The brief · 2026-10-31__rc1-paper-review · briefs/2026-10-31__rc1-paper-review/batch-06-pages-14-to-19-wardley-maps.md

Batch 6: pages 14 to 19: how the editor uses Wardley maps

The editor, in the conductor's session, 31 October 2026. Kept as he gave it.

Now, on the worldly maps here, one of the things that I kind of disagree with a lot of people from the worldly maps, and actually, to be honest, Simon, I believe, agrees with me because he's the first one to say that the worldly maps, the top-down is just a sequence of events, and the left-to-right is just one example, is that you can create maps on anything, right? So, you know, for example, like, also, the way I like to use maps is that when you say we don't measure here, we don't do measures. I think this is on page 14, right? I disagree, right? So because for me, every dot in a worldly map should be connected to the facts, to the evidence, to the assumption, or even to the next worldly map. I think there's even an article where we show a fractal worldly map. In fact, that's what we're showing here. Like a dot in one worldly map becomes a worldly map in the next one, becomes a worldly map in the next one. And that's a good example of the kind of power that we should show here in terms of visualization, in terms of our animation, right? Because that's a great way to do it. Because at the end of the day, you can make a worldly map out of almost anything, right? Because, and this is one on page 15, right? So the way I look at it is that, you know, not all maps start with a user and a need, right? You know, like Simon kind of says, you should start with the user and a need, mainly because most people forget about the user, right? So he goes like, dude, at least think of what the user wants, right? Start there, right? But you start with an anchor, you start from a point of view. Like, in a way, every dot in the worldly map can become a worldly map of itself, so you start from there, right? And again, you know, user is just one recommended of yours to do it, right? So you can create maps of systems, of all sorts, with all sorts of evolutions. You can make maps of risk, of vulnerabilities, of type, or whatever. Anything that you can make a tree of, you can make a map of, right? In fact, there's I think we already covered in an article in the newsroom, is that there's already a good example of when I show, I know, like, I think it was 7 or 8 different types of evolution, right? From risk to timings to classifications, all sorts of, like, 1 to 4, right? It's not always Genesis, custom build, product, and commodity. Like, Genesis, sorry, custom build, product, and commodity. It's not always that, right? So, you know, basically, all that stuff is, like, you know, it's about having sense. Because for me, look, a map is a top-down tree graph structure that becomes a map when we add positioning, so when positioning have meaning, right? So, for example, thread modelings tend to be a graph because position doesn't matter. But once you move something and you put those things into a place where now from maybe left to right there's a meaning, then that becomes a map, right? And that kind of, I agree with it, right? Now, one of the comments I had here is that there's a lot of, this whole section on worldly maps is actually really good, but I think, first of all, we should A, move some of this to the later part of the book. B, we should already immediately convert this to a really good article. So you can map this as an article to then give to the newsroom to publish, right? Because it's actually really good, right? And, you know, this whole section, you know, is quite nice. But it's the same thing, like, we're explaining the function. We're explaining the formula without somebody understanding why they need it. And I think the way, the power here, like I mentioned, is that how can we use and show the user worldly maps as part of a narrative without having to explain first. That's the point. Like, you should have something that you go to a synthetic user or user says, hey, here's me telling a story, and only, right, it'll be very powerful. So it's only at the power at the end of the section we can say, by the way, you already, and in a way the punchline is that you're already reading worldly maps, right? This is what the worldly map, you already read it because you already saw a bunch of examples, but we walk it through it, right? And also, I kind of find, and I still remember that the first time I saw the Pioneers, Explorers, Town Planners, which is now Explorers, Villages, and Town Planners, actually, the thing that worked really well was actually the analogy of an explorer going somewhere, the single person, the single group that fails and tries and kind of every now and then finally arrives and figures out how to get to the other side. And then once they do it and they find a safe passage, you then allow the villagers, right, to arrive. And the villagers are the ones who then get there and say, hey, where does everybody sleep? And how do we get food? And how do we get structure? And then you put this. And then once the villagers do that, they allow more people to arrive. And then there's more people arriving. And eventually you need to say, hey, we actually need structure. So then you need the town planners. We need roads. And we need the hospital. And we need the city, right? And we need government. And we need structure, right? You know, all that stuff. And then because now you have to, you know, deal with, you know, 1,000 people, right? Versus 1, which was the explorer, or 50, which was the villager, right? And that's the point, right? But then you can go from 1,000 to 5,000 into 200,000, because once the structure is good, it just scales, right? So that's the thing, right? So for example, like the worldly maps that you have on page 19, it's really good, right? So I think this should be converted into not just page 9, all this whole section, right? Should be converted into that. And, yeah.