Now-ish

I’ve been under water — figuratively.

Corniche Kennedy, 3 Oct 2024.

In September, I was back in Singapore for the Centre for Strategic Futures Foresight Conference during which I met some people I’ve wanted to meet for some time, including Ken Liu, Stanley Chan, Peter Schwartz, and Dave Snowden. For #reasons, I’m now a Fellow of the CSF and may be doing some things with them and with another government’s prime minister’s office to bring the practices of strategy and foresight closer together — analogous to my project to bring together the practices of strategy and design.

While I was home, there was a surprise stroke in the family. Singapore’s emergency medical response system got a team of paramedics to us within 14 minutes of the call — I salute the planning required to forward deploy teams across the island to reduce travel time.

After some weeks scrambling about to arrange care, I decided to move back to Singapore in the medium term. I’m now head of executive education for UCL in Southeast Asia and the greater region, based out of Singapore. I’ll also be working on a fund, incubator, and training programme for small businesses building AI applications, informed by my last few years of thinking about AI and meaningmaking and by the connections between innovation and not-knowing.

I’m back in Europe now to tie up loose ends:

1. Recording an interview about not-knowing for Work in Progress,
2. Disposing responsibly of an elderly Golf which served me well in the Auvergne mountains,
3. A strategic retreat in the hills outside Florence,
4. Teaching a strategy course for the University of Reykjavik, and
5. Giving a keynote on not-knowing and the future of work and innovation in Cologne.

I’ll post links to these as they go public.

Will probably be back and forth between UK, Europe, and Singapore a decent amount for the next year or so. Please get in touch if you know someone who wants learning and development from UCL, or interesting people I should meet in Singapore and Asia more broadly.

Staggia Senese, 12 Oct 2024.

Updated 12 October, 2024