Australia’s 2020 Future – the Futurist’s report
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is now available and it would appear, given some of the initial media coverage suggesting that ‘nothing new’ emerged in Canberra, the Futurists have once again shown that their aproach to thinking can be a significant benefit
Whilst it is harsh to suggest that, given a very limited window of opportunity, 1000 people could be given the chance to explore in depth a number of radical, interesting and useful ideas and generate some pure gems, Prime Minister Rudd’s Summit has achieved at least one key outcome – people are now actively and consciously talking about the Future of Australia in a means that has not appeared feasible for some time.
And we’d urge people to hold judgement as to the success or otherwise until we see what comes of the process because the proof of the pudding as they say, is in the tasting, not just in the making.
The focus on Australia’s future neither suggests anything better or worse, just different from recent history and it is this ‘difference’ that can provide significant leverage. Which is why the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit was convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber from the outset. Although the futures community was hopeful of obtaining a ‘seat at the table’ in Canberra over the weekend, most Australia Futurists are for more realistic and grounded in likely outcomes. To that end then, there was a strong chance that the experts in the futures field were going to be sidestepped at the Canberra process, which is what happened.
Taking the perspective that assuming involvement in the Canberra summit was not a ‘fait accompli’, Marcus Barber gathered a group of Australian Futurists together to tackle each of the 10 themes and the output of that thinking is now publicly available
As co presenter of the ‘Future Matters’ series with the National Geographic Channel back in 2004, I discussed the idea of Rapid Prototyping or 3D Printing. At that stage, 3D printers were like very large office photocopiers and the better ones had starting prices of around $150,000. I stated that in the near future, people…
Read More >In tracking shifts across the world and across industries, the rise of Crowdsourcing continues to unleash some amazing innovations in products and services. Importantly it is exposing the capability gaps that even large organisations have. Simply put, the ‘crowd’ is always going to be bigger than your business or organisation. But to tap that latent…
Read More >Allow me to flag my bias from the outset – I’m tinged green. My shade of green recognises that my actions can contribute to a cleaner or more polluted world and that overall, I’d prefer the cleaner version. There’s a huge amount of data that shows that as a species we haven’t been looking after…
Read More >The burgeoning shift in the manufacturing sector has been coming for a touch over a decade and has, I would suggest, now reached your front gate. A whole confluence of factors that include 3D printing, Crowdsourcing, home engineering and freescale Idea Generation leveraging social funding approaches means that EVERY single aspect of manufacturing as we…
Read More >Futurist Jack Uldrich has posted an item to his website looking at Ten Trends shaping Government today. Although each item is arguable and may be context specific depending on ‘which’ Government you’re looking at, it’s a good overall take suggesting things to do with data, the interenet, crowdsourcing and the like. However I think Jack…
Read More >Sir Paul Nurse has ‘weight’ when it comes to science. His position is the head of The Royal Society in the United Kingdom and in an address in Melbourne he suggested that we need to keep politicians away from scientists: “It also emphasises the need to keep the science as far as is possible from…
Read More >I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to call 2013. After saying 2011 would need to be the International Year of Resilience (much still needed) and 2012 the International Year of Problem Solving I’m thinking now that Crowdsourcing (the idea of seeking assistance beyond your own capabilities from the ‘crowd’ often through social media)…
Read More >There’s lots of talk about ‘next big things for 2013’ right now, just as there has been in past years. Rather than join the cadre of prognosticators, trend experts and (not so) disguised salespeople laying claim to knowing about what ‘will’ be for the coming 12 months, I offer an alternative approach – here’s five…
Read More >Here it comes, the 21st of December 2012 – the last known recorded date on the Mayan Calendar and for years people have wondered why the Mayans never got around to extending beyond 2012. What did the Mayans know that we didn’t and should we be thinking about opening our Christmas presents early this year?…
Read More >As a Strategic Futurist I love a good scenario like the rest of us in the futures community. And where I choose to diverge from many in my field is in the pragmatic applications of futures and foresight thinking. Scenarios left as ‘what ifs…?’ are at best, theoretical. All of my clients and most of…
Read More >