Finland Mini Trip report

The Finland Futures Research Center celebrated its 20th anniversary by bringing together 14 Futurists from around the world and 11 Futurists from Finland to explore the future of futures research (the participants are listed below – which included 5 Millennium Project Node chairs).

The key themes of the all-day workshop included broadening participation in futures research, collective intelligence systems, and making Futures Research a normal function in organizations (like accounting is a normal function in organizations).

A report will be forthcoming. During the workshop Professor Erzsébet Nováky of Cornivus University of Budapest asked about creating the Hungarian Node. She will explore this with Professor Mihaly Simai (former chairman of UNU and participant in The Millennium Project from the beginning).

After the workshop the Helsinki Node held a meeting to share its plans for the coming year and then I demonstrated the current status of MP’s Global Futures Collective Intelligence System (Global Futures CIS). The next day I joined other Futurists in talking to a youth conference on the future and then took the train from Turku to Helsisnki to have lunch with Paula Tiihonen, Director of the Committee for the Future in the Parliament and Osmo Kuusi with the Government’s Institute for Economic Research (his PhD was on the Delphi method). We talked about: 1) the future of governance and democracy issues that might be addressed in a Parliamentary conference this Fall, 2) the forthcoming Global Futures CIS, and 3) improving the selection of expert Delphi panels (Osmo will be pleased to collaborate with Ted Gordon in his interest in identifying experts – this discussion could be a special group in the Global Futures CIS – if you are interested in participating in this group, send me an email).

Next stop Amsterdam.

Here are the participants in the future of futures research workshop:

Leena Ilmola, Intl. Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Finland
PaulaTiihonen, Parliament of Finland, Finland
Elina Kiiski, Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, Finland
Cornelia Daheim, Z-punkt, Germany
Toni Ahlqvist, Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland
Sirkka Heinonen, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
Sari Söderlund, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
Osmo Kuusi, Government Institute for Economic Research, Finland
Markku Wilenius, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
Burkhard Auffermann, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
Jyrki Luukkanen, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
Olli Hietanen, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
Istavan Kappeter, Cornivus University of Budapest, Hungary
Jerome C. Glenn, Millennium Development Project, U.S.A.
Jennifer Cassingena Harper, Malta Council for Science and Technology, Malta
Philippe Destatte, The Destree Institute, Brussels
Geci Karuri, SA Cities Network, South Africa
Martin Rhisiart, University of Glamorgan, U.K.
Peter Bishop, University of Houston, U.S.A
Enric Bas, University of Alicante, Spain
Susanne Giesecke, Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria
Erzsébet Nováky, Cornivus University of Budapest, Hungary
John Casti, Technical University of Vienna, Austria
Rakesh Kapoor, World Futures Studies Federation, India
Jennifer Gidley, World Futures Studies Federation, Australia

All the best,

Jerome