Exploring Christchurch’s Future
POSTPONED – Magnetic South is an online idea-generating game designed to help people explore the future together. Whether you have five minutes or five hours you can help explore what the future will be like, and what this will mean with regard to decisions made about Christchurch. Draw on the collected knowledge of everyone playing...
Global Foresight Books Launched
We would like to congratulate Michael Marien on sucessfully launching the Global Foresight Books (GFB) website. The GFB project was initiated in 2020 by Marien to provide a reasonably complete inventory of current affairs books. The site also features short abstracts for all the listed books. Michael Marien was the founder and editor of Future Survey,...
Stephen Hay Presentation – Building Tomorrow’s Service Organisations out of Today’s
27 September 2020 Forum Stephen Hay of People and Process will lead this engaging discussion on how an unrelenting focus on efficiency has distorted the value creation logic of service organisations, with long-lasting and unintended consequences. Starting with a description of how we got ourselves into the current situation, he will propose two alternative logics...
Sustainable Future links with International Futurist Organisations
Earlier this month in Boston, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Millennium Project and the Sustainable Future Institute which establishes the Institute as the New Zealand Node of the Millennium Project. The Millennium Project is an independent, not-for-profit futures think tank, contributed to by futurists, scholars, business planners and policymakers. It is known...
Think Tanks in London
While I was in London I had the chance to visit a number of think tanks. It was great to see how these organisations operate, and the many different ways they are publishing and expressing their ideas. On Thursday I visited Forum for the Future at their office in Finsbury, London. Forum for the Future...
Foresight – Government Office for Science
On Friday I also was able to visit the Foresight team, which operates from within the Government Office for Science. I met with Mary Lawrence, Project Manager, who was very generous with her time. Mary explained the history of the organisation, and the full breadth of the work they do. The model is an interesting...
Meeting with Professor Tim Jackson
I caught the train down to the University of Surrey, where I met with Professor Tim Jackson, author of the excellent SDC report ‘Prosperity without Growth’. Tim and I had discussed the response to the report, and he kindly let me record a brief interview with him. We are currently working on preparing this interview to...
Nanotechnology
On April 23 and 24 I attended the Nanotechnology workshop organised by Dr Robert Hickson from the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. The event involved people from universities, research institutes and government departments, and was an opportunity to address issues that may arise from the adoption of nanotechnology. Shown above is Associate Professor Simon...
Insight vs. Foresight
I just got back to the office after a coffee with Victoria University’s resident futurologist, the fantastic Ian Yeoman. We had a very interesting chat about trends and tourism in New Zealand (amongst other things) and one thing he said particularly stuck with me. Ian outlined very succinctly the differentiation between ‘insight’ and ‘foresight’ and...
UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development – Futures Dialogues 2020
On Monday 17th November 2020 was held the Forum for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development co-organised by the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO (NZUNESCO) and Sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand Inc. (SANZ). This day of reflection and dialogue was facilitated by Trish Hall from Thought Partners Ltd, and lead by Wendy Reid...
Shaping Tomorrow
A friend of mine emailed me a link to this site, and I thought you might find it interesting. Shaping Tomorrow helps people and organisations better anticipate and respond to upcoming change, by setting out to help review critical uncertainties, challenges and trends. Our recent Think Piece 6, While AgResearch Fiddled, looks at critical uncertainties...
7X7 – Seven Imaginations
Tuesday, 26 August saw the final evening of the 7X7 Ideas Forum. Wendy decided to use her 7 minutes to discuss a few insights she had whilst attending the World Future Conference in Washington D.C. The theme of the evening was Seven Imaginations, a perfect complement to our Project 2058 which looks 50 years ahead,...
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