Report presented at the Planning Committee meeting of April 15-16, 2005 in Louvain-la-Neuve,Wallonia, Belgium

Cornelia Daheim, from Z_punkt GmbH, Essen, Germany, represented the German Node at the Millennium Project Planning Committee Meeting in April 2005. She presented the  latest accomplishments of the node and pleans for the future.

Activities since July 2004
• General Node / MP work: July Washington meeting, networking and informing German Node
• Collecting answers, Future Ethics Survey, Rd. 1+2, and Nanotech Survey
• Enlarging Network of German Node
• Trying to get project for company client together with MP (ongoing)

Promoting MP / PR Articles, short reports on:
• MP Washington Meeting, SOF, Prague Workshop, EUMPI-Conference, SPIDER, SOF in best future books list etc.
• Published in: Z_punkt Newsletter (2500 subscribers), English; Z_punkt Newsl. "Future News" (600 subscr.); German Futures Studies Journal „Zukünfte“; Z_punkt book “Corporate Foresight”, published in Spring
• Z_punkt book “Corporate Foresight”, published in Spring, including a chapter on MP and its work, interview with Jerry and short version of Global Challenges
• SPIDER-Project-- On-going project with Finnish and Brussels-Area Nodes (Juha’s separate report); interim report completed See http://www.spider-project.net
• Expert workshop also involved some members of the German Node
• Helps making new methods and approaches in Foresight more known in Europe and in our region, as well as the MP and its activities
• EuMPI; Contribution to discussion of EUMPI actions, meetings
• Presentation Prague Workshop on Futures Studies Methodology, Sept. 2004
• Publication in Czech Node’s series of CSES papers on workshop
• Helping Pierre Armand with contacts/meetings in Germany to get funding for Haiti project with Pavel / Czech Node
• Conference “The Futures of Europeans in the Global Knowledge Society” --marketing and planning, session preparation
• Weblog Weak Signals http://www.z-punkt.de/nucleus --collecting information concerning "weak signals“; on-going activity, to become a resource for information (archive + analysis) for The Millennium Project’s and Z_punkt’s work; All of MP-PC members have access; Problems so far: „Barrier“ too high, too much German content, rarely input from outside Z_punkt, Z_punkt discusses a possible re-structuring of Weblog, to be decided in May
• Conference (Oct.) with MP contribution “In the long run. Long-Term-Thinking in Business. Corporate Foresight + Global Change”; Jerry was a key-note speaker, using the S&T scenarios (see www.inthelongrun.de for pres.) 150 participants (policy makers, strategic planners from companies, scientists); Wide media coverage, for conference and MP; Mainly German, but also international and
Scandinavian media
• Meeting of German Node in the context, with Jerry joining in: Result: plans and first steps of Node to become more active in projects with the Node group
• New members, contacts for Node

Objectives of the Node
• Participate in and distribute up-coming surveys
• Contribute to EuMPI
• Esp. upcoming common proposal “Regions of Knowledge 2”
• Enlarging core working group of SPIDER
• Intensify and extend the existing network
• Marketing + PR for next SOF and MP
• New Website: MP and Node area
• Articles, press releases etc., getting SOF reviewed
• upcoming publication: Proceedings „in the long run“ conference (English and German) including article by Jerry, based on and including the S&T scenarios
• Try to get funding for German Node group to work together in a research project
• Currently trying to get a (small, but paid) involvement of MP in a project for a company client

Suggestions
• Strengthen practical co-operation between Nodes
• Set basis, also for communication to outside
• Map basic profiles of nodes
• Including core competences and working interests
• Develop strategy to attract more / other sponsors: “coach” Nodes how to do this; explain what sponsors gain; produce a flyer / info-sheet on this?
• Offer basic info for sponsorship on website / to Nodes

Innovate MP-PC Meetings
• Revolutionize Meeting Structure
• More output and interactivity orientation
• Do presentation and information part in 2 hours or do in on weblog or via handouts before
• Dedicate at least a day to workshop format on our strategy and next projects; on funding; on ideas for co-operation; maybe experiment at next meeting?

Young Futures Initiative
• Demographics problem in futures
• Lack of connection between young futurists: networking, mentoring
• More international dimension to intergenerational communication in futures
• Exchange of established and up-coming thinking

PDF version of the power point that Cornelia presented at the meeting is available at: http://www.acunu.org/millennium/mppc-0405/Germany-0405.pdf

Contact: Cornelia Daheim
Z_punkt GmbH, Email: daheim@z-punkt.de