While on Monday the partners met for the last project meeting, in order to discuss the main open issues and finalizing all the materials to upload on the website, on Tuesday they all took part to the Final Conference.
During this public event the main organizer, University of Pisa, invited a number or representatives of all the target groups: entrepreneurs, students, Academic / researchers and also Public bodies.
The first speech was given by the scientific coordinator of the project, Ms. Anna Sacio-Szymańska (ITeE-PIB), who presented the rationale behind the project that rests on the idea of Futures Literacy and the main outputs reached during the last three years. Following, prof. Andrea Bonaccorsi (UniPi) gave an interesting keynote speech titled “Unveiling cognitive biases in future anticipation processes”, which represented an occasion for discussing with the audience about the main expert bias that can affect almost any foresight activity or result.
In order to illustrate how the key concepts from the project’s field (Futures Studies & Foresight) work in practice and to show the benefits from selected foresight methods, the project partners organized two different workshops in parallel. This first one “Future of professions and competences” was lead by Ms Anna Pająk, Ms Anna Sacio-Szymańska (Łukasiewicz-ITEE) and Mr. Norbert Kolos (4CF) and was aimed at testing and evaluating a prototype of an educational game, which can be used in the practice of career counseling and career development support. The workshop methodology focused on projecting the future of the labor market in any time perspective (i.e. 2030, 2040, 2050 etc) through the prism of four possible scenarios and discussing potential competences relevant in the future in the context of specific professions.
The second one, led by Mr. Riccardo Apreda (Erre Quadro), was titled “Quantitative methodologies to anticipate the future”. The aim of the workshop is to show quantitative methodologies for foresight activities. The results of a quantitative foresight analysis for an emerging technological sector were illustrated and discussed with the participants, in order to better understand how such kind of outputs can be first interpreted and then used.
Before closing the event, a final round-table was organized. The moderator, Mr. Ibon Zugasti (Prospektiker) questioned two academics, our project member Anna Kononiuk (BUT) and prof. Andrea Bonaccorsi, one representative of a public administration, Mr. Emanuele Fabbri (Regione Toscana), one entrepreneur, Mr. Gabriele Montelisciani (TOI srl), one student, Mr. Nicola Melluso and one Futures Literacy expert, Ms. Irianna Lianaki-Dedouli (Praxi Network). The issues discussed by the panel members referred, among others, to:
- How to promote future-orientation among university students?
- How to present future in a positive way?
- How can foresight improve businesses and policy-making?
An interesting discussion with the audience that followed gave each panel member the opportunity to share their experience and practical tips on using-the-future in the present.
At the end we hope that with our final conference we managed to inspire the audience to take futures in their hands to “build our dreams of tomorrow and avoid our nightmares”.
FINAL beFORE CONFERENCE
Do you want to know more about how futures literacy and foresight can help your professional career and your business? How can you get benefited from future thinking? And how can you become a future oriented professional?
The Final Conference of the beFORE project that will be held the 26th November in Pisa (Italy) will try to answer to these questions, by presenting the results of this project, that was initiated in January 2017 and that is ending in December 2019. Specifically, the beFORE e-learning platform that integrates both basic and advanced training materials to promote future thinking will be presented.
The conference will count on the participation of several experts from the foresight domain, together with other professionals from the academic and policy making fields. Two parallel participatory workshops will be developed in relation to the future of professions and competences and to existing quantitative methodologies to anticipate the future, along with a roundtable discussion about the application of future in teaching.
Please also check Final Conference Presentations: