Mapping my Top 10 Events and Knowledge Co-Creation and Sharing interactions in the period 1999-2023

Attending and organising knowledge co-creation & sharing events (e.g. workshops, focus groups, citizen/expert panels, conferences, seminars, symposia, roundtables, matchmaking & coaching meetings) requires time and energy. 

In the last 20+ years I’ve been involved in 200+ such events in 3️⃣9️⃣ countries where I had the pleasure to interact with 8000+ people from 7️⃣6️⃣ countries. After such stocktaking I thought of sharing my Top 10 choices in terms of excellence (organisation- & content-wise) and impact (i.e. concrete spillovers & networking power). Given the large variety of events, I focused on those that mobilised over 100 people, including international experts.

Here are my Top 5 takeaways for the future:

1. Be selective and know why to attend an event.
2. Be assertive when choosing people to interact with.
3. Be ready to engage in follow up discussions on opportunities.
4. Be strategic by preparing yourself with pre-arranged side meetings.
5. Be patient as some positive spillovers may emerge several years later.

Here are my Top 10 events:

✅ 2002 – Wallonia, Belgium: Symposium on Territorial Foresight as a Tool of Governance. Organised for the Présidence du Government Wallon by the Institut Destrée. This event was extremely well organised (both structure- and content-wise) with several roundtable discussions about the importance of regional foresight by carefully selected experts openly sharing best practices based on ongoing and recently completed foresight projects. I had the pleasure to contribute to the session on experts’ testimonies and regional foresight practices facilitated by Jordi Serra del Pino.  

✅ 2004 – Seville, Spain: EU-US Scientific Seminar on New Technology Foresight, Forecasting & Assessment Methods. Organised and hosted by the European Commission Directorate-General Joint Research Centre IPTS, with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA). This event offered a wide range of inspiring insights and approaches to Future-oriented technology Analyses (TFA) from EU vs US, as well as public vs private perspectives, including lively debates on future trajectories. Proceedings of the seminar carefully edited by Fabiana Scapolo can only be described as “old but gold!”, thus worth reviewing if you are entering into the foresight or futures research field.

✅ 2008 – Cali, Colombia: International Forum on Innovation, Science and Technology Foresight. Organised for Colciencias by Javier Medina from the Universidad del Valle (CO), in close collaboration with The University of Manchester Manchester. The event brought an international expert panel to share lessons on how to better align foresight with the STI implementation environment by: (1) promoting key values in society and the STI system; (2) improving the generation of knowledge and R&l; (3) interacting with national and regional STI systems; (4) adapting and reacting to changes in the STI system; (5) promoting STI absorption and competitiveness; (6) consolidating infrastructures and information systems; (7) increasing and strengthening STI capacities; (8) fostering research on strategic sectors; and (9) fostering internationalisation of STI.

✅ 2010 – Vienna, Austria: EFP Conference on Foresight and Forward-Looking Activities – Exploring New European Perspectives. Organised by the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH for the European Commission funded European Foresight Platform (EFP) project. The event gathered over 100 practitioners engaged in ‘World Cafe’ style discussions sessions around several topics concerning the future of foresight, addressing questions such as: (1) How should foresight evolve to better respond to policy making needs?; (2) How could quantitative and qualitative methods be combined to support forward looking decision making?; (3) How to ensure continuity and future value of the EFP to support policy making?; (4) How to use surprising and bewildering events to support foresight, horizon scanning and forward looking policy making?; and (5) How can we bring foresight into media and media into foresight? All very much relevant questions that still deserve plenty of attention today. 

✅ 2011 – Brussels, Belgium: iKnow Conference in Taming the Wild and Listening to the Weak: Towards a Strategic Issue Management System for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI). Organised by the Manchester Institute Of Innovation Research (MIOIR) of the University of Manchester for the European Commission funded iKnow project. This event presented new methods, frameworks, tools and practical guides to better identify, assess and manage wild cards and related weak signals. The depth and breadth of the discussions, as well as the target audience, including supranational organisations and agencies (e.g. EFSA, ENISA, OSHA, OECD, and UN bodies); as well as national and subnational research, policy and industry players made the event particularly relevant for policy shapers, risk analysis, strategic planners, and the foresight and horizon scanning communities. The event was structured around 5 interconnected building blocks: (1) Informing and shaping futures research and innovation; (2) Knowledge sharing; (3) Networking; (4) Optimising research and collaboration agendas; and (5) Working with Grand Challenges and interdisciplinary agendas.

✅ 2013 – London, UK: CfWI Annual Conference on Working together to deliver the workforce of the future. Organised for the Department of Health and Social Care by the Centre for Workforce and Intelligence (#CfWI). The event mobilised 250+ stakeholders representing most key players in the UK healthcare, social care and public health systems, including: National Health Service (NHS), Health Education England (HEE), Care Quality Commission (CQQ), Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC), Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), Skills for Care, Skills for Health, Learn to Care, Allied Health Enterprise Development Centre and dozens of workforce planners and health practitioners working together to discover new horizons and explore workforce challenges facing health and social care. During the event the CfWI Horizon Scanning Hub and sdiPad App were launched in order to promote bottom-up mapping and discussions about workforce and future planning topics, articles and ideas considering plausible scenarios and assessing their workforce implications.

✅ 2014 – Brussels, Belgium: #VERA Final Conference: Forward Visions on the European Research Area. Organised for the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI (Fraunhofer ISI) for the EC Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. The event offered insights relevant for all science, technology and innovation (STI) policy makers, and provided an excellent platform supporting structured debates about the future of the European Research Area (ERA) and the political and societal priorities underpinning its evolution. The event helped to better position 9 ERA dimensions that have not been captured in the ERA discourse so far, but which deserve more policy attention and integration into the evolving dimensions of the European R&I landscape, namely: (1) Boosting research and innovation synergies; (2) Strengthening the global influence of ERA; (3) Promoting smart R&I evaluation; (4) Improving the governance of the EU R&I system; (5) Fostering relevant science-society engagement; (6) Developing attractive and impactful research careers; (7) Supporting knowledge co-creation and sharing; (8) Achieving gender equality and social inclusion in R&I; and (9) Reinforcing ERA regional and local outreach.

✅ 2018 – Santiago, Chile: ECLAC International Seminar on Planning for Development with a Vision of the Future. Organised by the Economic and Social Planning Institute of Latin America and the Caribbean (ILPES) for ECLAC. The event mobilised 180 delegates from 15 countries, including researchers, scholars, experts, civil servants and public administration authorities to present and discuss research studies, cases and experiences related to the following thematic areas: (1) Foresight for development; (2) Territorial development; (3) Planning: Management of planning systems for development, experiences of synergies between planning and budgeting, participatory planning and/or with a focus on gender issues; and (4) Building public leadership competences for development.

✅ 2018 – Turin, Italy: ETF Conference on Skills for the Future: Managing transition. Organised by the European Training Foundation (ETF) and attended by over 350 professionals from 50 countries. The event helped to promote a more structured policy debate on future prospects of the impacts of eight global trends in ETF Regions (Western Balkans, Eastern Partnership, Mediterranean and Central Asia), namely: (1) Globalisation; (2) Demographics changes and ageing; (3) Migration, mobility and brain-drain; (4) Digitalisation, artificial intelligence and automation; (5) Climate change and diminishing natural resources; (6) FDIs and offshoring threatened by automation; (7) Youth and women unemployment; and (8) Growing inequality and political instability.

✅ 2022 – Brussels, Belgium: INESC High Level Conference on Science-based Innovation for the Green and Digital Transitions organised by INESC Brussels HUB to promote multi-stakeholder discussions on the role of the wide diversity of research and technology infrastructures in supporting fully functional, competitive, state-of-the-art and disruptive R&I ecosystems; as well as the funding of the full R&I cycle and its impact on cohesion and competitiveness. The event mobilised over 100 high-level experts to share insights and forward-looking views about: (1) Science-based innovation; (2) Research and Innovation Support Infrastructures: An Ecosystem Approach; (3) Skills and capacity building for technology development and innovation; and (4) the Funding science-based innovation: Bridging knowledge production and market uptake. In addition to key representatives from all 5 INESC institutes, the conference included keynote speakers from the EC DG RTD; United Nations Regional Information Centre; UAS4Europe; the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation; the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport; EURASHE; the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Portugal; the Permanent Representation of Portugal to the EU, among others.