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Foresight Synergy Network

Welcome to the Foresight Synergy Network!

This wiki is to support the discussions of the Foresight Synergy Network.

The Foresight Synergy Network arose from ad hoc meetings in 2007 in Ottawa, Canada. The Charter describing the FSN is at 

    http://macnash.telfer.uottawa.ca/fsn/images/6/6e/Charter_Foresight_Synergy_Network.pdf

To obtain contributing access to the wiki, please contact nashjc _at_ uottawa.ca. Note that the University of Ottawa requires that we have real names and contact information, and that contributors abide by a code of conduct.


Contents

[edit] What is Foresight?

At the 11 September 2007 Meeting, it was clear that there were several understandings of foresight, as well as forecasting, scenario planning, and similar terms. Within the workshop, the issue was clarified by a particularly helpful metaphor from Lois Macklin, who suggested that 

 Foresight is akin to "path finding"

while 

 Forecasting is akin to "road building"

This may be characterized by seeing foresight as the generation of possible futures, with forecasting as the collective use of various tools to build, verify or possibly invalidate those potential outcomes. Some workers may consider forecasting only in terms of extrapolations of existing situations; others, myself included, take it much more widely, and include the use of reverse time methods (back-casting) to see if postulated scenarios can be achieved, and indeed including much of the foresight process.

Futures research also enters the mix. If the outcomes of such work are tested for feasibility, then it is synonymous with foresight. If suggested futures are untested for being achievable, we have fiction, sometimes science fiction, that may of course be very well-written and entertaining.

An equally great danger is overemphasis on models and simulation. Econometric models, in particular, have a poor track record in strict forecasting of future values of quantitative variables. They are also expensive to build and prone to over-tinkering. However, they do rather well in suggesting how changes in some inputs affect some outputs, so may be useful for short to medium term economic policy analysis. The extensive forecasting competitions (ref??) run by S. Makridakis and colleagues suggested that simple models do best for quantitative forecasting, and further that any quantitative method, on average, beats the "averaged" expert.

If one wants to have useful foresight, there is a need to balance the story-telling aspects of scenario and outcome generation with well-conducted testing and ranking of those scenarios using various quantitative and qualitative tools, along with solid background and literature research to avoid being blind-sided by un-noticed developments. Clearly one of the benefits of a network such as the FSN is the diversity of backgrounds and experience, allowing multiple inputs and viewpoints to the methods and processes for generating and testing.

Nashjc

[edit] Not quite foresight

Adam Smith may not have realized how the free market might apply to his place of burial! See Adam_Smith_grave

[edit] Foresight Synergy Network

[edit] Charter

Our charter from 2007 is media:Charter_2007_Foresight_Synergy_Network.pdf


[edit] Antecedents

The FSN owes much of its membership and interests to prior foresight activities over the past 30 years, in particular, the Futures and Strategies Network, and the Interdepartmental Committee on Futures and Forecasting.

[edit] Working Groups

  • WikiWG: The WikiWG working group proudly presents the Foresight Synergy Network Wiki!

[edit] Meetings and Announcements

Go to the Announcements page for a list of current and future meetings, a record of past activities, and for announcements of other foresight activities.

[edit] Projects In Progress and Completed

Many of our members are active in a number of foresight projects sponsored by their own organizations and involving collaborative work with the wider foresight community. The Foresight Projects page provides a place for members to describe their initiatives and give links to materials.


[edit] Why Foresight is important

This is an area on the wiki for users to provide evidence on why foresight is important. What arguments have worked in your organization?


[edit] Foresight success stories

Please provide Foresight success stories. How did it help create better policy? Create advantage? Avoid problems?

Go to Foresight Success Stories for more information.

There are also stories about failures that arose because of a lack of foresight. See You should have done your foresight.

[edit] International Foresight References

[edit] FSN Foresight Documents

[edit] Getting started

To begin using the FSN Wiki, you need only browse to the web address above, and you are here. Click on links, read some notes, and get excited about contributing!

Links in blue exist: viz. 7 June 2007 Meeting. Links in red are placeholders for articles that do not exist yet: viz. Foresight Overview. Feel free to fill in any red links with an article.

To contribute, we'd appreciate it if you'd log in. Logging in involves creating an account, which can be done by anybody who is already a member. You don't need to log in unless you want to change a page, so don't worry about getting in at the beginning - just look around at first.

If you'd like a more detailed tutorial, check out Wikipedia's tutorial. It's not identical with our system, since we're devoting this group to the Foresight Synergy Network, but it's a good reference in any event.

More details can be found at Getting started with MediaWiki.

To see what pages have been created, click on the Special pages link (in the toolbox) and then on 'all pages' to see the list of current pages on the wiki.

[edit] How to write and edit FSN Wiki pages...

Editing a Wiki page is very simple. There is a little tab button at the top labelled "edit". Click on this web page and you are editing the current page. You can also click one of the section editing buttons at the right labelled "edit" to edit only the given section. This is often easier than editing the entire document at once.

The great thing about a wiki is that any user can edit any page. There is a history function, so administrators can undo vandalism and such. When editing, three buttons appear beneath the text, offering the options of "Save page", "Show preview", and "cancel". It's always a good idea to do a preview of an edit before you save the page in its entirety. Changes are visible immediately - once you've changed a page, it is changed for the whole world.

When editing, links to other wikipedia pages can be added by putting a word in double brackets: [[Example]]. If you add a link to a page that doesn't exist, you can then save your page, and click on the link. A new page will appear that you can type into. Save this new page, and you've just extended the wiki. Easy, eh?

After you create or edit an article, people may rewrite or extend your work. This is not considered bad form in a collaborative workspace. Adding references or additional facts; correcting spelling and grammar; and even refactoring long articles into a mini-wiki on the topic are all considered useful things to do in a wiki. Don't take it personally if someone adapts, reuses, or extends the words you've written, it's common practice. The Golden Rule and the Hippocratic Oath both apply: do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, and first, do no harm.

More details on how to edit can be found at the How to page.

Have fun!

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