Studying the Future: Methodologies Sessions at the WorldFuture 2011 Conference

This session highlights the best student products from the award-winning graduate program in futures studies at the University of Houston. The session will include the best essays, forecasts, scenarios, and plans from the next generation of professional futurists.

It is becoming more obvious that many local leaders are not familiar with social and economic trends and weak signals, and, as a result, are often not able to develop effective strategies to address emerging issues that impact the quality of life in their communities. As a result, a process we call “mobile connecting” is evolving.

DesignWorlds for Learning Inc. and DesignWorlds for College/Careers have developed a Future STEAM Careers Navigator and Network (Future SCANN) to help students navigate, envision, and create STEAM careers—those in science, technology, engineering/entertainment, arts, and math.

Singularity University is a new interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity's grand challenges.

In response to current crises and opportunities, a new worldview is arising called conscious evolution. It connotes the evolution of evolution itself from unconscious toward conscious choice. Through a study of recurring patterns in cosmogenesis, or the creation of new universes, we see crisis after crisis leading to innovation and transformation. What is emerging out of the emergencies?

Despite the dramatic changes that have occurred over the past half century, government remains deeply rooted in Industrial Age organizational structures.

Highly institutionalized and politicized, these agencies are cursed by inertia. Whether government can change is very much uncertain.

Many believe that the recent recession has heralded a new era in our social, economic, and political development.

Trendbureau Overijssel was established in 2007 by the Dutch province of Overijssel to make political decision-making in the region more responsive to the challenges of the future.

This panel will highlight current and future trends including (but not limited to) social, economic, technological, environmental, political, and legal arenas that are and should be impacting the vision of policing in the future.