The Futures Workshop

This week, a special episode of The Futures Workshop: my conversation with Professor Paul Saffo, recorded in front of a live studio audience at the Dubai Future Forum in November 2024. Also special is today’s topic. After ten episodes exploring different tools and how to use them, Paul challenges us to think about the proper place of tools in futures work. He says we should use them in the same way a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, rather than for illumination. Paul is a deep thinker, a rock star in the futures world and has a real gift for communicating complex ideas. He shares some beautiful and clever metaphors to help get his message across, and we think this episode will be of great interest not just to future thinkers but to anybody who uses tools in their day to day practice. Please enjoy this special episode. Thanks to the team at Dubai Future Foundation for your hospitality and expertise, and thanks of course to Professor Paul Saffo for your generosity and intellect! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefuturesworkshop.substack.com [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

This week we’re following up our conversation with Ivana Milojevic with an imagined workshop. We show you how you might use the Futures Triangle tool with a group - guiding them to identify the pull, push and weight forces that affect the way we work towards a preferred future. We then look at how those forces might interact with each other - particularly where the tensions or obstructions might lie. Then we conclude with some final insights and briefly talk about how to turn those insights into practical next steps for action. You’ll benefit from listening to Episode Nine: Ivana Milojevic on The Futures Triangle [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com/p/episode-nine-ivana-milojevich-on], before you take on this workshop episode. And as always, if you’re more of a casual listener to the podcast, feel free to skip over these even-numbered workshop episodes which are focused more on the day-to-day work of futures practitioners. Whatever your background, we hope you enjoy this episode and as always welcome your feedback! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefuturesworkshop.substack.com [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Today we’re in conversation with Ivana Milojevic, another of the world’s leading voices in the area of futures. Ivana has worked extensively around the globe, and shares some of her most memorable experiences in a wide ranging discussion, with a focus on the Futures Triangle tool. In this interview Ivana explains how by understanding three invisible forces - the weight of the past, the push of the present and pull of the future - we can deepen our understanding of an issue, as well as spot particular challenges, and opportunities to make progress. Along with being an accomplished futurist, Ivana specialises in peace studies and conflict transformation. We spend some time in this episode talking about how these three disciplines intersect to create meaningful change. I hope you enjoy Ivana’s humour, warmth and intelligence as much as I did! Let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback on this conversation and as always I’ll be back in the next episode putting these tools to practical use in an imagined workshop. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefuturesworkshop.substack.com [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Welcome to our latest episode, in which we take the tool introduced by Jake Dunagan in Episode Seven [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com/p/episode-seven-jake-dunagan-on-design], and try it out in a workshop setting. Jake’s specialty is “experiential” (or “design”) futures and central to this is the Create-a-Scene tool, which uses various facilitation techniques to bring a future scenario to life. In this episode we imagine a dystopic “collapse” scenario, and then a more optimistic “transformed” scenario. We’ve telescoped this workshop more than usual - spending less time on the administrative and practical aspects of the workshop (like thinking time and Post It notes), to give us more time to explore two different scenarios with this tool. Thanks for listening, and remember to subscribe if you’d like to get fresh episodes direct to your inbox when they drop. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefuturesworkshop.substack.com [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

In this episode I talk to one of the pioneers of design futures (or if you prefer, “experiential” futures) about how to emotionally engage people in futures thinking. By creating immersive scenarios, Jake says we can help people connect with what they’re imagining. We talk about some of his most memorable scenarios, how to bridge the “cognitive gap” that stops people emotionally connecting with the future plus the challenges of facilitating design futures workshops and how to overcome those challenges. Apologies for the poor audio in this episode - you won’t have trouble following the conversation but we wish it was of a higher quality. Thank you for bearing with us as we work to get the best out of our equipment and our software! Thanks again to The Beths [https://thebeths.com/] for their beautiful music. You’ll find more detail on the 2x2 matrix [https://www.futuresplatform.com/blog/2x2-scenario-planning-matrix-guideline] for scenario planning that Jake referred to here, and a selection of resources he’s provided in the pdf below. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thefuturesworkshop.substack.com [https://thefuturesworkshop.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]