A World’s Fair of Ideas

About 2,000 people attended our 1975 conference — far more than we had at either of our previous conferences. The extraordinary turnout could be attributed partly to the rise in our membership, our more effective promotion of the meeting, and the richness of the conference program. We had so much going on that I began thinking of a Society conference as a “world’s fair of ideas.” The biggest problem for attendees was that many people, including myself, felt frustrated that we could not be in a dozen places at once.

Among the special features at the 1975 conference was an innovative film presentation on the future that Roy Mason, the architecture editor of THE FUTURIST, had developed with Marc Chinoy. There was also a “conference within a conference” — a “Syncon” run by our Board member Barbara Hubbard and her colleagues John Whiteside and Jerry Glenn. A Syncon was a unique method of conferencing that was designed for participants to gradually work toward a “synergistic convergence” of their thinking.

We also had another teacher’s workshop, as well as a variety of training courses for futurists. These events offered more opportunities for our members to interact and also provided some additional revenue for the Society — not to mention some impecunious educators who needed a way to pay their travel expenses to the conference.

The conference was a considerable success, and not just in member satisfaction, I’m happy to say. This time we were able to pay our bills in a timely fashion.