Reflections on World Futures Conferences: in response to a request for feedback

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Reflections on World Futures Conferences
Criteria of success and "markets"
Keynote listeners for the Conference
Conference themes
Change agents
Dynamics
Communications
Open Forums
Location
Phasing the event
Realities
Conference report

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Adapted from feedback requested by the the Brisbane Futures Group in anticipation of a conference of the World Futures Studies Federation (Brisbane, 1997) at which a separate paper was presented (Future Generation through Global Conversation: in quest of collective well-being through conversation in the present moment, 1997)

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Preliminaries

The theme of "global conversations" could prove a very useful framework. I am sending you a copy of a paper entitled Sustainable Dialogue as a Necessary Template for Sustainable Community" (paper for a Cleveland, 1995, Conference on Organization Dimensions of Social Change). This reflects some of my concerns about the challenge of rethinking dialogue. It emerged from my learnings from the abysmal failures of the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions (Chicago). The question is how to move beyond our collective and individual tendency to sink back into minimally productive patterns?

I am also sending you a write up I did of the 1st World Congress on Transdisciplinarity (Lisbon, 1994) which has some points of relevance you may enjoy. Also one on a conference organized by Magda McHale on "Who is Designing the 21st Century?" (Buffalo, 1995). Shortly I will send you one on the recent International Conference on Eco-villages and Sustainable Communities (Scotland, 1995). The three of them have the merit of being creative disinformation and merely reflect my view of what the future would have wanted them to be -- often much more rewarding than the cold reality!