International Events and Conferences

World Futures Conference 2020

Another fantastic conference, and many lessons learnt. I will be writing more specific entries about the conference soon, but until then, slides from my presentation at the Professional Members’ Forum on Monday are available here. I was also able to film a number of interviews with other speakers at the conference, as I did last...

Millennium Project Committee Meeting – Day 2

Today I presented to the committee on the activities of the Australia and New Zealand node, which included discussing the following three points: Supporting the Annual Global MP Delphi In 2020, developing an ANZ Delphi (now creating a database of 100 remarkable people in the region) Promoting and lobbying for Parliamentary Committees for the Future....

Millennium Project Committee Meeting – Day 1

Hi. I am now in Chicago. The World Futures Conference starts this Friday. Prior to the Conference proper, representatives from each of the nodes of the Millennium Project meet in advance to share information and discuss the next steps. I was fortunate to be asked to represent the Australasian node, as both the two co-chairs,...

Return to the UN

My second visit was of a more general nature in that I was a tourist. I spent about three hours in the main building and the bookstore – which was superb. I have added some pictures of the sculptures at the front of the building (see above) as they gave me a great feeling of...

One more day.

  Well it’s the last day, and I am sorry to see it come to the close. Today is what is called the Professional Members Forum, titled: Global Futures Projects: Innovations and Outcomes. Thankfully there were no more hard choices to make as the programme was set. Particpants had dropped down to about 50 and...

Monday: the last day of the formal proceedings, except …

  Today there were so many presentations I wanted to attend (9.00-10-30) and they were apparently all fabulous.  We all met up for coffee and the room was abuzz. People in particular to Google include: Medard Gabel (Big Picture Consulting); Jerome Glen and Theodore J Gordon (The State of the Future Report, The Millennium Project); Stacey Aldrich, Les...

Into the heavy stuff

  Today I attended a presentation by Dennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist from NASA, who was fascinating, but I was out of my depth. He is clearly a brilliant man who has an extremely good grasp of technology. Much of his thinking will feed into ‘7×7’ in August and the scenario work. After morning tea...

The Conference Begins…

Tonight the conference began properly with the Opening Plenary. The key speakers were Edie Weiner, co-author of FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change, and Bill Drayon, a founder of Ashoka and former assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington D.C. I was particularly impressed by Edie who was, as one...