“My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.” - Jane Austen
I would have to agree with Jane Austen, and her description of good company is exactly what I found at the recent FERN Conference in Washington D.C. While I could go into lengthy detail about how great our conference talks were on Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as on Saturday with our FERN group, I would rather celebrate the friendships that were forged over the course of the weekend. The quality of the people that descended on D.C. left me in awe of how fortunate I was to have been among such warm and welcoming individuals. I had incredible conversations with many different big thinkers that were all exceptionally intelligent in their respective fields and through some of them my perspective on certain issues has been forever changed. Now as I have come home and reflected on the time spent there, and have realized now that there are so many people that are looking towards the future, it gives me hope for a better tomorrow. Having met and gotten to know the people that make up FERN makes me proud to say that I am a part of them and I can’t wait to see what our organization can accomplish in the coming years.
Hi FERN members, I wasn’t able to attend last weekend’s gathering in D.C., but wanted to let you know that I’m extending a 10% tuition discount to all FERN members for RefactorU’s fall 2013 bootcamp. RefactorU is an immersive, 10-week bootcamp experience for web application development skills, and will be adding data science and other 21st century skills to the list of offerings in 2014. Graduates who accept a job through RefactorU’s placement services will receive a 50% tuition refund.
If you’re interested, learn more at http://refactoru.com/
I also intend to create foresight-related short courses and certificate programs focused on bleeding edge foresight methodologies, with similar incentives for getting jobs related to foresight. If you’re interested those opportunities, please sign-up on the mailing list:http://eepurl.com/wtFRD
We are excited to launch the new face of the Foresight Education and Research Network. Over the last few weeks we have invested quite a bit of time into redesigning this organization’s website and we are excited to see it work as a tool to help increase FERN’s viability into the future.
Our official launch is scheduled to coincide with the FERN Conference that is set for April 11-14th in Washington D.C., and one of our team will be there to introduce it to the world.
As things move on from here, we are looking forward to maintaining this website’s long and productive life, and are excited to be part of FERN’s staff since we are also huge futurism enthusiasts ourselves. We cannot wait to integrate the rest of the FERN crew to this space and we are excited to aid in familiarizing them with the different functions this site has to offer, but most importantly we are excited to see this website become an integral tool to the growth of this organization.
Here’s to FERN’s future,
Austin Cleek & Mitchell Taylor
FERN Website Administration
