Hines, Andy and Chair, APF (2006) The Futures of Futures. Technical Report. Université Virtuelle de Tunis. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Forty futurists gathered in Austin, Texas from February 28th-March 1st, 2003 to explore the "Futures of Futures." The meeting was organized by the year-old Association of Professional Futurists (APF), which was formed to give structure and form to the growing informal efforts by many futurists to become more organized. Years of hallway chatter at various conferences and meetings, characterized by frustration at the low esteem of the field and the difficulty in making a living as a practicing futurist, finally reached the point where the number of people involved and their level of frustration hit critical mass. It became time to put up or shut up. An early experiment along these lines took place in Seattle about a year ago under the moniker of the "Applied Futures Summit." This open-space meeting centered drew 25 futurists around a variety of topics, largely centered on methodological innovation. Here the issue was raised as to whether the informal, ad hoc nature of the Seattle gathering would be sufficient to address the big issues confronting the field and the futurist. What we found over the course of the next year was that most agreed that having a formal organization was both practical and necessary. The vast majority of the Seattle participants have become APF members. "Do something different" The APF was busy in 2002 doing the things one does to set up a professional association: defining membership qualifications, a governance structure, recruiting members, and putting together a benefits package. There was an extensive debate about the nature of the first conference, which was to become the Austin scenario salon. While opinions varied about the topic and specific format, the planning team agreed that it would be important to "do something different." A key factor behind the success of the Seattle meeting was using an open space format in which the participants set the agenda and made the meeting happen themselves -- a pleasant departure from the ubiquitous expert, talking-head format. The planning team wanted to keep the ethos of a participant-centered format. This led to the choice of the scenario format.

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