Vienna Mini Trip Report

(ok, maybe not so mini this time)

On the way back home from visits to Slovenia and Montenegro, I stopped off in Vienna to give a talk for Club of Rome’s European Support Office and explore potentials for creating the Austrian Node of The Millennium Project.

One of the members of the steering committee to create the Austrian Node of The Millennium Project is Johannes Seybold. He was one of the first six interns in 1991-92 that led to the pre-feasibility study for Millennium Project, which led to the three-year feasibility study, which led to the establishment of the MP in 1996. So, now 20 years later, he works for the IAEA in Vienna, and delighted to have him help MP once again. Nice.

The focus of the new Node (not yet fully formed yet) is to raise science and technology on the international development agenda, with the short-term objective of getting S&T more prominently addressed in the Rio+20 UN conference. Their first initiative is to create a new MP Listserv to discuss how to do that. So, those interested in getting S&T more seriously discussed in preparation for Rio+20 – send an email to kawthar@millennium-project.org to be added. Walter Lichem, a retired senior Austrian and UN diplomat pointed out during the meeting about the Austrian Node that only 9½ lines mention S&T in the 19-page working draft for Rio+20. He suggested the proposed MP Austrian Node help address the challenges of the relations between knowledge production (the sciences) and global policy processes.

A more long-run goal of the MP Austrian Node will be to provide a focus for the MP on Societal Development (as opposed to social development), in order to address the primordial issue of creating the necessary societal cohesion in contemporary societies around the globe to facilitate change at aggregate levels of human organization (communities, nation states, supranationally, and globally). Austria hosts several think tanks working intensely on various aspects of this question including the development of progressive analytical models. A transinstitutional approach of sharing results globally therefore appears very effective.

A second preparatory meeting of the Austrian MP Node will be scheduled to expand the membership and discuss strategy.

And last but not least, I met with a publisher in Vienna who is exploring financial support to produce a book with The Millennium Project on how nanotech can help address the 15 Global Challenges. The Foresight Institute – at Jack Gottsman’s initiative (MP Silicon Valley Node) – did some initial work on this, but not in the form of a book.

Next trip, next week, to the UN in New York to address the InfoPoverty conference March 22nd.

All the best,

Jerome C. Glenn