It was great to have APF colleague Nick Price recently visit our class and lead us through Presencing exercise. Nick is a graduate of the Australian Foresight program and is doing his own thing these days with “Of Things Immaterial.” Our paths crossed in his former experiences as an organizational futurist with Philips Design and Microsoft.
Several months ago I was lurking on an APF discussion in which Nick mentioned a study he had done with a client that involved presencing. We have a Presencing module in Alternative Perspectives class. It is the idea that the future in a sense exists and our task is to bring it into the present – or “presence” it. In class, we’ve been talking a bunch about the idea of the “extended present,” which suggests that the present can be thought of not just as a single point in time, but as an intersection of past, present, and future. A particularly attractive aspect of these ideas is that the future is that they suggest the future is not just the next step resulting from the push of the past, but includes the pull of the future. The future exerts a real pull and presencing is a tool for helping us “sense the future that wants to emerge.”
Theoretically, it make sense, but in my experience it has been challenging to demonstrate. This is true in general with new approaches – the concept makes sense but is challenging to operationalize. That’s where Nick came in and led us through a class-long exercise that enabled the students to experience presencing. It was a pleasure to work with Nick as we “hacked together” an approach from a much more extensive real-world project to adapt it to a 2.5 hour class. Thanks Nick! – Andy Hines
