One reason I did little to help with the 1974 Teachers Workshop was that I had become involved in a more adventurous activity.
Here’s how it happened:
We had polled Society members early on to find out what programs they wanted us to provide. Polling revealed considerable interest in study tours that would allow futurists to visit future-relevant institutions in other nations. The top choice as a destination was Scandinavia due to its forward-looking social policies.
So as early as 1970 I had discussed tours with professionals in the tour industry. But I took no action until late 1973 when I noticed that the Society’s coordinator in Vancouver, Canada, was a Norwegian named Anders Skoe. I telephoned Anders and asked if he would be willing to conduct a study tour of his native Norway and its neighbors, Sweden and Denmark. Anders readily agreed, so we set about arranging a 15-day tour with a special focus on things of interest to futurists.
We developed an impressive program featuring innovative projects in Oslo, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Copenhagen, with a side trip to the College of the Future on Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. To add a touch of glamour, we tried to arrange meetings with Scandinavian royalty and actually succeeded in lining up an audience with Norway’s Crown Prince, an enthusiastic environmentalist who later became King Olaf V.
I discussed the tour at a Board meeting and, to my astonishment, learned that one Board member, Glenn Seaborg, planned to be in Stockholm at precisely the time our tour group would be there. (Sweden was the land of his ancestors, and Glenn still spoke Swedish.) He said he would be happy to meet our tour group.
Everything seemed to be falling into place — except for the fact that very few of our members registered for the tour, mainly, I think, because we failed to promote it early enough for members to make plans. In any event, the small number of sign-ups meant that I could not accompany the tour since I could not afford to pay my own way, and, since I would not be going, the Crown Prince could not take time to receive our group.
Despite these disappointments, the tour actually got under way in June 1974. In Oslo, the group met with Norwegian futurists as well as scholars at the Peace Research Institute, which chooses the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. In Stockholm, the Society’s Swedish members provided the tour group with a warm welcome and dinner in the home of Tibor Hottovy, the Society’s local coordinator. Seaborg, as promised, really did meet the group at a reception held in the Swedish Engineering Academy.
One member of the tour group, Phyllis Huggins, wrote a lively account of the tour, which we published in THE FUTURIST (October 1974). Phyllis had been so thrilled with the Peace Research Institute in Oslo that she told me she was planning to give up her job in California and go to work for the Institute. (Circumstances later prevented her from actually doing so.)
Other members on the tour also found it highly enjoyable and educational, but, as with the Energy Forum, also held in 1974, the Society lost money. Clearly I had a lot to learn about business management.