Ivan Klinec, Bratislava, Slovakia

Ted Gordon was undoubtedly one of the world’s great and leading futurist and he greatly contributed to the development of the methodology of futures studies, futures research, to the organizational innovation of worldwide futurist activities, to the development of futurist thinking and to the solving of problems of the future. I had the opportunity to meet Ted for the first time in the year 1998 at the meeting of the Planning Committee of The Millennium Project of American Council for United Nations University in Chicago, USA and at the annual conference of the World Future Society also in Chicago, which the meeting of the planning committee preceded.

Then I had the opportunity to meet with Ted another 14 times at meetings of the Planning Committee of The Millennium Project and at World Future Society annual conferences in Washington, D.C., Houston, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Ted radiated great satisfaction and great wisdom, visionary and innovation in his presentations, speeches and discussions. He was a great innovator and his very important innovation was the creation of the State of the Future Index SOFI and I had the opportunity to participate in the calculation of V4 SOFI for the Visegrad countries including Slovakia. Ted provided here the methodological background for the project and was a co-author of the resulting publication together with its other authors from the V4 countries.

To me personally, Ted Gordon and Jerry Glenn are synonymous with The Millennium Project, as they have led and managed it since its starting point in 1996 (1992), managed it tirelessly, and have been instrumental in publishing the State of the Future since the project’s beginning in 1996. No other similar activity did not contribute so much to the global development of futures studies and futures research as the activities of The Millennium Project. Ted and Jerry have united a huge number of futurists from all over the world into one global neuron network, which continuously thinks about the future, searches for solutions to the problems of the future and pushes the boundaries of global futures knowledge worldwide. For that, Ted deserves the thanks and respect of futurists around the world in honor to his memory.