We will compile a brief FAQ about our salons, below:
The FSN is a network of monthly discussion groups where people get together for educational, fun, and challenging presentations, debates, and dialogue on important trends and innovations in science, technology, business, and society. The meta-theme for the FSN is a multidisciplinary inquiry into accelerating change, and the implications, issues, and challenges that rapid ongoing change creates. The importance of being an open-minded, broadly-interested and informed lifelong learner is one of the personal implications of accelerating change that we seek to internalize, and that we expect salon leaders to model. From our perspective, Future Salons serve three main purposes:
A. education/professional development,
B. networking among a multidisciplinary community of positive, practical and passionate change leaders,
C. a social space for future oriented people to form a regular, supportive, and fun community.
Our salons tagline: "Making a rapidly changing world fascinating, manageable, and profitable for you."
These words clarify three main educational/professional development functions of the salons:
Fascinating: a place to find relevant information about the present and future, presented in an engaging way
Manageable: to promote skills, tools, and strategies for managing our personal and professional lives
Profitable: to advocate behaviors and choices that grow our material and nonmaterial "wealth"
Some of our best-received salon meetings have been dubbed "mini-conferences," as they can bring breadth and diversity of viewpoint, promote debate and discussion, and provide updates on important new advances, and demos on practical skills and tools. All salons have social time afterward, where attendees, moderators and sometimes the salon speakers go out to eat together and make personal connections. Some salons also have social discussion time for a half hour or more before, which may be hosted with refreshments (e.g., Bay Area Future Salon at SAP labs).
The Acceleration Studies Foundation, or ASF, was incorporated in April 2003 as a nonprofit with an educational mission to improve the way individuals and organizations look at the future by examining accelerating change in technology and society.
The organization is based in Los Angeles, CA and is run by John Smart (President), Jerry Paffendorf (Research Director), and Timothy Moenk (Future Salon Network Director) and a Board of Directors. The Los Angeles, Bay Area, Second Life, and Atlanta Future Salons are all run by ASF staff and board members.
The ASF is the umbrella organization that runs the Future Salon Network (FSN), under their educational nonprofit mission. Timothy Moenk (timothymoenk@accelerating.org) is our Future Salon Network Director, and coordinates the activity of the salons and taps the ASF network to provide logistical and speaker candidate assistance to salon moderators as requested. Eventually, the ASF will allocate funds to help run each of the salons. All salon leaders have access to futuresalon.org email accounts to professionally display the salons affiliation with the organization (i.e. sdmoderator@futuresalon.org or lamoderator@futuresalon.org).
Because the ASF is an educational nonprofit, our salons must meet the IRS guidelines for educational activities that meet our exempt purpose. To ensure that this, we have published a Future Salon guidelines document. This document is a work in progress, and improved by feedback from salon leaders and attendees. Salons that have difficulty following ASF's rules, as expressed in this document, may eventually either elect or be asked to leave the Future Salon Network. In such case, we ask that salon leaders change the name of their group to something that does not have the phrase "Future Salon" in the title. ASF has operational and first use based trademark claim to the Future Salon name (in use at ASF since 2001), and we wish to have it only associated with gatherings that operate in accordance with our charitable educational purpose. ASF seeks to keep the salons entirely free for public attendance (no donation requested) for the foreseeable future, to maximize public accessibility and our charitable educational purpose. We may also work with local salon leaders to run special events, separate from the salons, that have an admission price or requested admission price. We reserve the right to ask salon leaders to inform their community of ASF fund drives on occasion (once or twice a year), but at present we expect the ASF will do most fundraising by direct appeals to foundations, sponsors, and our community at large, with salon leaders periodically requesting the ASF for small budgets to cover operating expenses. With special request and subject to ASF approval, local salon leaders may do voluntary (donation based) fundraising within their group once or twice a year to collect funds for their local salon's use (to purchase equipment, fund speakers, etc.), but such local fundraising is not expected, nor do we wish salon attendees to feel like they are constantly being asked for financial assistance. We seek to preserve the culture of the salon as a low-risk place for individuals to explore future-oriented dialogs.
As noted above, salon discussions touch on trends and innovations in science, technology, business, policy, and society, with an emphasis on the effect of accelerating technological change on the future of each of these domains. The salons seek a critical and scientifically informed perspective, and balance between education, analysis, informed forecasting, and prescriptions for action. We want to provide attendees with relevant, well-supported and documented information to support a baseline forecast for important topics. We also want to create a safe place for informed extrapolation, scenario consideration, and speculation with regard to the various alternative futures to the baseline expectation, if one exists.
Past topics include (but are not limited to): Accelerating Change, Artificial Intelligence, Art, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Biology, Business Intelligence. Collective Intelligence, Computing, Creativity, Cryonics, Digital Democracy. Digital Identity, Economics, Education, Email Marketing, Energy, Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Ethics and Philosophy, Evolution, Evolutionary Computation, Futurism, Globalization, Health Care, Human Consciousness, Human-Machine Interaction, Intelligence Amplification, Innovation, Internet, Investing, Language and Memes, Learning Disorders, Life Extension, Music, Nanotechnology, Policy Analysis, Privacy, Quantum Mechanics, Retirement, Robotics, Spirituality, Stem Cell Research, Telework, Terrorism and Security, Transparency, Video Games, Virtual Reality, War Policy.
The future salons each have their own volunteer moderators. ASF staff may provide helpful ideas and suggestions, but local moderators set their own agendas and make their own decisions. Ideal moderators are good communicators and discussion facilitators who have their own considered and balanced perspectives on a range of futures topics. They should also be interested in recruiting speakers with diverse viewpoints on a range of future-important topics in science, technology, business, and social and personal development.
We ask that each salon start with and maintain at least two designated moderators at any time, either one main and one (or more) deputy moderator, or at least two equivalently responsible co-moderators. These moderators, and their designees, form the executive committees for their own salons, and decide among themselves how to handle such salon management responsibilities as choosing topics, inviting speakers, marketing the event, maintaining a mailing list, securing meeting times and locations, and moderating the event itself. Having at least two designated leaders, ideally with different yet complementary skillsets and backgrounds (e.g., technical/humanist, older/younger, left/right political leanings, etc.) is one way to keep each future salon appropriately broad, balanced, and accessible in perspective, and is an important way to ensure help meetings to appeal to a wider range of interests than would otherwise be the case. Our recommendation for potential moderators who wish to start a salon is to find a co-moderator who is a complement to, not a mirror image of, your views and background. Such complementarity can be particularly important for moderators who have unique or minority opinions. If there is one main moderator, it is advisable that the co-moderator or moderators have a chance to also moderate occasionally, either by running particular aspects of each meeting or by substituting for the main moderator on a periodic basis. If you desire help finding a co-moderator, contact us and we will do our best to suggest possible candidates.
If you are interested in starting a salon in your area, please contact Timothy Moenk to discuss how you and the ASF can work together. While we strongly encourage you to start a new future-oriented community, we can only allow those who will follow our guidelines to become members of the Future Salons Network.
Page Last Updated: Jun 26 9:39pm by marlon@fizbit.com