Workshop Descriptions

Last Update: September 1, 2019

Introduction

During the APFN we are going to offer daily at least four parallel workshops conducted by experienced colleagues who have developed new tools and methods to engage people in understanding and learning about the future. This is an unique feature of an APFN conference, alongside with the conventional paper presentation sessions. It is a space for hands-on workshops in sharing techniques, approaches and methodologies. The aim of the conference workshops emphasise on sharing and learning emerging, useful, creative methods, tools, games, techniques for teaching and/or facilitating, consulting futures workshops for national, organisational projects, or at a personal level.

Please find below a short description of each workshop. The workshop facilitators will introduce also their workshops during the conference for a minute, so participants can make an informed choice.

Day 1 - Morning, 17th September

Workshop A1: The Future of ASEAN 2030 and its neighbours - A window into the future

In this session selected researchers/academics will present their latest papers and/of findings with presentations from Dr. Seong Won Park (Korea), Dr. Marcus Anthony (China), etc.

Location: Plenary Hall

Workshop A2: Developing Scenarios - A practical introduction, Dr. Nur Anisah, Senior Teaching Fellow, Strathclyde University & Founder Futures Sandbox

Scenarios are stories about the future created to challenge our thinking and help us learn. So the question remains - how do we actually develop scenarios? This workshop walks you through the Four-step scenario development process: Step 1: Identifying driving forces, Step 2: Driving forces clustering, Step 3: Predictability/impact ranking of driving clusters and Step 4: Framing and scoping end-states. A great start for being not familiar with Scenarios.

Workshop A3: Futurevisions at Risk? How to apply risk and resilience thinking in futures workshops, Sherman Cruz, Director, Center for Engaged Foresight

The future is perceptual, perpetual and open and so are the strategic and tactical risks and threats invisible or not. While futures workshops or strategic visioning courses are geared into making vivid and more flavorful our hopes and dreams for a brighter future; the space to discuss, deliberate and imagine potential and plausible risks to shared visions and preferred futures more often than not seemingly is not a priority or at the most absent in futures workshops. If we consider the future as an asset, a resource or a tool that can be employed how do we apply risk management concepts and tools or security and resilience thinking and principles in futures thinking and futures literacy strategy development workshops? If the endgame of foresight is to enable people and organizations to envision and create alternative and preferred futures, to challenge used and default visions of the future then risk and resilience thinking and tools must be critical to creating and sustaining transformative or desirable future visions. This workshop facilitates a session that accentuates risk and resilience thinking and the application of risk management principles, concepts, tools in futures thinking and strategy development workshop.

Workshop A4: Futures Action Model Game, José Maria Ramos, Director Action Foresight

The Futures Action Model is a prototyping and modelling framework, that provides the bridge between transformational futures thinking and powerful action, through real-world experiments. In order to develop breakthrough prototypes and models, we need to challenge and transform our images and understanding of the future. FAM provides a powerful way of integrating futures thinking into prototypes and models. This instance of the game at the 2019 Asia Pacific Futures Conference will take on a geopolitical theme: Rise of the fascist West and an enlightened Asia - what should Asia do? The game will explore enlightened pathways for addressing the reactionary politics emerging in the West from an Asian standpoint.

Day 2 - Morning, 18th September

Workshop B1: An introduction into Causal Layered Analysis (for Thai participants only): Dr. Sohail Inayatullah. UNESCO Chair for Futures Studies assisted by Ittinat Seeboonruang, Deputy Director, The Change Initiative and Thai Facilitation Expert

Causal Layered Analysis (abbreviated as CLA) is one of the most innovative approaches in futures studies and foresight since the end of the 1990, used to create alternative futures. The session will provide a short introduction into the purpose and impact of CLA and how it can be used to create alternative and preferred futures. CLA has been used, for example, in projects with international police, city councils, professional associations, large multinational corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and national governments. Topics have included terrorism, the knowledge revolution, libraries, quality and safety in health, bio-security, university futures and education policy. This session is targeting a Thai audience as there has been no Thai language publication on CLA so far.

Location: Plenary Hall

Workshop B2: Enabling Futures for Peace: How to Transform Conflicts to Create New Realities - Dr. Cesar Geronimo H. Villanueva, Peace Futurist

Conflict is omnipresent. The arena for change is in the futures space where new realities are created bridging the basic contradictions that creates the conflict. Peace futures work is an invitation to craft those prospective spots where equity and harmony are multiplied over trauma and conflict. In this workshop, we will be introduced to the basics of the TRANSCEND methods in conflict transformation using the DPT tools used by Johan Galtung. We will also undergo the conflict mat process to bring about our preferred peace realities. If time allows we will also do the SHE futures introduced by James Robertson many years ago. We will cap this workshop by the participants sharing their own experience in creating peace realities given their conflict experiences in a polylogue.

Workshop B3: Gaming Tomorrow(s): Prototyping the Participatory Futures Game: Dr. Nur Anisah, Dr. Jose Ramos, Mr. Daniel Riveong, and Dr. John A. Sweeney

The ActionForesight Global Swarm is working with NESTA to identify, promote, and evaluate inspiring cases of participatory futures aimed at furthering this practice amongst civil society and strengthening how practitioners utilize and evaluate such approaches. In this session, participants will receive an overview of our research and have a chance to play, quite literally, with a new game, which will be made available publicly in the coming months, designed to generate participatory futures engagements. All participants will be thanked as contributors to the game's development.

Workshop B4: Time Machine and Time Prism: Dr Mei-Mei Song, Independent Futurist and former Prof. at the Graduate Institute for Futures Studies, Taiwan

This workshop will introduce two activities aiming to help people make sense of Change. Time Machine aims to enable people to be more willing to envision the future that are very different from the familiar present. Time Prism—developed by Prof. Mei-Mei Song and Prof. Shang-Hsien Patrick Hsieh—helps people understand the layers of change in society and enhances their thinking in other futures tools and methods.

Day 2 - Afternoon, 18th September

Workshop C1: Sensemaking in Uncertain Times, Michael McAllum, Chief Steward, Centre of the Future Academy and Director & Strategic Foresight Lead @ Axilo.space, Giulio Quaggoitto and Diastika Rahwidiati of UNDP.

This introductory workshop will explore the architecture of sensemaking used by the UNDP both in Asia and across its AcceleratorLab program. It will illustrate its application through a number of recent case studies facilitated by either Michael McAllum of Axilo.space and the Asian Regional Innovation Centre of the UNDP

Location: Plenary Hall

Workshop C2: Bringing communities together with artists for imagining futures. Maya Van Leemput, Founder and Director, Reel Futures & Lecturer at the Erasmushogeschool Brussel

This workshop introduces some starting points for arts based foresight projects in local communities. Maya Van Leemput will present some of the media, arts and design tools she has used for co-creation and polylogues in different locations around the world. Participants can test these tools for themselves and learn how they could be used in their own settings.

Workshop C3: An introduction into Adaptive Conflict Analysis, Alessandro Fergnani, Researcher, National University of Singapore, Business School

In this workshop participants will be introduced to adaptive conflict analysis (ACA). Adaptive conflict analysis is an experimental futures method to design alternative futures of social and ideological conflict. It draws from macrohistory, integral futures, and evolutionary psychology. Participants will be walked through the method’s rationale, and through a series of mini-activities: framing, adaptive conflict analysis in the present, and adaptive conflict analysis scenario incasting. At the end of the workshop there will be a discussion on how to improve the method and possibly collaborate on its further development.

Workshop C4: Kryptonite is rocket fuel: the unlikely scenario to rebranding futurists, Sérgio Brodsky, Head of Strategy and Innovation at Nunn Media, Marketing lecturer at RMIT & Chairman at The Marketing Academy Alumni.

This workshop is a special service for futurists. Branding your craft is not easy and mostly misunderstood. Senior Branding expert will conduct this special workshop. A brand is a promise kept. In this sense, futurists and brand strategists share a common challenge, that of ensuring that a future projection meets the requirements of present and future demands. This workshop will dissect some of the key components for building successful brands and an unlikely yet highly effective approach to reappraising the futurist brand.