This October, The Community Economics Laboratory and Collective Intelligence Group will convene a three-day Think Tank Charrette: “Embracing the wickedness: tackling the hardest problems with economic and workforce development”

We are thrilled to be collaborating once again with Guillermo Mazier of the Collective Intelligence Group and our new friend, physicist Dr. Vipin Gupta of Sandia National Laboratories, in beautiful Albequerque during the balloon festival. Together with Joe Slatter, Founder and Principal of Better Practice, Dr. Gupta and Guillermo will speak to and discuss, in a world-cafe format, how better collaboration can yield stronger economies.

For centuries Cities, governments and the people that make them work have struggled with what can best be described as wicked problems. From crime and affordable housing, to energy and global workforce shortages, Cities have a myriad of wicked problems that often involve diverse set stakeholders with diverse perspectives, interests, needs, expectations and demands that make a City's wicked problems even more complex. What's more, there is no one person that really "owns" a City and with the rapid evolution of automation and technology disruption is now commonplace in Cities all over the world.

For this fun, interactive session participants will take an innovative look at how we can work together to apply design thinking and metacollaboration to solve complex community problems together.