates a container rich enough to safely hold the social and technical complexity of the situation, allowing the natural intelligence of the participants to light the way.

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  CogNexus Institute, Inc.

  • Napa, California

  • Founder, President

    • Jan 2000 - Present
    • Napa, California

    CogNexus Institute is a research, training, and support services company serving policy and strategy teams and organizations. We offer training and support services for issue-based (IBIS) tools, primarily Compendium, which use a question-based approach for capturing and organizing formal and informal knowledge in hypertext ‘issue maps’. Using this approach strategy and policy teams are able to capture decision rationale, increase the rigor of reasoning and quality of evidence used in deliberation and problem solving, coordinate project activities, create shared understanding and shared commitment among stakeholders, and create a coherent and searchable organizational memory of the organization’s knowledge assets.

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  George Mason University, School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs

  • Arlington, VA

  • Adjunct Professor

    • Sep 2001 - Dec 2003
    • Arlington, VA

    Taught graduate course in Collaborative Technology to adult students in the Program for Social and Organizational Learning (PSOL). (Three semesters)

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  Touchstone Consulting Group

  • Washington D.C. Metro Area

  • Chief Scientist

    • 1996 - 1998
    • Washington D.C. Metro Area

    Developed tools and training for consultants on connecting with client needs concerning wicked problems - how to identify them and understand their unique challenges. Oversaw deployment of new products and services, focusing on tools and methods to increase coherence and improve communication within complex projects. Clients were a mix of Federal and commercial.

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  Corporate Memory Systems Inc (CMSI)

  • Chief Scientist

    • 1991 - 1996

    CMSI licensed the gIBIS technology from MCC and created a graphical IBIS deliberation tool initially called CM/1, then later QuestMap. CM/1-QuestMap won the Best of Show award in the Group Information Sharing category at the first International Groupware Conference in San Jose in 1992. CMSI's largest installations of QuestMap were done at Southern California Edison (SCE), Nabisco, and Nynex. The SCE system has been in continuous use since 1992, has over 100,000 IBIS nodes documenting environmental policy decisions, and was recently converted to Compendium.

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  MCC (Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation)

  • Senior Member Technical Staff

    • 1984 - 1991

    Initially RCA's (and then GE's) liaison to the Software Technology Program, Conklin switched to working directly for MCC as Senior Member Technical Staff in 1987. He work focused on capture of design rationale on large software projects, using Horst Rittel's IBIS notation.