Publication Day & Other News
Is it October already? It must be, as we've already been streaming the horror classics and finding our work schedule jam packed (one is a therapy for the other). We're briefly off the road after a hectic few weeks jumping between Europe, the Middle East, the US, and back, and running an online workshop for a great group of representatives from small and mid-tier countries across many time zones.
One highlight was being in New York City with our friends at UNDP during General Assembly Week for a brief internal workshop supporting a long-running collaboration to design and deploy an organization-wide signals and trends collection system alongside our partners John Willshire and Smithery. Designing this system, which was piloted with the Signals Spotlight released earlier in 2023, and by a number of other teams and units around the world since, has been a pleasure and true learning experience at global scale. We look forward to seeing where it goes, and what it's applied to, in the near future.
Publication Day (Pt 1)
This system is one of the many real-world examples we use as case studies in our new book, Future Cultures, which has its initial publication day TODAY, October 3, in much of the world! We just received our initial physical copies last week and are so pleased to have our hands on the actual book itself! It's been a mad downhill slide since we agreed to write it last October, then sprinted through the winter to bring it together, and we're so happy it's finally here. We're very thankful for the excitement and good wishes many of you have shared through various our social channels.
If you haven't pre-ordered, to celebrate Publication Day, you can get 20% off by using the code FUTURES when ordering direct from Kogan Page.
We also want to extend our thanks again to folks at places like AXA, UNDP, Salesforce, IBM, National Lottery UK, BBC R&D, the Centre for Strategic Futures, Dstl, Superflux, Near Future Laboratory, McDonald's, Nesta, Kantar, other organizations big and small, and the individual practitioners who spent time sharing reflections and insights about their own futures journeys and cultures. They were a critical part of this book's development and substance.
The book, which looks at the development of strong futures cultures within organizations large and small, provides a layered structure, moving from the center outward. Starting with people and mindsets, then language and communication, tools, knowledge and ideas, space and experience, rules and norms, and finally, networks and ecosystems, we describe a framework for building a future culture in organizations of all kinds.
To bring all of this together, and help you think across layers of the book, we've released an updated version of what we call the Future Cultures Map, depicted in the book but beautified for download. You can find it here, as well as tips on how to use it.
If you do order a copy (and we hope you will), please do three things for us:
Share a picture of it, tagging us on Instagram @changeist.
Review it on Amazon, Goodreads, or your favorite review channel.
Share it with someone else, either in person or via sites like LinkedIn, your fave Discord (which we also write about), or WhatsApp group.
One way we've thought about Future Cultures is this: if our first book How to Future was written for the aspiring or upskilling futures designer or strategist, the new book speaks more to the team leader, manager or senior stakeholder. If you're working hard to build and strengthen a futures capability in any organization, Future Cultures speaks both to your challenges and opportunities, but also to those you need support from, whether that's resources, attention, participation, or any other engagement. We wrote it to help you make—or strengthen—your case. You can't do it alone!
There will be some events and publications to come, and the book reaches North American shores on Halloween, Oct 31, so hold tight there! It's on its way! You still have time to pre-order. You can also apparently get the Kindle version today in the US. In the meantime, you can enjoy this edited excerpt in Border|Land, a new magazine from the folks at GapJumpers.
If you are interested in a translation of either of our books, and know a publisher who might be interested, get in touch. We would love to see these books in other languages, and have had multiple requests for Spanish and Arabic. We can connect you to the fine people in licensing at Kogan Page to discuss further.
Heading South
Meanwhile, we are also excited to share that we both (Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith) have been invited to be the inaugural Visiting Research Fellows for the SA Water Visiting Research Fellowships program. Working with the great MOD., and under the sponsorship of the University of South Australia and SA Water, we will spend the month of November in Adelaide engaged in a range of activities around futures and foresight. We'll let the teams there explain:
Throughout their time here Scott and Susan will work with MOD., University of South Australia and SA Water on a number of projects, professional development opportunities and events.
Firstly, Scott and Susan will work with MOD.’s director, Dr Kristin Alford to co-facilitate a full-day Futures and Foresight Masterclass, where attendees can grow their understanding of the importance of futures thinking and foresight for leaders, explore an emergent domain, take a deep dive into futures methodologies and how to use these methods to inform strategic change in your organisation. This will take place at MOD. on Friday the 3rd of November, to secure your place book here.
Additionally, MOD., will host its next Foresight of Community of Practice drinks, where we will welcome those interested in or practising foresight in South Australia to meet one another and learn from Scott and Susan through informal speeches and conversations. It is also a chance to view MOD.’s current exhibition FLEX. This is a free event, open to anyone interested in foresight in South Australia, with drinks and food available for purchase. This will take place between 5 pm-7:30 pm on Thursday, November 2nd, book here. https://lnkd.in/gjGPxWbD
There's more to come from this Fellowship, including some time to develop new approaches to experiential futures, and we hope to lay some groundwork for future future fellows. Most of all, we're grateful to the sponsors and program developers and itching to get on the ground and meet everyone.
Stories to tell
As some of you know, we don't just work in the realms of grounded research and strategic futures, but we also do a fair amount of behind-the-scenes creative work. Some of our current and near-future work involve this creative development of narratives, backstories, scripts, storyboards and other elements of storytelling that we find both extremely enjoyable and a puzzle-building challenge.
After more than 20 years in this work around the world, we have a lot of stories to tell, plots to weave, and scenes to set. We also have a tremendous network of creative writers, designers and concepting specialists we can draw on to add color to our outlines, for both fiction and non-fiction endeavors.
If you're looking for support or a creative injection around storytelling and "the future," don't hesitate to contact us.
Also, if you're planning to come to the Dubai Futures Forum in late November, we will be around. Join us for a karak tea.
That's all we have for now. If there's something we can do to help you in our fields of expertise, let us know. We also welcome feedback on the new book, and are happy to talk about it in a range of forums and channels. Hit us up!
All the best,
Changeist
