Getting the task of closing or opening a conference is always a more interesting task than slotting in to the middle somewhere. Opening you can set the agenda, closing you have the responsibility to reflect on what other people have said and leave people with some new ideas and thinking so they go away on a high. For IRAHS2010 I had the closing session, but with the very specific brief to summarise the event and also to be provocative. Net result was I had to listen carefully and take notes for two days, and gradually start to put some slides together in the last hour before I stood up to speak.
The conference is the third in the series and I have been at all of them, this one to my mind reflected the maturity of the tools used by the foresight community and the consequent need for some radical rethinks. I took the opportunity of the presentation to revisit the S-Curves specially around the subject of foresight. My earlier version was around Management Theory in general, here I was more specific. My tribute as ever to Singapore for leading in this field, something that was acknowledge by speakers from the US as well. The slides are here, and the podcast is here.
Comments (2)
Hi - Good comments but I am missing the provocative part...
I'm wondering if it is just harder to be really provocative... or are people beginning to sit up and embrace what we have been screaming about for 10, 15, 20ys and longer? Hmmm.
'Tools of the foresight community' does concern me a bit. 'Tools' seem to interfere with just about everything good nowadays.
The collective intelligence networks do a nice job in foresight, but really haven't stopped long enough to call anything a 'tool' yet. They would feel that to be very presumptuous... It will be better, hopeful if they never reach that stage.
http://bit.ly/82Q3Sa
My opinion is once an activity reaches the 'mature tool' stage, most the goodness and value has already been beaten out of it.
Today's overbearing tool focus is an annoying, persistent and literal vestige of the stone age. Tool orientation is also a pathetic characteristic of juvenile male dominance. Both hurt knowledge and foresight.
'Radical rethink' needs to be a continuous, perpetual activity -- not a stage in a tool lifecycle.
-j
Posted by John T Maloney | March 17, 2010 9:12 AM
Posted on March 17, 2010 09:12
Oh the summary and the missing in action bits were provocative (especially if you listen to the podcast. However in general people are starting to shift so its getting a bit easier.
Tools are tools, its when they become fetishistic we get a problem!
Posted by Dave Snowden![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 30, 2010 7:11 AM
Posted on March 30, 2010 07:11