Why caring about events?

Events trigger and connect interactions and are a major instrument for scoping collaborative planning initiatives for improving interactions.

The absence or presence of specific events in interactions can be linked to the quality or (un-) desirability of those interactions. Therefor, one approach to evaluating interactions is via the recording of particular events, with severity of the consequences of them being present or absent, their incidence (rate of new cases in a population) and prevalence (proportion of cases in a population at a given time).

Events are classified according to a number of dimensions.

In line with insights from enterprise architecture, we distinguish events at different layers of an enterprise architecture framework:

Events also have an ontological order. The options explained at All things and their becoming. Events are the result of a partitioning of the "becoming of things". Note that natural and social order events are primarily included for explanatory purposes.

Also the socio-technical level at which an event is occurring matters.
An earthquake or flood for instance are affecting the landscape. Check out social architecture (Ens wiki) for the meaning of macro, meso, micro and pico, and the Key at the bottom for the type of the events that are included at each social level: life events at the pico or household level, enterprise events at the micro level, sector events at the meso level, and landscape events at the macro level.

Why creating an event repository?

A first reason is that the comprehension of events and their chains are an important input to understanding the cause and effect relationships as part of the diagnostics in a "development" project (as part of change).

A second reason is that the therapeutics part of an initiative can proceed effectively by intervening in an event chain (or by redesigning certain events). Depending on the category of a event, the degrees of freedom in the redesign of the complexes may vary.

A third reason is that precision regarding the events permits a sharp delineation of the scope of an initiative or intervention.

A fourth reason is that the analysis and description of events can benefit considerably from polymorphism and reuse. For each event that occurs for many entities, a unique "event description" can be linked to many entity descriptions (as listed in the Ens Dictionary) or actor descriptions (as listed in the Actor Atlas.

Event complexes

The event complexes of interest may cross the boundaries of the defined orders. For instance, the birth of a person (natural order) will require (by social contract) the registration of the newborn (social order), which in an e-government context may imply the assigning of a unique "social security number" to the newborn (techno order).

Some specific event lists

Life events

Events in the life of a person who lives in a social order.
Order Events
Complex events Famine
Natural order events Birth, Death, becoming parent, …
Social order events register a birth
Techno order events ….

Gate events

Events in an initiative by a person or a social group (organisation, sector, nation, global community).
Order Events
Social order events
Techno order events …..

Events included