Flow: A Permaculture Approach to Documentation ProjectsΒΆ
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| Time: | 9:20 - 10:00 |
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Technical writer and instructional designer, and a practicing permie. [Lots of people konw what that is, but I have no clue.] Over the past three years he’s replaced his lawn with a food forest, and signle-sourced training and documentation materials for a long term project with California Dept of Corrections.
Permaculture was first described by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in 1978 and 1988. Permaculture is a philosophy of “working with, rather than against, nature”; “protracted and thoughtful observation” of systems to see how they evolve. “The solutions are embarassingly simple”.
Examples:
- Lawns
- Gardens
- Greening a desert near Sea of Galilea
- Christensen’s food forest
- City Repair: Portland based group reclaiming neighborhood public intersections to build community
Principles:
- Work with the elements
- Diversity gives stability
- The problem is the solution
- Make the least change for th greatest effect
- No limit ot the richness of design
“Everything old is new again”
http://permacultureprinciples.com
Documentation is ripe for this: you want to develop a system that can will be easily maintained and fruitful for those who come after you.
- Observe
- Design
- Evolve
Observation always comes first, and is about receiving information and understanding the environment around you. You observe without preconceived ideas, and with an open mind. If you feel like something is missing, you observe some more.
When you’re observing a project, you also need to observe the surrounding environemnt. What’s the corporate culture? What’s the duration? What’s the desired outcome/yield? Who’s available, and what are their skills, abilities and natural inclinations? How can things in the environment (the land, the people, etc) be combined for the most beneficial outcome?
Design is where most of the work actually takes place. What are the zones of access? What’s the smallest change that will creat the largest effect? And what direction are energies going in? It’s easier to work with the flow than against it. In permaculture, the edge – where the forest meets the plain, the plain meets the ocean – is where the action is; there’s nutrient exchange, there’s biodiversity. So when we think about applying these principles to projects and documentation, think about where the edges are between different people roles, etc. If you can increase the size of your edge, you can increase the diversity on your project.
“The importance of collaborative porcesses is often ignored because of the urgnecy of direct action.” – Telford
And the process has to evolve to continue to be successful. Observing lessons learned, measuring and evaluting outcomes, etc. What are the documentation opportunities?