Steve Laufmann

My writing is based on long experience in the trenches of design, development, and delivery of very large, complex, distributed information systems. Rarely do these systems function in isolation, so I worked to find new ways to coordinate their activities.

I was a founding member of the International Foundation for Cooperative Information Systems (IFCIS), and was deeply involved in launching the Cooperative Information Systems Conferences (CoopIS). I've published many juried papers and book chapters on information commerce and related topics.

Several years ago, I shifted gears--to apply systems thinking to the study of living systems, and especially the ways that living systems coordinate their activities, both internally (among their many subsystems), and externally (with other individuals and ecosystems). This has led to new insights about how such systems develop and change over time.