Upcoming Events

The Accidental Hero: how a WWII Czech liberation story is a current event.

Patrick Dewane
Saturday, January 25, 2025 - 10:30am to 12:00pm
Shorview Library, 4560 Victoria St N Shoreview, Minnesota 55126
 
A string of jaw-dropping coincidences in the last week of WWII had Colonel Matt Konop liberating the same Czech villages his grandparents had left for Wisconsin in the 1860s. Konop’s first language was Czech, and the townspeople paraded him around town on their shoulders, declaring, “one of our own has freed us!” However, like many returning veterans, Konop didn’t talk about his experience after the war. And when he died in 1983, his family knew nothing of the story that changed his life.

Uncommon Common Sense: Riding the Dragons of Complexity

Glenda H. Eoyang, PhD
Saturday, February 22, 2025 - 10:30am to 12:00pm
Shorview Library, 4560 Victoria St N Shoreview, Minnesota 55126

Complexity sciences, and their applications to human systems,  have been around since the early 1980s, but the power in academe, business, industry, and government still sit squarely in Newtonian worldviews. Why? What are the  challenges of thinking through the lens of complex adaptive systems?