Events
Australia's 2020 Future - the Futurist's report
Monday 21 April 2008
You'd think that given a focus on the future, you'd ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn't occur for the PM's Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia's Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is now available and it would appear, given some of the initial media coverage suggesting that 'nothing new' emerged in Canberra, the Futurists have once again shown that their aproach to thinking can be a significant benefit
Whilst it is harsh to suggest that, given a very limited window of opportunity, 1000 people could be given the chance to explore in depth a number of radical, interesting and useful ideas and generate some pure gems, Prime Minister Rudd's Summit has achieved at least one key outcome - people are now actively and consciously talking about the Future of Australia in a means that has not appeared feasible for some time.
And we'd urge people to hold judgement as to the success or otherwise until we see what comes of the process because the proof of the pudding as they say, is in the tasting, not just in the making.
The focus on Australia's future neither suggests anything better or worse, just different from recent history and it is this 'difference' that can provide significant leverage. Which is why the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit was convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber from the outset. Although the futures community was hopeful of obtaining a 'seat at the table' in Canberra over the weekend, most Australia Futurists are for more realistic and grounded in likely outcomes. To that end then, there was a strong chance that the experts in the futures field were going to be sidestepped at the Canberra process, which is what happened.
Taking the perspective that assuming involvement in the Canberra summit was not a 'fait accompli', Marcus Barber gathered a group of Australian Futurists together to tackle each of the 10 themes and the output of that thinking is now publicly available
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Events
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Have just spent a few hours discussing the Future of Money, hosted by James Bibby at Microsoft in Sydney and facilitated by Peter Vander Auwera from SWIFT/Innotribe. I'd like to flag that everyone understood that the session was way too short for such a big topic and everyone would agree that we just scratched the surface (not that the scratch would leave too much of a mark just yet). The session was a kick start for a group from a wide variety of interests: banks, payment providers' IT specialists and some specialty consultancies.
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Ernst & Young and GreenBiz have completed a survey of business executives looking at the development of Corporate Sustainability around the world. The report shows that there has been a clear rise in awareness; that employees are a core source driving sustainability actions; that reduction of costs is a core appeal and that return on investment in sustainability actions is required to be judged in the same way as other corporate investments. For me this poses a dichotomy of thinking - the environment was built up over millennia and our use of it has taken just a couple of centuries yet we judge sustainability actions at the same 'speed of delivery' criteria. That poses a challenge and is perhaps an unrealistic set of expectations.
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Tuesday 24 April 2012
On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin's Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war - what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought
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