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Another Opportunity to Train as a Futurist

Category: Center for the Future Of Museums Blog

Why? Because bringing a futurist perspective to museum planning is really, really useful. Futurism, and forecasting, is about understanding how to spot and interpret relevant trends, project what they may mean for the future of your organization, and take appropriate action now to adapt to or change that future. Doesn’t that sound like a vital skill for anyone helping to guide their museum through the coming decades of change?

So here is an opportunity to take a crash course in the basic skills of futurism. The University of Houston Future Studies Program is again offering museum practitioners
a 25% discount on their week-long certificate course in Strategic Foresight to be held May 17th – 21st, 2010.

This program is run by Dr. Peter Bishop, who is one of the founding members of the CFM Council. The project-based workshop teaches participants to “anticipate disruptive change and work towards the creation of transformational change in order to influence the future of their organizations, companies and communities.” (The course offers 4 CEUs for attendance and a certificate upon completion of a project after the workshop.) I took the course in January and it was, indeed, transformative to my thinking. It is intense, it is immersive, it is stimulating. It will change the way you approach your work–I bet you spend the trip back furiously jotting notes on what you want to do on your return, and how to share your new skills with your colleagues.

Joe Cavanaugh, Museum Director of the National Museum of the Pacific War, was one of my classmates in January, and blogged about the benefits of learning to think like a futurist, here.

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More information is available here. The deadline for discounted tuition and hotel is April 15th. Call staff of the University at 713.743.1060 for more information or to register for the course at the CFM discount price of $1875.

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