Pop!Tech – Camden Maine – Oct07

When you need to get rid of cobwebs in your brain I recommend a few things

• A long dinner with friends with a conversation repertoire
• A long walk in the Sydney bush – in particular the ones with vast views to the water
• A long canoe journey along the Sydney foreshore(s)
• A week skiing with friends and family
• A cottage in Finnish Lapland [winter] or by the lakes [summer]
  ……
• And then there is Pop!Tech

Pop!Tech happened already some weeks ago but I have really had to digest it for a while to write about it.

I had never been to Maine before, nor to Camden. It is a gorgeous New England town by the Atlantic. Timing was perfect as the fall [autumn] leaves were getting to their joyous colors. My flight in was in a jumpy commuter plane from Boston to Rocklands. I had charming chat company in a man who is local to the Maine coast and was sharing insights about the area and the night coastline as we flew in.

From the airport I took a taxi to Camden and a motel very close to the Camden Opera House where the event was held.

As a pre-event extra I had booked myself to a workshop discussing mobile solutions in Africa. It was eye opening to see how the technologies are used when you have to be innovative to make it work. The solutions go from business tool related solutions [sales tool] to being a part of the health care system to community assistance.

The next day the show was full on.

I met with some wonderful people from the West Coast of the US, Seattle and San Francisco who became my guardian angels. For a newbie to Pop!Tech I got lucky as I was shown to a coveted seat out front, thank you Buzz, Pat and Brian . Every conversation I had with some 50 out of the 500 total attending was worthy of some stage time, everyone had something to say, a great business they were running or building or research they were doing etc – so many wonderful people and so little time. Lucky girl!

Pop!Tech has a mixture of presenters: artists, researchers, published authors, inventors, not for profits, religious leaders, technologists, community leaders.

Each presentation was a culmination of talent, persistence, belief, passion, dynamism wrapped up in 20 minutes of self-controlled or less so outpouring in the form of visual, performance, voice, texts, presence, storytelling, themes….

You can see the presentations on Pop!Tech site but what you have to be there for are the discussions you have

• with the presenters who for the most part take their turn in the audience to be wowed by the other presenters and
• with the audience which is also vetted to attend.

The idea as I see it is to form a large conversation to move things forward, to engage people who have ideas, means, energy and contacts to offer.My take aways and impressions

• Africa is enterprising
• Mobile is growing in millions of niches
• Solar has great future potential
• Creating the system is hard
• Youth is ready for green leadership and roles
• Light is fundamental is villages without electricity – there is a solution
• Worlds first not for profit pharmaceutical company was founded a few years ago
• Now biotech company joins nfp pharma and gets Gates Foundation to join to eradicate some illnesses
• Artists Association should become the new Ministry of Defense [Vanessa German - you gotta see the argumentation]
• We disgard a lot of cans, bottles, printed paper if you have trouble with the numbers go see it visualised by Chris Jordan
• Storytelling is an old art form, at Pop!Tech we were delighted with digital storytelling from Alaska and other [Jonathan Harris]
• Africa has a values and culture issues from years of hardship and misery – how to work on that while at the same time treating the symptoms
• Language is a tricky bedfellow, we screw up so much in life by an inability to converse more directly without ‘feeling like’ we’re losing face, potentially [Pinker, I am about to start reading his book which we found in our goodie bags] – I always preferred direct talk, hard as it might be at times to receive and give, makes for a better relationship
• Men and women, yes it is such a fun topic and when delivered with humor it had us cracking up – we’re just wired differently. Who is smarter than the other? I [dj] think we have to know which smarts we’re talking about [Louanne Brizendine on brain]
• What we communicate with our skin – a la modern anthropology
• Eating al desko is one modern issue – until we all embrace slow living – what is it that we’re in so big a hurry to get to, I don’t think many even know, it is just churning wheels and feeling important
• Affordability is not an economic problem, it is an engineering and design problem
• Microfinance works real well in many countries
• “Money is a sign of poverty” Ian Barks {?}
• ML King did not change the world by saying, “I have a problem”
• Fast trends get all the attention and slow trends make all the change [Brand in 06]
• Mass observation from the 1930s, recording daily lives, citizen journalism
  my own addition to this is history will never be the same, not formal, not as rewritten by the victorious, but tells us how we thought, felt, appreciated, hated, commented, understood, …on a daily basis and recorded [Google and other projects??] for generations to come
• Living in cities is a form of consensual hallucination. London has food for 3 days, fragile?
• Participatory sensory mapping has fascinating potential – need to talk to Christian Nold more about that
• Making toys is art and science – beauty of blending the two
• Harvesting the ambient RF already out there for wireless power
• We need some things to be present to threatening change: a face of terror, speed/abrupt change, visceral to us, morality of change. All these lacking in climate change and we sit and wait….

…..and much more

Thank you!!!!!

Future and Sci-Fi

What is the role of the science fiction writer in our future?

….my view is that science fiction writers imagine the future – which the scientists and business people then go and make happen – sometimes it takes a long time – but I don’t think that they ‘predict the future’ as someone said in an article lately [the link no longer works...] – no they imagine the future….

Science fiction is art just like a painting. Both require the specific knowledge and foundations of the craft. In science fiction it is knowledge of technology and human interests.Some science fiction is better than others on the latter part. It inspires. It makes you see how something in Sci-Fi might be made possible.

It then takes many participants, co-creators to make the vision happen. Science fiction has the benefit of engaging with a good story, as against the way in which corporate vision is told. That communication ability is what inspires. If a novel idea has no context, is not shared in an engaging manner what hope does it have to rise above the NOISE?

It is one of the best proofs that vision is important.

Helas it [vision or science fiction as a source] is still not well embraced by most businesses. Too busy to go kick another few sets of tires, which in turn leads nowhere….

AusForesight2007

Three days in the lives of futurists – together

AusForesight2007 is now part of history and memories. We came together in a national event with one tireless international guest Peter Bishop to reflect, react and respond.

• We reflected on the meaning of futures in our lives and in the world.
• We reacted to what we have learned and sensed and felt as futurists.
• We responded on the society we form a part of.

The setting was Sydney, surrounded by views of the harbour and the Opera House, the bridge, the parks and mostly wonderful weather.

Context

Two of the organising committee members Peter Hayward and Serafino de Simone welcomed the attendees and reflected on the origins of this year’s event in years of tireless work by Jan Lee Martin and the leading names in foresight from Australia: Richard Slaughter, Sohail Inayatullah and a number of others and also the importance of the previous year’s event in reforming the Australian foresight community.

Dominique, Serafino and Peter: three organising committee members

Last year many of Australia’s futurists had never met each other face to face or any other way.

This year the idea was to get us all to talk to each other more in depth. And talk we did. The first day we covered lots of ground through an intense dynamic conversation on what we had encountered as pressing issues and then what we faced as practitioners personally.

Chatty futurists

The lively conversation confirmed, raised eye brows, challenged views, winged, got real, despaired and got hopeful.

Group photo

Some topics which got attention were:

• What is it that makes people change their habits.
• Why do people carry on the old tracks even when their lives are at risk.
• We see behaviors which suggest that us humans are milking the current model before it collapses.
• With so much negativity in the media on change, we felt that futures work needs to be offering potential for hope or ways to initiate positive ripple effects from positive personal actions and then help bring about the wider outcomes.

One fitting quote here on the impact of the negativity was, “When you’re on the Titanic you might as well get drunk”.

Futurists@work

Futurists often work in small entities, one man/woman bands, and this causes a lack of leverage regionally and globally. We spoke about the numbers of ways in which we need to balance between the potential in the alternatives we see and the receptivity of our audience. Our client is often a corporation [government, education system] whose attention is firmly – all or nothing bet – on delivering on the short term numbers regardless of the chance that it is that ‘all chips on the same square bet’ which is terminal when carried forward with blinkers on.

Beware the taboos

One issue which was raised was the fact that it does not matter what group of ‘aficionados’ we talk to there are always the taboo views which are tricky to deal with. It is hard to say anything controversial and not face the smile that says, “Where have you been to bring that one up?’”. And futurists fall into the same trap. Mention the word growth and somehow it seems to bring up that smile on many a futurist’s face – it is somehow counter agenda.

Holism is hard work. It requires re-examination and redefinition of words and concepts we throw around, we cannot play this forward as if the words meant one thing to all people.

Ready for change?

A fundamental question to ponder is, “What are we prepared to give up to get somewhere different?”. This goes for individuals as much as for corporations. If the old way isn’t so hot and is going to run out of steam, what’s it going to be, what is a keeper and what is a giver upper?

We react differently to radical change – we have three prime flavours: Party, pray or pioneer. Futurists may be in all three while pioneering was considered to be part of our professional make-up. I know a few who are definite troopers in the party camp but equally present in the pioneering troupes.

There was one impassioned speech from a lady with a dream which reminded me of something I heard in my latest visit to the US in Camden Maine, which was “Martin Luther King did not get to his achievements by saying – “I have a problem”". Dreams, passion and persistent actions towards those dreams is what miracles are made of.

On what are the ways in which to get oneself into the zone of those passions, one key point was “Identifying your unique strengths and using those in the service of others”. It is what vocations are made of where the goals are bigger than the individual often petty concerns.

Voices for the future

As we roamed from table to table and room to room and from inside to outside event elements there was one conversation that kept on emerging in various guises. It could be called ‘voices’.

• Futurists as a group do not speak up strongly enough about the areas of concern, futurists have not supported minority voices or even understood them.
• Futurists have various voices depending on what the futurists backgrounds are.
• Should we consider segmenting the field more clearly like engineering or marketing has for the flavours to be understood better and heard?
• Are the young heard in a meaningful manner?

…but what about me?

Foresight involves pattern recognition. Sometimes us futurists need to take good care of recognising our own patterns and where those are leading us. The elements of our life so far are landmarks of our evolution and our path into our own future. Remember the moments of delight and passion, remember the moments of drudgery. It is wonderful when those moments of delight come together into one bigger whole of a happy you.

In one of the discussions we were trying to get to the essence of human competitiveness and lack of negotiation in the bigger picture engagement and it led to a discussion on the need to shift from competitive intelligence to connective intelligence and collaborative intelligence. Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine was mentioned for its qualities for re-energising. One tenet in it being that clarity increases energy. Clarity of where we are and what we are doing.

We all have to do many things we don’t like, living in rather tyrannical situations. How do we deal with it? We shared our various ways to find a spiritual stillness. How do we divorce ourselves from the situation and find the distance and peace? For me, as I have found out lately, it is blogging [still practicing]. Mowing the lawn I think was the most likely activity to gain ground globally. My lawns are in constant need of mowing the lawn, you are welcome anytime

Integral foresight foreplay…letting lose on the second day

I could not attend all the events during the second day but the two that I did were very good sessions of sharing practitioner experiences.

They were led by insightful approaches to setting the scene for a good conversation. The first one I attended was on the applying integral foresight in our work. As Richard Slaughter has said now in a number ways and said it again, ‘integral’ is not an ideology, it is a model or a framework and helps us be more inclusive of the dimensions of influence in any situation. Chris, Josh and Gretchen outlined their experiences and here are some key dimensions which I took away as important things for all to remember.

Gretchen, Josh, Richard, Chris

It is not very useful to use the model explicitly to try and explain the state of the world with it. Rather it is more important to use it to cover the ground but leave it at the back of the mind as a frame of reference. This way the focus is on the area requiring futures thinking rather than on the method to get to the solutions and opportunities. Some readings suggested were naturally Ken Wilber’s books but also Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson on people as autonomous beings and as meaning making individuals.

One danger with the model is that a practitioner compartmentalises people into different stages and people are really at many stages all at once for various situations and contexts of their lives. One way the integral method makes a difference is that it pushes for re-examining other methods and improves their comprehensiveness when taken from an integral perspective.

The second session I attended was aptly called “From foresight foreplay to corporate consummation”. The room was full. Sex sells. Marcus and Steve did a great job weaving a human interest story into the progress with a client.

We took a journey through key works of foresight and strategy which gave us part of the puzzle and the focal questions which we in the room were going to explore through discussion from our own experience on what works and what does not. Some of the questions were: What is foresight effectiveness? Is the field’s value understood? What to do about it?

Other fields which the group found to be equally difficult to put a direct dollar value to the results are public relations and design. With the cooperation of the participants we ended up in a warm embrace with our client(s) but we were wondering about what it made us futurists as we did end up in that warm embrace and we did a paying gig …….

Thanks it was fun!

Oliver coined a nice sentence for how he saw the consequence and thrill of our field, “The unbearable lightness of seeing”.

Further building the community

We wrapped the event by discussing our future as a community, the ways in which we’d like to engage for an improved future of the field.

After some months of deliberation on the ways in which the community can help itself we are now well on the way to forming an Australian professional foresight association.

A youth event in the park

Sunday we had a treat by Janine and Liz Cahill at Victoria Park. It was time to launch www.globalyouthfutures.org. We had a number of activities around rethinking and re-perceiving future and providing youth a voice.

A crowd scene – people listening to stories about the future and rap

Sustainable Sydney and some alternatives being envisioned – through art

Re-expression through recycled computers and toys

Thank you: Peter, Richard, Dianne, Wendy, Marie, Peter, Luke, Stephen, Steve, Marcus, Nicola, Terri, Jan, Peter, Brian, Brendan, Pat, Ian, Julien, Ian, Anita, Adam, Charles, Matthew, Liz, Janine, Roslyn, Chris, Barbara, Hugh, Robert, Maree, Gretchen, Josh, Oliver, Steven, Amy ……and the many others apologies if name isn’t here I am mainly listing those I paraphrase here in some way shape or form, apart my own thoughts and reflections on it all.

Here you can find more on the event.

I cannot believe this – how cool

Sometimes one just gets blown away how technology makes life easier!

I have downloaded Air B2 on to my mac. I downloaded the version 2 of beta to enable Airpress.

I had a problem, which was making it easier to interact with my blog on WordPress when I am offline and saving my blogs somewhere other than having them on WordPresss. I now have this cool interface with Airpress to do just that. I haven’t tried all the features just yet but so far I am impressed by the simplicity and the ease with which it installed.

Two things that don’t seem to be quite streamlined yet are when you re-enter it does not download the latest blog – so I ended up creating a second instance of my blog and haven’t found a way to get rid of it. I am also yet to figure out whether it has downloaded more than 20 blogs – I doesn’t look like it. Hmmm

Ah well. In the next few versions I am sure.