Erik F. Øverland

WHY FUTURES ALWAYS ALREADY HAS TO BE OPEN.

SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE WFSF BERLIN CONFERENCE, OCT 26TH-29TH 2021

THE 24th WFSF World Conference was a tremendous success. In the middle of a pandemic, facing severe uncertainties regarding travel restrictions, limited financial situations for a lot of our members and professional reorientations by many, we aimed at a physical event with an additional online section. High risk? Yes! But, due to a great team preparing the event, we succeeded in gathering more than 180 people in person and a considerable number of attendees for the online program. In addition the WFSF was made known by a long range of possible futures partners and futures interested actor, not only within Germany, but World Wide. Of course, the participation was limited due to the pandemic situation, which above all but this as a background we should be satisfied with the in-person attendance.

Personally, I participated in several sessions and had a long range of bilateral meeting with people during the event. And I was definitely not the only one. The Conference fulfilled its mission as being a meeting place for futurists and futures interested people, both members and non-members.

As I started in this field for more than 25 years ago – and I know that many of you can point at more than 50 years involvement in the professional futures field – one of the strongest impressions was the outstanding sympathetic, creative and intelligent habitus all people I met represented. As a former boss of mine said – “the people in this field, Erik, are all that sympathetic and inviting”. And I agree – they (you) definitely are.

This field is a free arena with people that not only want change, but also to a high degree open up things, angle things differently than usual and invite you into

journeys that you did not know about and definitely did not understand. Here we can move beyond current conflict lines – independently whether they are geopolitical ones, conflicts between states, between world regions, between value systems or even between professional approaches. In this field we are free to express difficult topics without “being arrested for it”, we may be political incorrect in a the best meaning of the term, and we just experiment with ideas, images and perspectives to see what the futures may or could bring, not what it will be or what we want it to be. All these kind of undertakings do something to you – obviously – something wonderful and important.

That’s some of the reasons why we titled the conference “The Openness of Futures”. The Openness of futures reflects the broad dimensions and dynamics of futures studies/-research and describes an arena in which we explore the expansiveness of our imagination – an open universe prepared to deal with the grand challenges of our time, beautifully articulated as desirable visions of sustainable progress and hope.

When you look at the program you will find a long variety of themes and approaches to the Futures field. It combined plenary sessions, guest speakers, panels, workshops and experiential happenings, scientific papers, as well as sponsor and exhibitor displays from across the globe. The combined 3-day conference program involved around 120 speakers and panelists from 46 countries in over 80 sessions.

The conference was opened by Dr. Helge Braun, Head of the German Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the fourth coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Personally, I am proud that Helge Braun took his time to wish us welcome on behalf of the German Government, which definitely not was a given option. Other Keynote speakers included Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO, Dr. Issa H. Al Ansari, President of Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Dr. Jin Canrong, and President of the Chinese Society for Future Studies (CSFS). We had presentations from the President of Nauru, President Lionel Rouwen Aingimea, and the ex-President of Seychelles, James Michel, as well as author Bayo Amokolafe and the world renowned digital artist, Stanza. In addition we also had several interactive sessions with a long range of topics.

The conference theme - The Openness of futures - reflected the broad dimensions and dynamics of futures studies7research and described an arena in which we explore the expansiveness of our imagination – an open universe prepared to deal with the grand challenges of our time, beautifully articulated as desirable visions of sustainable progress and hope. Topics ranged from the future of democracy and trends in defence and security to the future of work, education, health, living environments and sustainability. The latest in transdisciplinary technologies and their potential future applications were a prominent feature as were emerging foresight tools and methods and developments at the intersection of art, science, sci-fi and futures studies.

All in all – we can be proud of this year’s event and it definitely set the standard of our next World Conference, which will be in 2023 and which at the same time will be our 50th years anniversary!

We are now working with the proceedings. Papers submitted to the scientific committee of the conference should be submitted to selected journals by the authors. In addition we are thinking about a way to present a document that also visualise the broad scoped thematic content of the conference. The videorecorded material will be – as soon as we got that far – presented on the conference website. You then just have to click on the contribution in the program that you are interested, to view presentations and discussions.

AFTERMOST