Mini Trip report: Paris

Hi Everybody from soon to be buried Washington, DC in snow.

Joshua Polchar of OECD’s strategic foresight unit brought together the foresight or strategy (or related) officers for all the OECD divisions (for the first time in one room Joshua said) to introduce The Millennium Project. We focused mostly on the Global Futures Intelligence System and the State of the Future Index. OECD has its own index as an alternative to the GDP and will now explore the SOFI variables and approach.

Next I met with Sophia Richou, Chair of The Millennium Project’s French Node, Vincent Champain (former Deputy Minister of Foresight and not co-President of Observatoire du Long Term), Sophie Fay (Journalist), and the next day with Nathalie Cecutti (head of foresight for the Ministère de l’Écologie) and Riel Miller head of UNESCO’s foresight programs (and member of MP’s Planning Committee) to form a group to create the national planning workshop to begin the development of France’s long-range strategy to address future work/tech dynamics.

Hughes de Jouvenel brought Michael Godet, Riel Miller, and some other futurists in Paris together to introduce the 2015-16 State of the Future at Futuribles (the first think tank in Europe). And then I went on to lecture at ESCE and EBS private business schools arranged by Saphia. Afterwards I had a delightful dinner with the head of ESCE and EBS and Saphia about collaboration with their international system of higher education.

Now back to working on the Real-Time Delphi on the first of three alternative scenarios on future work/tech 2050.

Jetlagelly yours,

Jerry