How the Future Works.... by Bob Allen

It's about 36 degrees and raining outside and the sky looks like an impenetrable roof. That would be Albany, the Capital of New York, at the need of February. I’ve come on our third Radical Platypus mission. You may remember that my pal Jim Brazell, a futurist, scientist and general passionista for all-things Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math; teamed up with me this year and formed Radical Platypus. We brought our very divergent backgrounds along with a couple of other colleagues together to form a new kind of speaking and workshop team. Radical, because we are intentionally iconoclastic on what we present on how the world might be likely to change and Platypus because we are an unusual but potent combination of attributes.

Tomorrow Jim and I will give a PlayShop to the New York State Association of Career and Technical Education Administrators called “How the Future Works Today: yourWORLD, yourSTORY, yourCALLING”. We’ll be combining some speaking (Jim focused on how the world of Tech-Prep education is changing and me on Story and Innovation practices) with some facilitation to help our audience create the future state of their discipline. When we rolled this work out in Atlanta a while back, we got good feedback, We've added and hybridized since then so hopefully we’ll get the same here. Now, if only I can avoid going outside...