Our guests today are Helga Veigl and Martin Calnan talk about the upcoming 50th Anniversary conference for the World Futures Studies Federation which is being held in Paris on 25 and 26 October 2023.

Interviewed by: Peter Hayward

More about the Conference

WFSF XXV World Conference, Paris 2023
25-26th October, 2023 in Paris, France at the École des Ponts Business School

Audio Transcript

Peter Hayward: How do you organize a conference for the 50th. anniversary of the World Futures Studies Federation and both the recognize it's achievements but also highlight its ongoing importance and challenge?

Martin Calnan: First of all we are really trying to create a conference that brings together different perspectives, different ways, and ultimately different objectives different purposes, so to speak. Which also explains why we chose the theme that we chose, which is Exploring Liminal ity. This idea where that things happen, where different worlds meet, where different perspectives meet, where different boundaries interact.

Helga Veigl: Liminality is an anthropological term which refers to transition from not being here, not being there, being between two stages. Liminality rituals in anthropology, usually, they are transitional rituals. For example, marriage, deaths. When people transition from one life stage to another and this term is used now in other areas now referring to the transition. And we think that it's very appropriate because we are very much in between different worlds now.

Peter Hayward: Those are my guests today on FuturePod. Helga Veigl and Martin Calnan who have taken on this challenging and exciting task.

Welcome to Future Pod Martin and Helga.

Thank you very much, Peter. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks guys for coming on. So the first question for Future Pod, the one that all our listeners love to hear is the story question. How did you become members of the Futures and Foresight communities?

Martin Calnan: Maybe Helga, do you wanna start? How did you find yourself in the field?

Helga Veigl: I think I spent literally half my life in Future Studies because I encountered it at the university. I went to the Economic university in Budapest, and I was not really let's say satisfied with the Economic topics because I couldn't align myself too much with the efficiency and the optimization that was the main topic of most of the courses. And I was really happy when I had the chance to study Future Studies. It was an optional course, and I fell in love with it. And I stayed at the Department and I was Student Assistant. And then I stayed for Researching and I stayed there for a PhD. Which actually I haven't finished, just for the record. However I encountered, for example, professors bullying me literally for being involved in the Future Studies department because it is something that not really precise and it's not really useful compared to their economic approaches.

And I really felt that offensive, but I never for one second doubted that Future Studies is literally the thing that I should follow and I should go with and and I really like the methodology. How does it deal with Uncertainty and how does it actually leverages the uncertainty that actually the future causes for us. And I love to be a futurist. I'm a Professional futurist now after academia. I spent almost 10 years in academia with Future Studies after that I became a consultant. And a Professional Futurist. And I'm doing that since then with a little bit of a break for one and a half years. I was an employee as a business consultant, but I managed to sneak in a little bit of future studies as well there. And I'm back in consulting now again, and I just really like it.

Peter Hayward: Helga why do you think Helga was so interested in futures, and futures thinking and future studies? What is it about your early upbringing or whatever that the fire of Futures under you?

Helga Veigl: There is a list of traits of good Futurist by Jim Dator and one of the one of the items on the list is the Insatiable Curiosity. Yeah. And I think I always had that. I always asked questions and I always, I think I was always an annoying kid and a teenager just asking and questioning everything. And thinking about weird scenarios and that combining the things is actually useful skill. Yeah. Being able to combine these different approaches and different things in life is actually a good skill and I can put it to use.

Peter Hayward: And Martin, what's your story?

Martin Calnan: I'm the old man in the interview at this stage. The old white bloke compared to Helga. But I'm actually the newbie in the field. I've only actually been involved in Futures for at least as a discipline for the past five or six years now. And I came to it in a very roundabout way. And I realize if I follow up on your question later or that you asked earlier I came to futures through innovation, through corporate, and through the absolute lack of innovation that, excuse me, that everybody kept going on about and my career is mostly in corporate.

I'm now at a Business School, so I'm not completely still in that world, but still very closely related to it. And just little by little I realized how much all this buzzing talking, excitement about being innovative, disruption and so on and so forth was actually empty talk. And I worked a lot with different methodologies, trying to bring groups and corporates and what you have you to try and be more creative. And I was never satisfied. I always thought that we were actually playing with the same ideas over and over again. And just changing the colors a little bit, adding a little ingredient here and a little ingredient there. And actually it was all about marketing. How can I sell this idea and make it sound new? And it was very little new and and then I fell into it by as usual serendipity. A beautiful encounter with Riel Miller a few years ago who started talking to me. Actually not even Futures Literacy initially, but we actually had a good chinwag about philosophy and uncertainty and how we relate to chaos or rather don't relate to chaos and not knowing. And one thing led to another. And by that time I joined the Business School. And that led to creating a UNESCO chair in Futures Literacy. And so one thing led to another really. And suddenly I felt that we, I could actually change the perspective and bring back something and start engaging corporates in a different way and start maybe changing the actual nature of the discussion and the nature of the, of what innovation means and how one approaches innovation. So that's in a couple of words my story.

Peter Hayward: My question to both of you, cuz this has come up in previous guest interviews, is how did your family, close working associates, respond when you started to move in the direction of Futures and Foresight? Because often they have to be the first people that we practice explaining what it is we are doing. What this journey is about and It's always interesting about how mothers particularly respond, or children respond, to when they start on this journey to this unknown thing called the future.

Helga Veigl: A lot of question about lottery numbers and the weather as a start. And then it develops into more serious questions. But there is always a doubt, I think in people's mind what it is really.

Martin Calnan: Yeah, absolutely. My what that question brings to my mind is my conversations with my daughters. And I have a couple of teenage daughters and it's actually I don't know if I should thank you for asking it, because it's making me realize just how formatted they are already. At 13 and 16 I'm realizing now that the conversations I'm having with them are very much already pre formatted by a view of the future that is extremely closed. And and it's not that it's difficult conversations. In fact, ultimately when you get into it they open up. But they don't come from a position, and maybe it's because they've grown up in France, and grown up in a very Cartesian educational system, but I am realizing that I'm having just as much trouble so to speak, opening the conversation, having a more organic relationship to the future and to futures. It's just as difficult to talk to my daughters as it is to talk to, your Corporate Strategic CEO who wants results, who wants facts, who wants certainty, who wants to be able to plan it and have a contingency plan, and so on and so forth. It's actually very much the same language. Yeah. Which is pretty scary.

Helga Veigl: For example, in Hungary it is also very much predetermined by the language. What vocabulary do we use around Future Studies? And for example, it doesn't help that Future Studies in Hungarian doesn't have plural for the Futures. It just doesn't didn't happen like that. And there were discussions about changing it and introducing new terminology, but it's not easy. And the problem now today is that obviously the political climate is not really open in Hungary. And some new Futurists emerged they're not actually Futurist and they talk about Trends and they think Trend Watching is Future Studies. So actually that's more deteriorating for the conversation in Hungary. But it is very much also determined in a country how the language is treating it.

Peter Hayward: Yeah. Yeah. Futures by its nature is a political, it's a political position to talk about the future, especially when you start to articulate preferences towards or against particular futures.

Martin Calnan: Indeed.

Helga Veigl: Or whether the government decides to employ futurists or not.

Martin Calnan: And also what you use it for. The point is the future becomes a tool, like you say, and that's the political aspect of it, and it becomes a tool to achieve a particular end, directly or indirectly. I think we are not aware of just how powerful the futures can be and they are constantly, and I was gonna say, manipulate it as if, some people do and other people don't. We all use the futures all the time. So in a sense, we're all constantly manipulating them, as in using them. Sorry I'm half Italian, so you see my hands going all over the place. Cause I talk just as much with my hands as I do with everything else.

Peter Hayward: I'm gonna lean into the second question. I've always found in the interviews the notion of the philosophies or the frameworks or the approaches that we use to practice, that are our preferences or the go-tos for when we are trying to do futures work also reveal a bit about who we are. Maybe start with you Martin. So in terms of a go-to approach or a preferred framework or philosophy that is core to who you are?

Martin Calnan: Clearly I fell into Future's work through Future's Literacy. So as not to get into a, too much of a theoretical discussion, but the basic approach here, the basic underlying question that I'm fascinated with is how we anticipate and the anticipatory mechanisms and systems underlying our uses of the future? And what I'm so fascinated by a deeper question, a deeper philosophical question, of how do we as human beings deal with uncertainty? Deal with the unknown and how we, and how all our Anticipatory Systems then, Kick in to try and reduce, ignore, control, adapt to what have you this underlying fear that we have of uncertainty.

And so what really my go-to is I wanna open this box up. I really wanna try to achieve a place or arrive at a place where we're less scared of uncertainty because I'm convinced that fear is what paralyzes us. And in a time when we really need to change in a time when we really need to start thinking differently if we're coming from a position of fear, there is no way we're gonna be open to the discussion. There's no way we're gonna be imagining new ways of doing things. We're just gonna double back or double down onto what we know, the tried and true, what we've tested, what we believe we can more or less control. And that's really that's how I fell into it. And that's really what I guess really speaks to me.

Peter Hayward: Yeah, a thing that I'm drawn to in this notion of anticipation is also the knowledge of how trauma affects people's ability to anticipate. Yeah, the data is that if people suffer, deficiency and trauma in the present, they have a very for shortened future or almost no future at all, because they've almost learned not to think about the future because it becomes a continuation of our trauma in the present and past. So what's your take on how we have to develop anticipation to allow for people who might have, in fact, been traumatically dealt with in the past and present?

Martin Calnan: And this is obviously a very cultural, how do you say, bias that I have here having been brought up in Western tradition and so on and so forth. But at least my coping mechanism is I need to understand, I need to try and understand. What are the anticipatory mechanisms that are in place? What are the heuristics that make it, that I am going to anticipate in a certain way? And if I can start understanding those, then I can start opening the box. Then I can start realizing, okay yes, trauma is going to affect my anticipatory mechanisms, my heuristics, because that is exactly what I'm gonna project. That is exactly what I am probably unconsciously trying to adapt, to relate, to or just process. And I need to understand that because I also need to understand that then my actions in the present are conditioned by what I'm capable of anticipating.

And so if I don't open that box, if I don't open that field of possibilities, I'm just gonna be repeating in one shape or another what I've experienced in the past, right? What I do realize and what I'm really enjoying in this journey that I'm doing is I'm exploring other ways of dealing with trauma, other ways of processing these things I'm finding that the western view of. Having to understand it from a rational point of view, the psychology approach. There are various other ways of doing this and I'm finding that very interesting and that there are different ways of relating to the future and therefore to time, and that we have a very linear approach to time. Kronos is our God of Time. And and we forget that there are multiple other ways of seeing time and therefore of opening up this, the whole discussion of Futures Anticipation and our relationship in this in this continuum or not of time.

Peter Hayward: Thanks Martin. So Helga, for you, when you are doing your future's work, when you work with people, organizations even the university itself, What are your go-to frameworks or the things that you lean most heavily on?

Helga Veigl: I try to use mostly qualitative approaches because I experience similarly as Martin and I think most of us, which is not wired in the business culture to be having multiple futures and things that doesn't have a high percentage of probability. My Masters is in Insurance Mathematics, actually Actuarial Sciences. And actually in my dissertation I was using foresight methods to calculate to define what should be calculated. And they were not really happy with it because that was not the job. And they still said, okay, that was not the job, but they still gave me the Diploma, but I refused to calculate something just for the sake of calculation. Because I think it's more important to think about what should we look at and my university years and all the pushbacks I think gave me resilience in this in this field.

Because in companies there are still a lot of pushback and sometimes there are very few allies who actually understand what the role and what the weight of Future Studies is and what can it bring and what value can it create for a company or for any kind of entity. I worked a lot With the company of Derek Woodgate, The Futures Lab, and I really like his approach and his methodology. He's more or less using the Houston method, but it is a bit different. It's a six stage foresight process that he developed for himself. And it also includes an implementation process and how to hand over. The projects and the ideas to the client. But that wasn't also straightforward how we started to work.

For example at my first project, I remember that I was complaining that how he does the scenarios is not how we should do the scenarios because I was teaching it for 10 years, so I must know, right? And then he said that he has a 15 year experience so maybe I should follow his guidance and just do my job. And actually I learned that the textbook approach is not always the same as how does it work in practice. And it was developing over the years. I really liked the ideas and the approach of Weak Signals. I did a lot of research on that and I'm pretty specialized, let's say to frame them. I also do coding and AI development as well. So I'm also dealing with frameworks and developing foresight frameworks and scanning systems. So that's also part of my specialties, let's say. But in essence I'm very much into focusing on Weak Signals and making sure to deliver something to the client that is unique and new and valuable. I also know that in my 10 years of practice, I learned that communication and presentation is key. It's really crucial. How do we present these crazy ideas and the wide futures and we have to make sure that it has the right framework?

Peter Hayward: I'm talking to the pair of you because you are organizing a very important conference for our field. So who wants to explain to the listeners what this conference is?

Helga Veigl: So the World Futures Studies Federation is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It has been founded in Paris. And for this reason, we decided to organize a conference in Paris. The Federation approach Martin as he's having a Future Literacy Chair at his school, and that's why we have a joint conference together with them.

Peter Hayward: So Martin, did you put your hand up to say that you would be the host of the conference?

Martin Calnan: Yes, I did. I was I was approached by Erik to whether this would be interesting or not. And and of course we love crazy ideas. We love having fun and and what a wonderful opportunity for us as a business school once again to create this bridge between a field, an academic field, and a Federation that is relatively academic in its membership. To create the bridge and to create the connections with the corporate world, and I hope even beyond the corporate world. I hope we'll be able to also create connections with with the various organizations and associations here in France and institutions that make up our social, political economic how do you say ecosystem.

Peter Hayward: So did you know much about the federation before you started this?

Martin Calnan: Am I being politically correct or incorrect? I had heard about the Federation. I didn't know much more about it. It was one of the various international bodies that were active in the field. I was more familiar with the French. The French had a quite a strong futures tradition with several longstanding organizations, associations, foundations around futures. And so to be perfectly frank, I was more familiar and more connected with that ecosystem. Since we're based in Paris. It was a natural, as you say, fit. And and no, I wasn't an active member, put it that way of the federation.

Peter Hayward: Can someone, I don't want a full history of the Federation, but can we just for the listeners who might not know that we have a 50 year old academic, European based federation possibly go back and tell us some of the highlights of the federation for the last 50 years?

Martin Calnan: From what I know, having discussed with Ri el who was one of the initial secretaries of the creation of the Federation, it was a meeting, it was not a conference per se. It was a meeting of a whole bunch of Futurists from around the world. And I hope we'll be able to expose the original Magna Carta, so to speak, of the Federation, which is here in Paris. Yes there is an artifact. We have an artifact.

Helga Veigl: The first futurist conference was in 67 in Oslo, and they were focusing mostly on human development. There was a second conference in Kyoto and the third Futures conference was in 72 in Bucharest, and after that they founded officially the Federation. I think it was very much aligned with the foundation of the Club of Rome. And it was very much of similar people working on the same issues. The Federation today has more than 300 members from 60 countries, more than 60 countries, and has more than thirty institutional members. And it's the most important let's say academic futurist body globally. And we are very proud that we have developed and we are going to launch the Accreditation system. Yes, which is a very big step. There is a growing number of futurists all over the world. And also there is the networks are also expanding hugely. And it is very important that we actually keep the academic approach.

Martin Calnan: I don't know if I can maybe just riff off of that. What I find really interesting is yes, absolutely in the field of all the work of the Club of Rome and all of that, and actually previous work, at least in France, once again, I know the French history a little bit better than I do, than I know the international history in the creation of Futuribles in 1960 by Bertrand DeJovenal and so already a tradition here which is probably also related to the fact that, UNESCO is here as well and there is a heritage how do you say connection, vision or that, that is here. And what I what I find interesting is that just recently the United Nations has identified futures and the ability to work with futures as the essential capability for us to achieve the ultimate goal of the United Nations, which is peace. So I think it's I think it's interesting once again that we are on a continuum. There is the arc of history is still moving and there is a continuum here that is clearly still and always there 50 years later of realizing just how important, once again, tying back to the different discussions we've had about anticipation and our ability to anticipate and trauma and fear and how all of that, mixes up and what a powerful cocktail that is.

Unfortunately, it's a cocktail that limits what we can imagine and how we can move forward. And so how do we open that up? And I think futures is precisely how we open that up, is realizing and understanding that we can use our ability to anticipate the way we think about the future, the way we project into the future in a way that builds peace rather than like you say the next okay. How am I gonna save my hide? When when the proverbial excrement hits the proverbial fan.

Peter Hayward: So what is it that you have planned for the conference this year?

Martin Calnan: Shall we two time this one Helga? Shall we bounce off each other and have a little bit of fun? Like we said before, first of all we are really trying to create a conference that brings together different perspectives, different ways, and ultimately different objectives different purposes, so to speak. Which also explains why we chose the theme that we chose, which is Exploring Liminal ity. This idea where that things happen, where different worlds meet, where different perspectives meet, where different boundaries interact. And here I'd like to just shout out to one of your compatriots Peter, Tyson Yunkaporta who whom I love. Of course, because he speaks of, what you mentioned earlier that his futures really big, really is all about talking and what he calls yarning, but deeper. He has a very interesting perspective on the importance of conflict and the importance of ideas, being able to bounce off each other and and creating a space where this can happen.

A safe space where this can happen, such that the conflict is actually interesting, creative and allows novel novelty to emerge. And so that was very much the underlying, how do you say, focus, idea, inspiration of the conference and the theme once again, liminality.

Helga Veigl: Just for the record, liminality is an anthropological term which refers to transition from not being here, not being there, being between two stages. Liminality rituals in anthropology, usual, they are transitional rituals. For example, marriage, deaths. When people transition from one life stage from to another and this term is used now in other areas now referring to the transition. And we think that it's very appropriate because we are very much in between different worlds now. AI is almost happening and we don't know how it'll be because luminality means that we don't know how it'll be. And Future Studies is a lot about how to discover something that's gonna happen, but it's not there yet. And we think Future Studies is very much appropriate to discover these luminalities, exploring luminal and also the subtitle for the conference, Creating Spaces for Unlimited Futures, referring that there are so many open possibilities.

Peter Hayward: So Martin, you are in an Innovation school or a Business School with Innovation at the center. And I'm gonna say to you that a lot of conferences that I've been to aren't that innovative. This is a Futures conference, and I would imagine if we're doing an Innovative Futures conference, we'll be doing some interesting stuff.

Martin Calnan: That's definitely the plan. That's definitely what we're aiming for. And it's actually as usual in I would say, all life, it's difficult to find a balance between what a conference is expected to be, so the keynotes and, and having the plenaries and being able to share these various perspectives and creating a space where Things can happen. Where things can emerge, where we are not just listening to each other, but we're actually speaking with each other and we're exploring novel ideas with each other and where we'd like to create a liminal space. Ultimately that's the object is that we can create within this conference.

That this conference become rather a liminal space in and of itself. So what we're trying to do, first of all, is to make sure that we have a lot of different perspectives. The reality unfortunately, is that Future's work is actually quite for the moment, still dominated by the West, by White Males. So just already as a start, try to have a fewer white male voices and and so j just go get perspectives that come from different traditions, different cultures, maybe not futures per se from an academic perspective, but who are telling different narratives are coming from different backgrounds. And so we hope to have, actually Helga was talking about rituals and how liminal are moments of rituals, moments of passage.

We are actually planning to begin each of our day of conference with an ancestral ritual. To bring us to a liminal space, to create a liminal space rather than enter in our traditional Western mindset of, okay, I'm coming from a rational perspective in which I am going to explain or understand or make sense of. We're gonna try and put the sensing into the conference as much as the sense making. We'll also be gonna be organizing labs during the conference. So the opportunity for once again perspectives to meet, to collide, maybe to express themselves. We're also working and inviting, we would like to have some critical perspectives on our Future's work. So once again, to challenge us. So where we're going, what we're coming from. So that's really the, in addition to, of course, the more traditional, I would say ways of doing things. But that's what we're trying, that's those, that's what we're trying to play with.

Helga Veigl: We also try to make sure that everyone in the community, in the futures community who's part of the federation is comfortable and they have a chance to present their work other than the Paris in-person happenings. We will also have an online streaming session outside of Paris hours, those two days, where we'll have online sessions and presentations. And depending on the requirements, we might also have it in other languages as well, other than English.

Peter Hayward: One of the things I've learned through our going on five year journey through Futurepod has been the penetration of Futures and Foresight and its application with young people. And there's the Young Voices Program, which is put together by Teach the Future, and I have been delightfully surprised to meet, 13 and 14 year old entrepreneurs that are using Futures and Foresight. Is it possible to bring the generational perspective into the liminality, along with the cultural?

Martin Calnan: I love the idea, Peter. I think it's absolutely brilliant. I think we have to find a way of doing that. Yes. Interestingly enough, one of the projects that we are going to be talking about at the conference is about reinventing early childhood. And how Futurist thinking can help reinvent early childhood. And so in that perspective the group that is talking about this is definitely working with the younger generations, in fact the much younger generations. And interestingly enough a moment when when younger generations is a key moment when the mindset gets how do you say set, so to speak. And yes I think that's one way that we'll be answering or that we'll be speaking to that. But I really like your idea and I'd like to I'd like to be, let myself be, let ourselves be inspired by that so that we can do something more with it.

Helga Veigl: We will also discuss the past and the future of the federation. 50 and 50, the past 50 years and the next 50 years. And we will also organize program where we are representing the deceased fellows of the World Futures Studies Federation and so we can talk about and remembering their contribution to the field.

Martin Calnan: Excellent. One of the things I thought maybe is interesting to build on as well there is that we all know that Futures is very linked to the narrative. And there is a longstanding, because it was initially done in the 1980s, early nineties. The narrative of the next century, 2100 done here by the 2100 Foundation here in France which is being rewritten as we speak. And so the idea here was to maybe bring together this Foundation, and the work there, and create a lab where those narratives that are being imagined through the Western perspective. And we would like to create a lab where those narratives are put together with African narratives. And so we will have, I hope a whole group of South African, actually youth in this case actually speaks to what you were talking earlier and see how these two narratives can actually build off each other and how maybe there is a, still a different narrative that we have not imagined yet that grows out of this coming together of perspectives.

Peter Hayward: Okay for the listeners. When is the conference and where can they go to get more information on it?

Helga Veigl: Is it going to be on the 25th and 26th of October in 2023. It's going to be in the center of Paris in the Ecole de Ponts Business School, and we are launching the website next week. It's WFSF2023paris.org. The online participation is free and for members and partners and students we have a discounted price this time as well for the Paris Conference.

Martin Calnan: We will have also a few events before the actual conference itself because once you come to Paris, you might as well enjoy the city while still getting your getting your Futurist fix. So actually actually there's gonna be a few side events. On the two days previous as well, so that the details of that program will be available on the website as well.

Helga Veigl: There will be half a day pre-event at the SKEMA Business School where students can present their papers. That's one of the already planned and set side event. We are planning.

Martin Calnan: So basically expect to spend a week in Paris for that for that particular conference.

Peter Hayward: A week in Paris is never long enough Martin.

Thank you on behalf as a Federation Member. Thank you for taking on the task of organizing this very important conference for the Federation and the community. Thank you to for the pair of you for taking some time out to come and join us on FuturePod. I wish you well and I wish the conference well.

Helga Veigl: Thank you so much Peter. Thanks.

Martin Calnan: Thanks a lot Peter. It was lovely to have this chat and hope to see you in Paris.

Peter Hayward: I hope you will find a way to engage with and support the Paris conference. The Federation is one of our key institutions of foresight. And it plays a tremendous role in spreading futures and foresight.

Future pod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist because of the generosity of our supporters. So if you love listening to the Pod and would like to support us then please check out the Patreon link on our website. I'm Peter Hayward saying goodbye for now.