The Houston Foresight Community was once again well-represented at the WFS/AFP annual summer meetings. This time it was Orlando on the perimeter of Disney from July 10-13.
There is too much to include in one post, so we’ll start with the overview and fill in some details in upcoming posts.
APF Pro Development
The APF had its Pro Development Day at a very cool space (as usual) called Purple, Rock, Scissors. The event was a sellout, which is certainly rewarding to see, as the Pro Dev days have become must-do’s for professional futurists. And this one did not disappoint, despite having to compete with the high bar of last year’s “Professionalization” meeting in Chicago. There were three sessions and each was truly outstanding:

  • Research engagement with Mike Courtney: Mike is the founder of Aperio Insights, and a great friend of the Houston Foresight Program. He showed us the ins and outs of compelling research and survey design, with some real useful insights on what they can and cannot do. Practical stuff we all we felt we could use.
  • Digital engagement with Michael Parler: Michael is the VP of Purple, Rock, Scissors, our host for the day. He talked us through cutting edge digital strategies that futurists can use to attract and retain clients. His handout on “connecting” the various social media will all participate in is priceless. I am working on the checklist for our Program right now.
  • Immersive engagement with Trevor Haldenby: Trevor founded The Mission Business and has a background in theater. By this point in the day we’d all felt like we had a great day and got more than our money’s worth, and then “blam” we go over the top with an incredible session in which he described his techniques for creating immersive living scenarios, using actors, participants, live events, etc.

Really, an incredible day! Kudos to the Pro Dev team!
WFS Best of Houston
Our 14th “Best of Houston” session was another smashing success. We enjoy featuring our best student work and it’s always a popular session at the conference. Below are the session titles and links to their slides. In an upcoming post, we’ll provide links to videos of the presentation. For now, we have links to the slides:

APF Annual Reception and Awards Presentation 
The APF announced its 2014 Most Significant Futures Works Awards on Saturday evening. Good news for Houston as that text you all know and love: Teaching about the Future, was this year’s first prize winner (more on this later):
Winners: Category 1 Advance the methodology and practice of foresight and futures studies

Winner: Category 2 Analyze a significant future issue

WFS Poster Session
On Saturday night, we had a power trio of poster presentations featuring a faculty, alum, and student. Those of us at the APF Reception were able to catch the end of the lively session.

  • Alexandra Whittington (faculty) “The Future of Infant Feeding  2025”
  • Jim Lee (alum)  “Investing in Emerging Technologies”
  • Nicole Trapp (Student) “Challenging Assumptions in Reading Education & Language”

WFS Student Presentation: “Age of Stagnation”
On Sunday, three students, Kate Burgess-Macintosh, Laura Schlehuber, and Jason Swanson (well, he is now an alum) presented the results from research they did as part of an internship with Stephen Aguilar-Milan of EUFO (European Futures Observatory). Stephen was unable to make the meeting, so the students were on their own. And they did an amazing job with what was a pretty deep topic. This was very sophisticated analysis, but presented in a way that the audience got it. It led to a very lively Q&A, which is the mark of a great session. The slides for “Age of Stagnation:”
All Houston Foresight Participants
Check out the PDFs below for a list of UH participants and their sessions:
List of participants by name
It was a great weekend. Start saving your pennies and be sure to join us next year from July 24-26 in San Francisco.  Andy Hines