X2 in Europe

One of the Institute for the Future's most powerful research tools is the expert workshop-- events in which a cross-section of experts spend a day brainstorming, creating maps of the future, and developing scenarios that look in depth at possible futures and our responses to them. The Institute has been organizing workshops for years, and has built up a tremendous store of both practical and tacit knowledge around them; and in addition to their being useful research tools, they're a great excuse to spend time with very interesting people.

The X2 project has been organizing workshops in Asia this spring-- I was just in Malaysia and Singapore, and we're going to Korea, China, India, and other places later this year. Now we're setting our sights on Europe.

The X2 project

For the last 6 months or so, I've been working on a big new project at the Institute. I haven't written that much about it, as we've been... quiet. Now, though, we're starting to take the project public.

Conference on the future of social science

One of the things I've started paying more attention to since starting the X2 Project are announcements for interesting conferences that deal with some aspect of the future of science. There's an interesting-looking workshop this summer on "Challenges and Visions in the Social Sciences" at ETH Zurich: