On May 10, BCSSS managing director Stefan Blachfellner was called to Beijing, PR China as part of a select audience, among others the presidents of the World Organization for Cybernetics (WOSC) and the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR), invited by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences. The meeting was hosted by the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences (IASCYS), with the purpose to discuss several important matters for the field in 2020 under the theme „Research, Development and Education in Systems Science and Cybernetics: paradigms, models and applications“.
With the upcoming 10th anniversary of the IASCYS and the 30th Anniversary of SECS, a series of simultaneous, geographically spread events is planned, attached to the 2020 WOSC conference in Moscow. Towards this endeavor, IASCYS invites all systems societies to participate who would like to „enter the network for the strenghtening of the field of Systems Science and Cybernetics (see the PDF report on the IASCYS website).
Furthermore, there was great interest for a more frequent and intensified collaboration with the BCSSS fostered through the key note by Stefan Blachfellner „From Science Heritage to Present Design and Future Practice: Prospects for the Development of the Systems Science and Systems Research Field“ at the event. This objective is supported by the fact that the IFSR office is set in Vienna as well. Another shared concern was to increase the number of education programs in the systems and cybernetics fields, a possible shared interest with the BCSSS as well. As Blachfellner invited the IASCYS and other representative organizations in the field to revive and strengthen the impact of systems science and research in practice, to collaborate on and actively contribute to the Ludwig von Bertalanffy & Cybernetics and Systems Archive, the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, the development of contemporary systems & data science epistemologies, and the development of current educational modules and curricula.