Archives for November 2024

Emotions are data: Respond to conflict with emotional intelligence

You’re at a party. You don’t know many people at the party. You notice the emotion of discomfort as your stomach clenches and your breathing gets constricted. Your mind labels that as feeling awkward. Yet, someone else, at that same party, with those same emotional bodily sensations, might label the experience as exciting because they get […]

How Canada should negotiate with the new Trump administration

With Trump soon to be back in power, Canada, my home country, needs to focus on the opportunities, not our worst fears. That’s the key message in an opinion piece in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail, “Taking control of our relationship with Trump”.  The article was co-authored by Janice Gross Stein (Belzberg Professor of Conflict […]

AI product demo: How Google’s NotebookLM helps manage complex information

Google calls NotebookLM an “AI-powered research and writing assistant”. It’s more than that. It “helps users understand complex information by instantly becoming an expert on uploaded sources.” You can upload various types of files to NotebookLM, give it an ask, and watch it “generate” … Focused on AI, I wanted NotebookLM to intersect the big […]

AI and Mediation: Working with the Fourth Party

AI is changing how professional mediators can do business. A pre-recorded presentation by Clare Fowler and Colin Rule (both with Mediate.com), for next week’s Association of Conflict Resolution conference gives a terrific snapshot of what’s possible for today’s dispute resolution professional; e.g. mediator. Click on the image below for the full presentation: The Fourth Party […]

Complement public hearings renovation with a mutual benefit approach

Uytae Lee, from About Here, in partnership with SFU’s Renovate the Public Hearing Initiative, last week dropped a nifty 15-minute video on Why public hearings are undemocratic (and mostly meaningless).   The video touches on public hearings, why they are problematic, and ways to fix the problems. The video provides good discussion fodder. I summarize […]