KEYNOTE: Modeling Conversations in Complex Collaboration — Unfolding Everyone’s Best

Complex software work demands complex collaboration. Over the last decade, Collaborative Modeling (CoMo) techniques such as EventStorming, design studios, and ADR workshops have significantly improved how we design together. Yet a crucial gap remains. We have strong guidance on structures, steps, and artefacts — but very little on how to design the conversations that hold collaboration together under complexity.

In practice, teams still rely on habitual ways of talking. Dissent remains unspoken, ownership stays unclear, and “undiscussables” end up shaping decisions. Because how we talk shapes what we build, our systems inevitably carry traces of these conversational patterns.

This keynote introduces conversation modeling as the next frontier of Collaborative Modeling. Drawing inspiration from Peter Block’s Six Conversations, Christopher Alexander’s notion of unfolding, and Humberto Maturana’s experiential coherence, we frame conversational design as a sociotechnical practice.

The session includes some small interactive elements — designed for reflection and experimentation, not performance. You’ll be invited to notice your own everyday conversational leadership capacity. Together we will reflect on how intentional dialogue can support better collaboration, better decisions, and create the conditions for unfolding everyone’s best.