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About a hundred students, alumni, and friends of the University of Houston Foresight program gathered for this year’s event on all things Transformation on April 10-11. Participants were welcomed to our new home in Sugarland, an amazing brand-new, state-of-the-art facility and picked up their swag, featuring t-shirts, stickers, and socks.
The weekend kicked off on Friday afternoon with the FAB (Futures Activation Lab) session featuring the annual Alumni Refresher on Activating the Future taught by Andy and Mina McBride, an overview of this summer’s elective on AI-Augmented Foresight being taught by alum Simeon Spearman, and most importantly, a series of presentations from our student award winners: the nominees to the Association of Professional Futurists Student Recognition Competition and the Houston Foresight Award Winners. This was followed with the traditional Friday evening tacos, which shifted to Torchy’s Tacos in Sugarland.
Andy kicked off Saturday’s events that began after breakfast. We ran three tracks most of the day, one in the auditorium, another across the hall in a classroom, and a third in a nearby building where the Design Futures students held their experiential sessions. You can see session descriptions and bios in a nicely laid-out agenda crafted by the fabulous April Koury.
What a remarkable range of speakers: Anthony Akins, Heather Benoit, Astrid Bradley, Brandon Brown, Kiran Carpenter, Ashley Chiarelli, Adam Cowart, Maria Crabtree, Christian Crews, Latrice Dudley, Stephen Dupont, Rachel Feine, Kristen Fikse, Leah Fischer, Blake Frere, Ingrid Furtado, Seth Harrell, Andrea Henderson, Xie Hill, Andy Hines, James Holcombe, Brittney Hopgood, Alan Howell, Martha Howell, Joy Jones, Philip Jones, Dexter Lam, Lavonne Leong, Tristan Markwell, Mina McBride, Autonnette McLauglin, Lyric Metroplos, Tim Morgan, Nicci Obert, Steven Pinckney, Jeremiah-Anthony Righteous-Rogers, Claire Routley, Mark Sheets, Simeon Spearman, Molly Taylor, Karessa Torgerson, Ed Venit, Crystal Washington, Amanda Rounsaville Welsh, Gordon Withrow. WOW!
Take a look at this amazing array of topics, too: Future of the Arctic; Future of Future of the United Methodist Church, Missouri; Activating the Future; Social Cohesion for Arup; Systems Thinking & Honeybees; Neoarcology; Shell Sky Scenarios; Grounding in Groundbreaking; Future of the Womb; Future of Truth; Future AI Summer Course Preview; Transformation with STILE; Transformation in Practice: Navigating Obstacles; Econ 101 – Earning and Spending Credits in the New World, sponsored by MegaCorp; Transforming Workspaces: Designing Adaptive Environments for Human Performance; Communication Tools for Transforming Teams for Work in Foresight; The Civil Continuance Council; Digital Foresight: Data, Tools, and AI; The Kenotic Horizon: Institutional Relinquishment as Path to Regenerative Futures; Getting Paid for Transformation: A Practical Framework for Selling Ideas Without “Selling;” Transformation in the Era of Uncertainty: Pathways to Understanding; Corporate LARPing: A Workshop on an Enterprise Operating Model for Times of Transformation; Transforming Participatory Foresight into Participatory Strategy; The Brazil Signals Spotlight: Coming Together for a Brazilian Lunch in the Future; A Sense of Balance: Refining and Recalibrating Shared Futures; The WTF Clinic: Withdraw (from) Toxic Fandom; Small Moves, Big Shifts: Using the Theory of Minimalist; Preferred Futures – Transforming our Students from Passive Observers to Active Participants in Life; Making Foresight Stick: The Organizational Readiness Factor; Seeding Transformation: Encounters with Prosocial Futures; Facilitating Transformation Panel; Localizing the Future; Feeling Our Way Forward: Affective Foresight as a Pathway to Transformation
The meeting adjourned to Talyards Brewing Company, where they held the top floor for us and the we packed it to capacity. They were great … kudos to the fabulous Nicco Obert fro finding our new party home!
The UH Foresight community is one-of-a-kind, and the annual Spring Gathering presents an incredible opportunity for the community to gather together, learn from each other, and have fun. Huge thanks to the team Adam Cowart, April Koury, Nicci Obert for making this event a huge success. — Andy Hines
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