Learnings Day

21 November 2024

As an add-on to an exciting two days, the Dubai Future Forum is hosting a third day, Learnings Day, that is dedicated to enhancing our collective capacity to navigate the future through strategic foresight practices. Learnings Day will take place on 21 November at Emirates Towers, which is adjacent to the Museum of the Future, and which aims to empower individuals and organizations by providing the tools, knowledge, and skills needed to anticipate and prepare for emerging trends and potential challenges. Through a series of collaborative workshops, participants will gain insights into methodologies for future planning, scenario development, and innovative problem-solving.

Please note that this day is an optional opportunity for Dubai Future Forum participants and sign up is mandatory. We would like to recommend that you sign up for no more than 2 sessions on the day to provide an opportunity for as many people as possible to take advantage of this additional experience. When a session becomes full, a waiting list will become operational. In either case, you will be notified should your spot be confirmed for your selected session(s).

SCHEDULED SESSIONS

Indigenous & Inclusive Futures: How Can Identity, Culture and Stories from Oceania Weave Connections for Collective Futures?

This workshop offers participants an immersive experience to explore identity, culture and stories, creating connections for collective futuring. Through story, sound, and imagery, we will weave together futures practices and ways of knowing and being across diverse cultures. We will explore the wisdoms that guide us, the possibilities that unite us, the rituals that connect us, the relationships that hold us, and finally our individual and collective journeys. Participants are encouraged to bring an item of significance that represents their own cultures and rituals to gift to the space during a ritual of reciprocity between Emirati and Pacific Indigenous storytellers. Participants will leave the workshop with a garland created through their immersive journey.

Leaders for Humanity: How Can We Cultivate Foresightful Leaders?

In an era where leaders are increasingly strained by unprecedented change and uncertainty, foresight is more critical than ever. Yet not every leader needs to become a foresight expert. Instead, they need practical tools to integrate foresight into their roles and everyday decision-making. This interactive session, Leaders for Humanity, is designed for foresight professionals eager to help leaders navigate this era of complex, constant change and reimagine the future of leadership. Through an engaging card game, the co-hosts will explore how to equip leaders with the ability to anticipate and respond to future challenges. Participants will also have the opportunity to shape the Dubai Future Forum 2024 expansion pack of Leaders for Humanity, using their foresight expertise to craft plausible scenarios and leadership strategies that will better equip leaders to navigate an increasingly complex future.

Preparing for an Evolving Landscape: How Can an Adaptable Approach Shape the Future of Early Childhood?

The immersive workshop is aimed at exploring and co-creating the future of early childhood. Participants will have the opportunity, as part of the launch of the Early Childhood Development Megatrend Report, to learn from and use the report with an adaptable approach informed by collective intelligence. We will use the megatrends from the report to explore and expand the future we are collectively developing. It is in our actions and inactions, and how we perceive and engage with the future, that we determine the future of our children and our society.

Why Do People Convene: Prototyping Public Spaces for Connection in Dubai

This hands-on workshop invites participants from the community to envision and prototype their ideal public spaces, specifically tailored to Dubai. Through collaborative exploration and the use of basic materials, participants will create models that reflect their needs, desires, and values for public spaces. The workshop will emphasize the power of community-driven design, using a Human-Centered Design approach and Gehl’s people-first methodology to urban planning and design.

By Invitation Only

Global Energy Scenarios: How Can Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches Reinforce Each Other?

Navigating the future of global energy requires a balance between qualitative insights and quantitative precision. Many organisations lean heavily on numerical projections, often leading to a misplaced confidence in their strategies. However, foresight experts understand that numbers alone can’t capture the full picture. Instead, quantitative models should validate whether future scenarios are grounded in reality or based on unrealistic expectations. This approach is vital as the world undertakes essential transitions in energy and natural resources to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Often, the scenarios we see are either normative—outlining what must happen—or technocratic—focused on specific changes, but these can result in contradictory or overly optimistic projections. This session uses contextual trends to create scenarios that reflect internally consistent, realistic pathways. By focusing on the next 10-15 years of policy and investment cycles, the co-hosts will offer a practical guide for addressing the “wicked problems” of global energy transitions, ensuring decisions are both informed and actionable.

Dialogue of the Future: How Can Foresight Enhance Institutional Readiness?

In line with the commitment of the Dubai Police General Headquarters to fulfil the aspirations and vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, who said, “The future does not wait… the future can be designed and built today,” Dubai Police General Headquarters, represented by the Centre of Future Foresight, is organizing the Dialogue of the Future: How Can Foresight Enhance Institutional Readiness? workshop as part of Learnings Day. This workshop aims to foster knowledge exchange, review best practices, and gather insights from experts and specialists to strengthen institutional readiness for the future

Sandboxing Innovation: How Can We Future-Proof Regulation?

Regulation plays a critical role in ensuring clear rules of the road and ensuring public safety. Yet, outdated regulation can sometimes hinder innovation, or regulatory gaps fail to provide the right framework for an innovative technology or product to go to market. Future-proofing regulation to ensure the right balance is a key goal for societies everywhere. In this session, we will introduce Sandbox Dubai, a centralised, innovative platform that offers a structured approach to regulatory modernisation. Sandbox Dubai offers innovators the unique opportunity to test market-ready business models, products, services and technologies in a controlled, real-world environment under adaptive regulatory supervision, guided by industry experts. By providing temporary regulatory relief during the experimentation phase, Sandbox Dubai allows innovators to better navigate regulatory barriers and accelerate their time to market. Collaboration with Sandbox Dubai also allows regulators to gather valuable insights to advance evidence-based regulation and holistic, data-driven policy outcomes for Dubai. Come and meet the Sandbox Dubai team and exchange ideas on how sandboxing regulation can pave the way to a smarter future.

Next Gen Futures: How Can We Promote More Young Voices in Decision Making?

This session promises to inspire new ways of thinking about the future through youth-led foresight and create actionable paths for meaningful youth engagement globally. Join the hosts in this un-conference to co-create, connect, and shape futures where youth voices are at the forefront. The session will embody the principles of meaningful youth engagement—youth-led, participatory and future-oriented—turning the room into a creative studio where young people remix and reimagine future possibilities, projects, methods and tools. “Next Gen Futures” will offer a collaborative space for intergenerational dialogue, providing young participants with opportunities to lead discussions, reflect on learnings during the Dubai Future Forum and co-create outputs. This will ensure that all voices, especially those of young people, are amplified in the discussion around the future of youth engagement and youth-led futures.

Editing the Future: Who is In and What is Out?

Editing Futures Journals is more than curating content; it’s about shaping the narratives that influence tomorrow’s world. This session brings together editors who have not only navigated the path to leading Futures Journals but have also witnessed and driven change within this dynamic field. Unlike traditional disciplines, editing in Futures Studies requires a unique approach, one that balances emerging trends such as AI in writing and peer review, with a commitment to inclusivity and the integration of diverse perspectives. As the field evolves, so too does the role of the editor—adapting to new challenges, embracing technological advancements, and facilitating the rise of peer-to-peer journals like Medium. Our panelists will reflect on standout papers that have marked their editorial journey, providing insight into the themes that resonate most strongly in shaping our collective future. This session offers a rare opportunity to hear from those who are at the forefront of editorial innovation, sharing practical advice and tips for those eager to contribute to the ongoing dialogue within Futures Studies.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Changemakers: How Can They Deliver Future-Proofed Public Policy?

Futures and foresight thinking is critical in allowing policy makers to anticipate future challenges and opportunities, and develop effective public policy over different time horizons. However, too often the link between futures thinking and real-world policy implementation has not been made, with both fields working separately and to different ends. Futures reports sit on shelves gathering dust. Public policy lurches from short-term crisis to crisis. How can we break this self-defeating cycle? This Changemakers session will begin with an expert panel discussion on the value of making the link between futures thinking and policy, its importance in fields such as trade, geopolitics and healthcare, and the lessons learnt in policy implementation by panelists. Building on these insights, the session will continue with an interactive workshop. Drawing from the industry leading future.ctrl methodology, the workshop will focus on best-practice and innovative tools and methods to combine futures and foresight thinking with effective policy implementation, leaving participants with actionable insights to create policy legacies within their organisations.

(Joining Remotely)

Workshop at Full Capacity

Evolving Foresight Skills: How Will We Shape the Future of Strategic Foresight?

Futures and foresight skills are essential for navigating the complexities of an unpredictable world. Join OCAD University’s Super Ordinary Laboratory for an engaging exploration of the evolving landscape of foresight skills; exploring past and obscured histories, as well as possible futures and trajectories. This session will feature an interactive installation and World Café workshop, where participants will collaboratively map critical foresight skillsets, educational pathways, and the organisational needs of future futurists. Through this engagement, participants will foster a rich international dialogue focused on advancing emerging foresight methodologies and skills, enhancing academic and professional development in futures studies, and integrating foresight practices within organisations. Together, this session will challenge conventional thinking and co-create pathways for impactful foresight in our rapidly changing environment.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Framing Tomorrow: Who Decides What is Ethical in Foresight?

Anticipating techno-social trends is a crucial task for policymakers aiming to promote innovation in a responsible, sustainable, inclusive, and fair way. However, very few of the currently available methodologies for horizon scanning and foresight enable a systematic anticipation of ethical issues linked to emerging technologies. The UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Ada Lovelace Institute and University of Oxford’s Ethox Centre are working in partnership to develop practical ways of embedding ethical foresight into the policy development process. The ambition is to place ethics at the centre of decisions regarding biomedicine, health and AI governance, so we all benefit. This workshop invites participants to join an experiment to assess one of the methods the co-hosts have developed. Participants will be randomly allocated to groups, taken through the exercises, and be provided with project context. The results of the workshop will subsequently be shared with workshop participants after the Forum, and the hope is for future opportunities to collaborate further.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Without Words: In Which Languages are The Futures Talking to You?

In a world dominated by language, we often overlook the power of our senses in shaping how we perceive the future. This workshop invites participants to step beyond words and engage with the future through a multisensory experience. Through hands-on exercises focused on sight, sound, touch, and more, participants will explore new ways of sensing and interpreting emerging signals. It is targeted at futurists, especially those working as facilitators and seeking to enhance their fluency in engaging with non-expert audiences and truly democratising futures. Drawing from the Learning Pyramid, which states that we learn the most when we embody the content we are aiming to learn and then, teach others, this workshop will be very experiential and give significant autonomy and co-creative power to the participants.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Embedding foresight into Reluctant Organisations: What Drives this Resistance and How Can We Overcome it?

Integrating foresight techniques into our organisations can be a real challenge. While we often enjoy learning about these methods, bringing them into our workplaces can feel daunting, especially when faced with resistance from colleagues or cautious bosses. In this workshop, we’ll tackle the challenges of embedding foresight into our organisations. Discover why resistance often arises and learn practical strategies to navigate it. We’ll explore how to transform reluctance into an opportunity for improvement, helping to build a more proactive and innovative team culture. Designed for leaders and foresight professionals, this session offers valuable insights to make foresight techniques a natural part of your team’s routine.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Unconventional Futures: How Can Practitioners Explore Non-Traditional Approaches to Foresight?

In a rapidly changing world, traditional foresight methods may no longer be enough to navigate the complexities and uncertainties of the future, or even to engage or reach many diverse audiences and stakeholders. This immersive workshop invites futurists and foresight practitioners to delve into unconventional and non-formal approaches that tap into our innate human capacity for futures thinking. Join APF for a dynamic exploration of non-traditional foresight methodologies that push beyond the boundaries of conventional practice. Through interactive sessions facilitated by APF’s board members, participants will engage with innovative techniques such as speculative storytelling, participatory foresight, embodied futures, and creative arts-based methods among many others.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Co-Creating the Future: How Can We Harness Generative AI for Foresight?

In an era where technology and foresight intersect, understanding the impact of Generative AI (Gen AI) on strategic foresight is crucial for shaping the future. This workshop explores the transformative power of AI technologies, with a focus on Gen AI’s disruptive potential and the ethical considerations that arise as we move toward Artificial General Intelligence. Participants will explore how to integrate Gen AI into their foresight practices, enhancing everything from content generation to strategic decision-making. This session will highlight examples of using Gen AI tools in the different phases of foresight research and examine real-world applications, such as Egypt’s Horizon Scanner, an innovative platform designed to advance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Designed for foresight professionals, this session provides essential insights into leveraging Generative AI for more effective and insightful futures analysis.

Workshop at Full Capacity

Global Futures Research: What Concepts, Methods and Management to use?

This interactive session will explore key insights and practical tools to navigate the future. It will begin by presenting highlights from State of the Future 20.0, a comprehensive analysis of global critical issues and opportunities—the most detailed work by The Millennium Project to date. Participants will then explore how to engage in the transition from today’s artificial narrow intelligence to the future of artificial general intelligence. The session will also cover global management strategies, focusing on Nodes, Networks, and Fields of Play, the international movement toward creating national parliamentary committees for the future, and 26 innovative methods to connect foresight with decision-making. The session will conclude with roundtable discussions and a plenary, allowing for deeper exploration of these key topics and collective insights to drive future action.