It’s day two of the Phorecast Session Work Life in 2022 and by now our teams have had the chance to present them self to each other, it’s part of our process that they haven’t met before, so it’s about time we present them properly.

TEAM 1

Kerstin Bergh
Vice-chairman Civilekonomerna (The Swedish Association of Graduates in Business Administration and Economics). She has a background from the Sahlén shipowning company, currently managing the internal economy department Master Data at the Nordea bank.

Alexander Culafic
Creative Director, Kollektivet Livet. Jack-of-all-trades, working with advertising, digital projects and events. Also engaged in summer camps for the handicapped and adolescents with social problems.

Jonas Hurtigh Grabe
Business- and office concept developer at the real estate company Diligentia, working with construction projects and office solutions in their Future Lab. In the past Jonas has been an entrepreneur in the housing sector and he has also worked in IT and advertising.

TEAM 2

Björn Ekblom
Formerly industrial engineer at Unisource, currently at Eltel Networks Infranet, working full time for Unionen, the biggest Swedish private sector trade union, where he works primarily with labour legislation.

Lennart Eng
Illustrator, artist, graphic designer and teacher. Chairman of Svenska Tecknare, (The Association of Swedish illustrators and Grapic designers), member of the boards of Sveriges Författarfond (fund for book authors) and Svenska Barnboksinstitutet (The Swedish Institure for Children’s Books).

Anna Lundbergh
Senior Business Analyst at Skånetrafiken (regional public transport body). She has previously worked with analysis, strategy and e-government as Strategic Development Officer in Government agencies, at the OECD and for the research and consulting firm Kairos Future.

TEAM 3

Daniel Byström
Industrial designer with his own studio Design Nation. He teaches design and strategy at Jönköpings Tekniska Högskola (Jönköping School of Engineering) Daniel was involved in the CityMove, a project investigating how to move a the city Gällivare in the north of Sweden.

Lars Lundqvist
Former archaeologist, department manager at Riksantikvarieämbetet (The Swedish National Heritage Board) with a focus on developing user friendly e-services and social media as tools for accessing cultural heritage information.

Eva Ribbenhall
Master in Business Economics, with a background in excecutive management positions at IKEA, various companies in the media sector and at the corporate health care company Previa. She also has experience from recruitment o executive level managers and specialists. Currently consultant, interim manager for organisations in need of change.

When we headhunt participants for our think tank teams, we search both for individual expertise and a way to mix people with really different backgrounds and characters into effective teams. We are convinced that interesting combinations of people enable interesting solutions. If you want to be considered as a Phorecast Session participant you can read more about our recruiting process and apply here

Yesterday we started a new Phorecast Session (our framework for result-oriented think tanks). This time the end result will be scenarios of work life in Sweden in the year 2022. Our clients Almega, Saco and Unionen will then use these scenarios as a base for their future strategies.

This is a joint project between:

• Almega – Employer- and trade organization for the Swedish service sector
• Saco – The Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations is a trade union confederation of 23 affiliated associations which together have over 600 000 members
• Unionen – Sweden’s largest trade union in the private labour market and the largest white-collar union in the world

Right now we are looking for experts in scenario creation with different backgrounds so if you think this is a Phorecast Session you would like to apply for please email work2022@phorecast.com

Read more about the Phorecast process »

On this installment of the Phorecast podcast we meet Mr Richard Tofel, the general manager of ProPublica.org. Pro Publica is a non profit newsroom with one goal: to produce great investigative reporting.

Today, there is no escaping the headlines that newspapers are dying, advertising revenue has dried up and venerable newspapers are scrambling, downsizing or going web-only. Investigative journalism is expensive and often the first to go when times are tough. There is a flurry of discussion about new business models to save the industry be it micropayments or philanthropic ventures like ProPublica.org.

Pro Publica is funded by grants and works like this; the newsroom has a staff of around 30 top investigative reporters, they produce reporting and it is then given, not sold, to news outlets such as the New York Times, the LA Times, CNN and CBS 60 minutes. All the reporting is also available for free on the ProPublica.org site.

Mr Richard Tofel was formerly the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal and he has authored several books including Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism (St. Martin’s, 2009)

Read more about Pro Publica at New York Times »
Read more about micropayments and journalism at New York Times »

Wars and natural disasters are just a few of the reasons why people, for generations, have had to relocate from their homes all over the globe. In the Northern part of Sweden the mining industry has continued to expand and an unfortunate side effect has presented itself in several cities, the ground is crumbling. The beautiful town of Gellivare is one of those cities.

City Move Interdesign is a unique global event designed to tackle this pressing issue. The project is a partnership between ICSID, the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and the community of Gellivare and it will begin to tackle the enormous challenges that moving an entire population entails for both the inhabitants and for the city itself.

Phorecast founder Tomas Seo has been handpicked to join forty international experts and innovators for this multi-disciplinary project. During a two week think tank, innovators from a vast spread of competencies, will work together towards solving issues such as how to address the needs of people when relocating from their homes, physical conditions when planning a new society, sustainable factors for a new society and much more.

The findings from the City Move Interdesign project will become part of a knowledge bank that can be used in Sweden but also serve as groundwork internationally, for example when relocating populations ravished by political unrest and natural disasters.

International architects, psychologists, artists, engineers are just some of the disciplines joining together in this effort. Designer Tomas Seo has through much of his career worked in multi-disciplinary projects and is a strong believer in this method of collaboration. He is looking forward to contributing to this knowledge bank that will hopefully be of service to both Gellivare, other cites in Sweden and the international community.

Phorecast is honored for the opportunity to interview Mr Randall Fielding. Mr Fielding is a world renowned architect and educator who has developed award winning schools all over the world. Randall is the co-founder of Fielding Nair International based in Minneapolis, one of the world’s most innovative educational design companies.

Mr Fielding has worked with schools in Minneapolis, Kazakhstan, Australia and Switzerland, to name just a few places, and his focus is on creative and interactive 21st century learning spaces. In this interview we talk to Mr Fielding about what the problems are with todays school system and environment and how we can engage and create innovative schools to prepare kids for the new requirements of the knowledge age. And we find out how Prince has been an interesting inspiration in this field!

Read more about The Master Classroom at Edutopia »

Radiolab has been called the most innovative show on radio by This American Life’s Ira Glass and very many listeners agree. Each week co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich choose a big topic of a scientific and philosophical nature and in a unique documentary style explore it through interviews, experiments and discussion. Jad, a music composer, adds a distinctive audio production style with sound illustrations and unique editing techniques.

We are honored to interview Jad Abumrad about the coming season of Radiolab, some behind the scenes of the shows production, the most difficult topics they have ever tackled and how pop culture portrays science and scientists today!

Listen to Radiolab »
Listen to Christina and Tomas talk more about pop culture at Voccine »

We congratulate Tomas here at Phorecast who was just named an Honorary Lifetime Member by The Swedish Association of Designers!

Tomas served as chairman of the association between 2005-2008. The Swedish Association of Designers (Sveriges Designer) is a trade organization for professional designers based in Sweden. During his years as chairman membership grew substantially and his contributions include working for multi-disciplinary thinking among designers and seeing new business opportunities in openness and cooperations.

Tomas is in excellent company, other Honorary Lifetime Members of The Swedish Association of Designers include Margareta van den Bosch, chief designer at H&M and Henrik Otto, senior Vice President of Global Design, Electrolux!

This week on the Phorecast podcast we meet Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner at Blue State Digital in Washington D.C.

Blue State Digital is an interactive consultancy specializing in online fund raising, advocacy, social networking, and constituency development programs. Blue State Digital is behind Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama’s Internet campaign, Obama for America 2008. Their online tools have helped the campaign generate more than $300 million from over more than a million online donors. Blue State Digital built Senator Obama’s own social network MyBO which has 850,000 users and has organized 50,000 events.

The company’s other clients also include the Democratic National Committee, Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator John Kerry, the Save Darfur Coalition, Sundance Film Festival & Institute and London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s campaign.

Thomas Gensemer managed The Accelerator Group before leading the online communications for General Wesley Clark’s Presidential campaign in  2004. He joined Blue State Digital in 2005.

Read more about Blue State Digital in Business Week »

At Phorecast we specialize in finding and customizing multidisciplinary teams of innovators and experts into sessions working for your organizations future. We are always looking for the most interesting innovators and we wanted to share some of the people that have really inspired us with their ideas and creativity. The Phorecast podcast enables us do just that! Thanks for listening and we would love to hear your comments, questions and innovative ideas.

In this installment of the Phorecast podcast we focus on smart textiles and we are honored to interview Suzanne Lee. Ms. Lee is the Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, she is a fashion consultant and the author of the book Fashioning the Future, tomorrow’s wardrobe. Her expertise lies in creative applications of new technologies to design and innovative directions for fashion. One of Ms. Lee’s research projects is clothing grown from bacterial-cellulose, to produce a range of Cellulose Couture.

In the interview we also discuss wearable technology and innovations in smart textiles in regards to military and medical applications as well as “the emotional wardrobe”.
Ms. Lee also gives her thoughts on if and how haute couture is embracing smart textiles and what we may soon be seeing on the fashion runways of the future.

See more examples of Suzanne Lee’s cellulose fashion »

At Phorecast we specialize in finding and customizing multidisciplinary teams of innovators and experts into sessions working for your organizations future. We are always looking for the most interesting innovators and we wanted to share some of the people that have really inspired us with their ideas and creativity. The Phorecast podcast enables us do just that! Thanks for listening and we would love to hear your comments, questions and innovative ideas.