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Planning for a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous Future

Why is foresight an essential skill for museum people in coming decades? Last week I had the pleasure of making that case at the ICOM 2022 Triennial Conference, and today I’m happy to …

Big Global Trends: An #AAM2022 Keynote by Thomas L. Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, author, and journalist, opened the Museums in Society focus area of the 2022 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo with his keynote, …

To NFT or Not to NFT: The View from Two Museums

A few weeks ago I published a post on blockchain collectibles, offering a primer on NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and exploring some factors, notably alignment with mission and values, that …

Introducing the 2022 Edition of TrendsWatch

As a child, I fell in love with museums for the good they did for me: providing a place of wonder, exploration, refuge, and, as I aged into teen-dom, an opportunity for meaningful work as a …

Introducing Your Do-It-Yourself Toolkit for Strategic Foresight

Check it out. I made something for you ↑ I’ve been teaching strategic foresight to museum people for fourteen years now, travelling around the country to give talks and lead workshops, …

Museums as Keepers of the Future

Watch this keynote speech from Elizabeth Merritt at the Museoalan Teemapäivät Museum Theme Days seminar in Helsinki City Theatre, Helsinki, Finland. In this presentation, Ms. Merritt talks …

Three New Scenarios for Financial Survival in 2020

  Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field: The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Center for the Future …

Using Scenarios to Plan Your Museum’s COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Response

  Support Free COVID-19 Resources for the Field: The current crisis is taking a distressing financial toll on cultural organizations, and AAM is no different. The Center for the Future …

Day 3: A Visit from the Authorities

This is the third installment of a “diary of the future” I wrote a decade ago, exploring what the world might be like in 2019. My story takes place in a scenario created by the Institute …

We, the Aged, Are an Integral Part of the Community

In April, while on a visit to New Zealand, I convened seven highly-respected Kiwi colleagues in Wellington to discuss creative aging. I asked two questions of the participants: How might …

Futurist Friday: Fractional Art

Here’s William Gibson, writing in 1986, offering an off-hand glimpse of art collecting in the year 2042: “He led her across the room and through a doorway. A graying, heavyset Frenchman in …

TrendsWatch 2019: Ledger de Main: How blockchain is transforming transactions

This is one of the five trends from the 2019 TrendsWatch. Click here to read more about the full report.  “The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of …
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