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Playful strategy development for museums
When I tell people I’m a futurist, I inevitably get some jokes about crystal balls and Tarot decks. Ironically, I actually HAVE a Tarot deck on my desk: one that I’ve hacked to create a “forecasting deck”—a clever tool to help people … -
Summer Reading: What’s on my iPad
I never have enough time for long-form reading, but every summer I queue up a few things and make time to dive into them. Preferably sitting on the porch. With lemonade. And cats. Here are the next four on my list—these summaries are based … -
The Future of Storytelling
On a recent series of flights across the country I burned through Scott Westerfeld’s “Leviathan” series: three Steampunk-style alt-history novels. One fundamental premise of strategic foresight is that any area of … -
Futurist Friday: Past Visions of Future Highways
It is fun, and instructive, to revisit the future as envisioned by past visionaries–in this case, Disney. This [8:47] min short from 1958 envisions color-coded highways that defrost themselves, parking elevators and self-driving cars … -
Futurist Friday: I Think, Therefore I Am
Some futurist scenarios are more probable than others. But even those that seem wildly improbable help us see the present in a new light. The March, a lyrical animation (5 min) wrote, directed, and animated by Josh Fortune for the Sci-Fi … -
Spend Some Time Daydreaming the Future
Humans are natural storytellers. That should make my work easy, because the apex of strategic foresight is using storytelling to plan for the future. Futurists call these stories “scenarios,” and while they have a very serious purpose, … -
Dark Futures: Nonprofit Fragmentation
I wanted to start the year on a positive note, I really did. But I find myself writing about a middle-of-the-night worry, instead.What gave me nightmares? Not a bad dinner, unfortunately, but a steady diet of sobering news. I spent most of … -
Museums in the Future: A View from Across the Pond
I was originally going to feature the report “Museums in a Digital Age” from Arups’ Foresight + Research + Innovation thinktank in a Futurist Friday post, but I try to confine the recommendations in that series to short bites of reading or … -
The Fourth Sector
The second flight of “Test Pilots” is winging their way through the CFM Digital Badging project. Besides helping the Alliance test the potential of this form of microcredentialing to serve our members, and providing some training on … -
Futurist Friday: Artifacts of the Future
What artifacts will history museums of the future collect, and how will we interpret them? Scenarios—fictional stories of potential futures—can help us imagine how we would adapt to alternative outcomes. Often scenarios can be found in …
Tag: Scenarios
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