Slides on "Let's Predict the Future: Agile Thinking" for a workshop session on "Predicting the Future" held on 3 June 2014 at the SAOIM 2014 conference in Pretoria, South Africa and facilitated by Brian Kelly, Cetis. See https://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/saoim-2014-lets-predict-the-future-workshop/

1. D: We've Predicted the Future! So What?
Let’s Predict the Future!
A half-day workshop
at the SAOIM 2014
conference held on
Tuesday 3 June
2014 facilitated by
Brian Kelly, Cetis
Slides available
under a Creative
Commons licence
(CC-BY)
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D1: Let’s Predict the Future!
Agile Thinking

2. Need for Agility & Flexibility
Dangers that we:
• Assume the future is
like today, only faster,
bigger, smaller, …
• Fail to transform
existing practices
• Fail to recognise
implications of
political, economic,
cultural, … changes
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3. What Did You Notice?
What did you notice for the first time
today?*
Or variants:
• What did you notice for the first time this
week / recently?
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* Acknowledgements to Tony Hirst
My recent observations:
• Buying newspaper using my mobile phone
• Being awarded a badge on a computer game
• WiFi on buses
• Responses to “Who has used a mobile device for
work-related purposes - in bed?”

4. What Was The Question?
You overhear someone saying
“Have you tried the library?”
What might have been the question?
You overhear someone saying
“Have you tried Amazon/Google/…?”
What might have been the question?
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Acknowledgements to Tony Hirst

5. The Future Backwards
What will we see in the future?
Dangers of:
 Providing optimistic or pessimistic views
based on personal inclinations
 No new insights
Need for innovative ways of story-telling
such as:
 The History of the Web Backwards
 Forecasting Trends Backwards
 Reversible, Reverse History and Side-by-
Side Storytelling (Tony Hirst’s blog post)
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6. Questions
Any questions?
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