AC/UNU Millennium Project
Silicon Valley Node - 2003 Activities

Report presented at the February 2003 Planning Committee Meeting

Report presented at the July 2003 Planning Committee Meeting


Report presented at the February 2003 Planning Committee Meeting

The Silicon Valley Node began its activity in 2002.

John J. Gottsman, node chair, president and CEO of  Clarity Group, and Peter Yim, leader of the SOFI Software team, represented the Node at the February 2003 Planning Committee Meeting in Washington, DC.

John Gottsman presented the general activities of the node and mostly the fundraising aspects. He also highlighted the Node's involvement in the organization of the 2003 World Future Society Conference to be held in San Francisco and of which he is the President.

Peter Yim, leader of the State of the Future Index Software team presented the concept and design of the software. The presentation is accessible at: http://mp.cim3.net/file/project/mp-sofi-sd/presentation/mp-sofi-sd-P1.htm   The last 2 slides (20 and 21) of the presentation provide links to more information on the team's project.

The Proposal for funding the software development was also presented and discussed with the audience.

Project Title:
State of the Future Index Software Tools/Systems Development
(SOFI Software Development)

The American Council of the United Nations University (a 501 (C)(3) U.S. corporation) is seeking your assistance for its Millennium Project that produces the annual “State of the Future” for the past six years and has now developed the “State of the Future Index” (SOFI).  We seek your support to translate this on-going research into a set of Internet based software tools that can be adapted on any institution’s ability to create their own “state of the future” research.
 

Background:

The Millennium Project is an international participatory think tank that began in 1996 after a pre-feasibility study (1991) and feasibility study (1992-95) funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, UN University, UN Development Program, UNESCO, Monsanto, and Ford Motors.  Since then, over 1,500 futurists, scholars, business leaders, scientists and policymakers who work for the UN, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities in 50 countries have contributed their insights to the project.  Global and local perspectives are connected through the Project’s Nodes listed at the right.

Concept and background of SOFI Software:

In the past two years, the Millennium Project has published an experimental State of the Future Index. Computations were done using mainly spreadsheet macros. There is interest in applying the process and algorithm of SOFI in a regional or industrial context as well. The Millennium Project wants to improve on the work by developing the system and software for it. This will allow people unfamiliar with the mathematics to use it and build SOFI’s of their own, and to simplify the task of updating the global SOFI every year. This SOFI software development project will be a sub-project within the AC/UNU Millennium Project, and is considered the next phase of the ongoing SOFI development effort. Extensive planning and requirements gathering work has already been done (see “References” section below). An architectural design workshop for the project has also been held (on 08-Nov-2002) where a panel of leaders and senior members from the software industry gathered in the Silicon Valley to contribute towards proposing an organic open-knowledge system architecture upon which the envisioned system shall be based.

Project Mission:

To build on the previous research of the Millennium Project, including the spreadsheet model, algorithm and collection of data, and progressively develop it into an Internet based futures study and analysis tool supported over an open knowledge system.

Longer Term Project Vision:

As SOFI becomes mainstream, the Millennium Project would like to see many countries and regions to be tracking their own SOFI. Newspapers and other publications could cite, or even syndicate, SOFI as they would today with some of the economic indices (such as GDP, cost of living, DOW, and S&P500). Future phases of the software could associate SOFI with scenario building and validation, as well as with front-ends that facilitate the capture of judgmental or other research inputs. By architecting it as an open knowledge system, and developing this software in an "open source" mode, it is envisioned that it will become a collaboratively developed and continuously improving system. Among others, is the normative desire to maintain an authoritative, accurate and up-to-date database of data relevant for computing SOFI’s, and to make such database available in a consistent, standard format. Coupling that with the research content and scenarios, the SOFI software tools and system shall, hopefully, become a useful and compelling tool/platform/knowledgebase for the futures research community, policy makers, strategists, scholars and other SOFI users.

Please let me know if this concept is of interest to your foundation and if you would welcome a more detailed proposal.  Attached is a brief overview of the approach, schedule, and costs.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome C. Glenn
Director, AC/UNU Millennium Project

Attachments

Proposed Approach:

Key features of the proposed approach shall include:

Project Phase 1:
Phase 1 – To develop the architecture and framework for continuous development, and to implement the initial code base that will allow the handling of data, computation of SOFI, and display of numeric and graphic results for both online and off-line users.

This initial Software Tools/Systems Implementation tasks and deliverables shall include:

1. System Architecture.
2. System Design.
3. Software Coding & Testing.
4. Development and deployment of an open community infrastructure implementation.
5. Continued research & development of SOFI data and algorithm. This is run as a parallel track to the software development effort, and is eventually integrated with the software tools to produce the product package that will be deployed.
6. Training and Deployment.
7. Release of software product in both Internet downloadable and CD-ROM media.
8. Launching of online community for continuing open, distributed, collaborative development.
9. Project postmortem; mining of learning/knowledge from this phase of the Project
10. Initial planning for the next phase of the Project.

Cost & Schedule:

Cost for Phase 1 of this project is estimated to be US$150,000.00
Project Phase 1 will require 6 months to implement.

References:


Report presented at the July 2003 Planning Committee Meeting

John J. Gottsman, node chair, president and CEO of  Clarity Group, and Peter Yim, leader of the State of the Future Index System (SOFI system) team, represented the Node at the July2003 Planning Committee Meeting in San Francisco, CA.

John Gottsman presented new developments concerning fundraising aspects for the SOFI system and suggestions for Millennium Project fundraising in general. He also highlighted the Node's involvement in the organization of the 2003 World Future Society Conference of which he was the President and in which the Millennium Project was highly involved: the Nodes presented 2 sessions of "Futures form Around the World" and Ted Gordon and Jerome Glenn presented new developments of the Millennium Project, the 2003 State of the Future and the Futures Research Methodology-version 2.0.

Peter Yim, leader of the State of the Future Index System (SOFI-system) presented the latest developments on the system and new ideas for improving the on-line communication between the Millennium Project nodes and members of the Planning Committee. Click here to see the power point presentation presented by Peter Yim. The SOFI System Proposed Approach and Initial Plan are available at
http://mp.cim3.net/file/project/mp-sofi-sd/mp-sofi-sd_plan.html

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