I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live, and all Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. I pay my respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
Hello. I’m Maree Conway, based in Melbourne, Australia. I have been a foresight advisor, researcher and practitioner since 1999 when I first discovered the power of foresight - and my foresight journey is still emerging. This site, Foresight in the Present, offers content and resources about finding and using foresight in the present.
Some background. I worked as a university manager for some 28 years before I set up my own futures business in 2007. I worked until 2022 as mainly a foresight practitioner (see feedback on that work on the Testimonials page), and I managed to get my PhD on university futures completed in early 2020 (the link takes you to my thesis). My move from practitioner to thinker and writer about foresight was generated by a mindset shift during my PhD about what really mattered to me, and the gaps that I perceived there to be in the futures field. You can find out more about me here.
Foresight in the Present is a content site that publishes my writing since around 2006 about how we can find and use our foresight capacities individually and collectively. Ultimately, I hope to add the writing of other people in the field too - that's a work in progress.
I write about foresight, the neurological and cognitive capacity we have to imagine our futures in the present. My focus is around exactly how it is that we humans can have so many perspectives on what futures matter and which futures we reject. My space is around worldviews, assumptions and finding our foresight by digging deeper into our inner selves.
Why this site? In an increasingly busy world where the dominant focus is on the present and where there is often little time to think in deep ways about just how we create our futures in the present, this site and my newsletter give you lots of ideas, hints and knowledge about how we can - individually and collectively - think about futures in more meaningful and considered ways. That is, we can move beyond assuming there is something called ‘the future’, a steady evolution of today. The bad news is that this single future doesn’t exist. The good news is we can explore how to think about futures here - in the multiple - to open our minds to what is possible, not only what is. Helping people to do this is why I started Foresight in the Present.
By subscribing to Foresight in the Present, you can share in an opportunity to understand how and why you think about futures, what your assumptions are and how you can challenge them. You can think about the types of futures we want for those who come after us. I do this work because I know we can think in new ways, find new perspectives on the present (remember, what we see isn’t all there is), and take new actions to create futures in ways that are open, inclusive and participatory - and sustainable over time.
If you are new to foresight or just curious, come join me on this journey to find out what our futures need from us today.
