The panel featured three speakers with expertise in sensemaking:

• Dave Snowden, who has a background in philosophy, physics, anthropology and has designed sensemaking systems, including for the Singapore government and counterterrorism efforts
• Kaitlin Beegle, head of protocol governance at the Filecoin Foundation, who works on sensemaking in decentralized tech organization
• Antoine Vergne from Missions Publiques agency, who organizes European citizens' assemblies combining randomly selected citizens and topics of public policy to make recommendations to decision makers

On defining sensemaking:

Dave Snowden:

• There are five established schools of sensemaking in the literature, with different perspectives
• Dave's approach is "naturalizing sensemaking" - making sense of the world so you can act in it, rooted in the natural sciences
• You never have all the information to make a fully rational decision, but need to know what types of decisions you can make based on what you do know
• Example: people only see what they expect to see (inattentional blindness), invalidating many corporate decision support methods

Kaitlin Beegle:

• Sensemaking is a design question, localized to specific problem spaces
• In decentralized orgs, cultural assumptions, operational motivations, and diffusion of responsibility are stumbling blocks to sensemaking
• Need to understand who will be empowered to facilitate conversations and get alignment to enable distributed sensemaking

Antoine Vergne:

• Citizens' assemblies are a tool for sensemaking, connecting cognitive diversity (via random selection), procedural fairness (via facilitated discussion), and human nature as a social species
• Polls show 90%+ of participants change opinions and would change behavior after such a process
• Democracy and sensemaking are not just decision-making tools but a culture and way of life

Some of the stories they shared: