Australia’s 2020 Future – the Futurist’s report
As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields and will look at each of the key areas the Prime minister has flagged as critical themes for development.
Given the gathering will be of a ‘Tell of Futurists’, you’d expect that the group would be ahead of the main game, which of course it will be by about 6 weeks. The aim of the 2020 Futures Summit is to pre-respond to the larger gathering in April and to produce a report that will have quite a pragmatic flavour to it, whilst allowing for deeper consideration of the challenges that lie ahead.
Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber commends the Prime Minister on the initiative whilst cautioning the difficulties of taking too ‘thin’ an approach to a serious consideration of the future: “The willingness to gather a thousand people in Canberra to generate ideas for each themes is a very interesting approach and takes much from the ex British Prime Minister Blair’s forums in the UK. Two of the biggest challenges for the upcoming gathering in Canberra will centre around an effective facilitation process which might require some of the Zing-type data software for it to work quickly at gathering ideas effectively, and for there to be enough depth of discussion and peeling back the layers to ensure any idea has an element of pragmatic value, no matter how left field it might seem initially. In fact the bigger challenge might be in too few ‘out there ideas’ being generated if the process encourages group think. That’d be a difficult hurdle given the number of people and the limited time involved”
The 2020 Futures Summit report will be made available to a select number of media who will be embargoed from releasing it until after the PM’s summit has been completed. “Allowing for the individual perspectives being brought to the tables in Canberra, it is important for people attending the PM’s summit to be as ‘clean from recently influenced bias’ as possible. We are already seeing a flood of activity of press releases and discussion papers pouring into mainstream media which I suspect is in no small part an attempt to shape the type of thinking of the 1000 people who make their way to Canberra” says Marcus Barber
“We want the quality of the depth of thinking from our Summit to be seen as additional to the thinking that emerges in Canberra in April, not an attempt to shape it before hand. The one big advantage we have as futurists is an ability to work with multiple perspectives simultaneously and to look for confirming, disconfirming and alternative perspectives, a luxury that time constraints will probably not be afforded to the Canberra meeting”
Media inquiries regarding the 2020 Futurists Report can be directed to Rebecca Camilleri at August on 9445 0326
n a recent piece in the New York Times, Thomas L Freidman’s article ‘If I had a hammer’ discussed the new book by Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee’s new book ‘The Second Machine Age’ and the development of computing power now making even complex employment positions redundant. Whereas in the first machine age, human muscle…
Read More >I was interviewed for this article earlier last year and now it seems it has more currency than ever, so I’m reposting the link here. As a parent, what steps can you take to ensure your kids are well placed for a fulfilling career? This article offers some thoughts
Read More >For over a decade I worked with organisations in for profit, not for profit and government sectors. I’ve advised organisations in Europe, North America, Asia and beyond. Some organisations have been multi nationals, long standing, privately owned, publicly held, socially aware, profit focused and more. I’ve managed million dollar portfolios and client accounts of just…
Read More >The link to the article below will take you to an overview of how robotic design is developing towards a more ‘natural’ form of human movement. To a larger extent, this is part of the normalisation process so that those of us exposed to robotics can be more accepting of their presence. This is indeed…
Read More >Occasionally I see a post that leads me to slap my forehead with the sheer simplicity of its brilliance. The post in the link below discusses the idea of homework for kids and I flag that I’m on the School Council of my kid’s Primary School, where this discussion runs rampant. The research we…
Read More >I’m part way through a small research piece for an FMCG company that is interested in exploring the future consumer and what kind of environmental factors might influence their purchasing decisions. Interestingly enough toward the end of last year I had three FMCG firms approach me about a similar challenge, so ‘Future Consumers’ must be…
Read More >The Australian Government has announced a ‘Repeal Day’, intended to be used to axe the existence of hundreds of outdated laws. The concept is a good one, though for me, doesn’t quite get the Australian Parliament into a forward looking setting in how it could develop FUTURE legislation. So what could be done instead and…
Read More >Continuing his run of suggesting an annual theme and idea of world focus for the year ahead, Futurist Marcus Barber has declared 2014 to be the International Year of Food Security. ‘The year ahead is going to bring into sharp focus, what has often been seen as an ‘other-world’ problem’ Barber says. ‘For a number…
Read More >Yes I know, committing to an early morning chat on ABC Radio on New Year’s Day may to some seem tinged with the ‘what were you thinking?’ bug, but hey, what better time is there than chatting about the future, than at prime New Year’s Resolution time? You’ll be able to listen to the stream…
Read More >The Australian Strategic Planning Institute website has a new article on why Visions, rather than being useful shining lights, end up being ‘ruts’ for organisations. Counter instinictivley and yet simply put, the never ending nature of some Visions leads to an inaction toward that Vision. Companies and individuals spin their wheels in a quagmire…
Read More >