by I have been involved with the APF Most Significant Futures Works awards (MSFW) program since we started it in 2007 and had the pleasure of chairing it this year. I really believe in the need for us to “get the word out” on the good work that futurists are doing. We can point clients or those interested in foresight to the listing of award winners when they ask us to show them examples of good futures works. We know have several years of examples! And I also enjoy honoring colleagues. Foresight is fun, yes, but it is also hard work, and given that our impacts are mostly realized in the future, we don’t get a lot of recognition, so it’s nice to just see people recognized for their good work. And, finally, it’s really cool for me to see this good work being done — as a teacher of foresight, it’s important to have a sense of what the good work is, who’s doing it, and where it’s being done.
| APF 2015 MSFW Award Winners
Category: 1 Methods and practice The Thing from the Future (link) The Situation Lab (Stuart Candy & Jeff Watson); game, 2014. Research Foresights: The Use of Strategic Foresight Methods for Ideation and Portfolio Management (link) Ted Farrington, Keith Henson, & Christian Crews; article; Research-Technology Management, March/April 2012, pp.26-33, Category: 2 Analyze a Significant Future Issue Mutative Media: Communication Technologies and Power Relations in the Past, Present, and Futures (link) James A. Dator, John A. Sweeney, and Aubrey M. Yee; Springer, 2015. Category: 3 Illuminates future through artistic work Byologic/Zed.TO (link1 & link2) Trevor Haldenby; cross-platform The Museum of Future Government Services (link) Noah Raford; exhibit; 2014. Project Hieroglyph, Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future (link) Kathryn Cramer, Ed Finn, & Neal Stephenson; project; 2014. |
One theme that I noted this year was the highly interactive nature of the works The Thing from the Future is a card game; Research Foresights was a paper, but a key part of the project involved a MOOG; Byologic was a cross-platform narrative, simulation…and more; the Museum of the Future was an exhibit; Hieroglyph is a platform for gathering stories about the future. The “Mutative Media” entry was a monograph in a more traditional mode.
It seems to me that the panel of judges has a tougher job every year as the works are getting better and there are more of them. Andy Hines
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