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Let's Workshop
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Imagining Futures of Organizing Human Value Creation

An Open Source Proposal To Workshop An Existential Dilemma

That's a mouthful, eh?

It's the long hand, for the oft-heard shorthand:

'What's the Future of Work'

So, why do I put it in long-hand when there's a shorthand for the same thing?

I do that because I believe the shorthand sells us a bit, well — short. We are, afterall, the humans with the potential for value creation, are we not?

And if we are, can we not imagine other ways that we might associate amongst ourselves to create, conjure, ignite potentials for meaningful value creation?


Yeah but..why?

I want us to provoke ourselves to think a bit deeper, to imagine a bit harder about an evolution in the ways we do what we do, and how what we do in this speculative possible future brings value and meaning into the world.

Think about it: the history of human value creation — um, sorry...I meant to say 'work' — has led us to this point in our evolution where, for some reason, we're asking ourselves a lot about where we're going, what's next; what's 'the future' of this thing we do.

That's what we imply when we ask ourselves, over and over again especially since (and within) the pandemic times, "what's the future of work?"

Why are we going back into the office?

What's an office anyway? I mean...really?

Work is?

When we say 'work' we make a world of assumptions because we're born into a world where the word 'work' means something quite specific to our place and time in the history of human value creation.

But if we truly want to evolve what value creation could become, we need to imagine harder and ask ourselves a richer, more engaging question that gets to the true purpose of this gathering:

What are the possible ways of organizing the human potential for true value creation?

That is the purpose of this pilot workshop.

How

Evolved methodologies for imagining outside of the map, at the edge and vanguard of what sounds reasonable, to reflect on the unknown, unexpected, and the not true yet.. Emphasis is on thinking/imagining/wondering through the creation of material artifacts that could represent a 'box of stuff' that's come from some possible adjacent now or future world in which whatever principles/philosophies/ontologies organize human potential are different enough from our world to feel strange and curious, but not so different as to feel significantly impossible. In other words, artifacts that signal that value creation, circulation, and exchange 'happens' according to some set of discernable principles which may in fact feel alien, but only because we've been born into a world in which we haven't imagined otherwise.



Run of Show

Day 1

Introductions
Context & Motivation
Immersion Experience (The Room)
Design Fiction 101
Future of Work Talk
Microscope (The Game)
Prompts for Breakouts
Breakouts / Prototyping Artifacts
Construction/Creation
Film Festival

Day 2

Re-introduction
Reflections
Construction/Creation/Production Activities

Day 3

Re-introduction
Group Sharing Artifacts & Discussions
Reflect & Wrap

Who is this for?

Our intended audience ranges from those who really just want to know how their organizations and teams should respond to RTO mandages, all the way to those who are feeling a bit more of an urge to consider and evolve the meaning of work, and the mechanics of value creation, value circulation, and value exchange.

Random Notes

Sounds Like Fun, Eh?