Mini Trip report: Turku, Finland

Turku is the old capital of Finland and now the home of the Finland Futures Research Center, which produced an excellent two-day conference of 260 participants from 33 countries.

The Prime Minister’s Office sponsored my trip to be the speaker for “Foresight Friday” organized by Sirkka Heinonen, the Co-Chair of the Helsinki Node. I shared the initial results of the Future of Work/Technology 2050 Real-Time Delphi study. The talk was live-streamed and may be archived by the PMO – if so, will let you know. It was a good talk and discussion. The Future of Work/Technology 2050 study has eight steps:

1. Literature and Related Research Review

2. Real-Time Delphi

3. Road Maps and Scenario Drafts

4. RTDelphi Feedback on the Scenarios

5. Final Scenarios, Policy Implications, and produce initial report

6. Initial Report as input to the National Planning Workshops

7. Collect results of the national planning workshops, analyze & synthesize results

8. Final report for public discussion

The PM’s representative thought a national planning workshop (step 6) would be a good idea for Finland and would report so to the Prime Minister. Sirkka and I also give a talk on Conscious-Technology (based on Future Mind, a book I wrote during the 1980s) as part of the main program of conference. Since there would be many of the European Node Chairs at the Turku conference, the Foresight European Network decided to hold a meeting after the conference to share current work, explore collaborations, and build synergies. Cornelia Daheim (Germany Node) and Ibon Zugasti (Spain Node) who co-chaired the meeting will send a note about the results. The new FEN website is: www.feneu.org. Now back to working on 2015-16 State of the Future. And then in a few days off to Mexico.

All the best,

Jerome C. Glenn, CEO