On 16-17 April 2018 the second meeting of Italian Futurists was held in Bologna, at the headquarters of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italian National Council of Research, CNR) and was organised by CNR, University of Bologna, University of Parma, Italian Institute for the Future and the Italian branch of Millennium Project.
Erre Quadro, as member and representative of beFORE Project, took part at the meeting in order to contribute to the creation of a consortium of people oriented to Future Studies also in Italy, and to promote awareness and knowledge on the topic of technology foresight among the participants which were not already professionals of the field.
The meeting involved lecturers among managers of public administrations and private companies, university professors, experts of technology and journalists of the main Italian business newspapers as well as participants from the whole country.
The main subject of the meeting was the future of labour market in its different aspects (market trends, change in manufacturing processes, relation between work and personal identity, work and learning etc.). Other topics involved foresight in human and social sciences, in technology, in literature, arts and design through the analysis of actual tendencies and the profiling of different future scenarios. One interesting consideration for our project is that connecting future studies to the issues of the label market attracts attention also from stakeholders which are usually not interested or aware of the importance of future oriented thinking.
The workshop ended with the purpose of starting within the year the society of Italian futurists.