This past summer I had the opportunity to lead a group from the National Association of Electrical Distributors in a workshop on future trends and preferred future planning. The participants, all part of the Lake Michigan Club, were owners and managers of companies that ranged in size from small businesses to large national distributors and manufacturers. Their business is to supply the building and construction industry with an A-Z supply of electrical equipment, from conduit to switches to fixtures. Of course it is an industry struggling to manage during the construction down times we are in. Here is a short video about their annual meeting, with a brief clip of me discussing preferred future planning.

Following the workshop, I was invited by the Association to produce for them a “Scenario Planning Playbook” and a short video encouraging their membership to take a look at it. Scenario planning can be an excellent tool for companies that faced with a volatile and uncertain future environment, because considering alternate scenarios enables you to plan flexible strategies.

The association has made the Scenario Planning Playbook available through their website, where you can also watch the video. If learning about scenario planning has been on your agenda, check it out.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist author, speaker, consultant, and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech, workshop or consultation contact Futurist.com.

The other finalists were “The Book of Joby,” by Mark J. Ferrari; “Bright of the Sky,” by Kay Kenyon; “Not Flesh Nor Feathers,” by Cherie Priest; and “Powers,” by Ursula K. LeGuin. Thirty seven books published in 2007 were entered for the Award.

The annual Endeavour Award honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. All entries are read and scored by seven readers randomly selected from a panel of preliminary readers. The five highest scoring books then go to three judges, who are all professional writers or editors.

The judges for the 2008 Award were Ellen Asher, Steven Barnes, and Russell Davis. Steven Barnes presented the Award.

Congratulations to Brenda. Very cool.

Brenda sets her story on a distant world, where genetically enhanced and non-enhanced colonists struggle to co-exist and make a new life. As Brenda’s reviews attest, she is a master at character-driven story telling, while mixing in the best of anticipated technological developments.

Brenda was the original web-designer when we set up Futurist.com in the mid-1990’s. She was, at the time, an IT executive for a small city in the state of Washington. Now she is Director of IT for a larger suburban city, and has fully realized her dream of becoming a recognized and regularly published writer of speculative fiction.

Buy the book and enjoy!

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

img id=”image478″ height=96 alt=”Book Portuguese Translation” src=”http://www.futurist.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/BookPortTrans.thumbnail.jpg” />

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, consultant, blogger, internet TV show host and founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Brenda Cooper’s new science fiction novel, The Silver Ship and the Sea, is, in my opinion a must read for anyone interested in the future of humanity. Set in the distant future when descendents of humans roam the galaxy, we come upon a colony on a distant planet. This colony has rejected the super technologies of our human descendents, particularly the abilities developed that enable genetic modifications. As we join the colony, we learn of a war fought some years earlier, between these “natural” humans and a second colony which also attempted to settle the planet.

The second group consisted of genetically enhanced humans. Greatly outnumbered, these enhanced beings were eventually defeated despite their technological advantages, and a few surviving youngsters were captured and loosely adopted by the victors.

We enter the world as these kids are growing older and beginning to question their present, past and future, and as the original colonists grow worried about what to do as the kids grow up. Thus begins a sweeping adventure as two histories collide, and two cultures struggle with the question of whether they can live together.

With richly drawn characters and plausible future technology, the book stands out in its genre. It is in the author’s ability to envelope you in a new and strange world that the book takes wings. Today, weeks after finishing the book, I can wander the high lake country with its hidden secrets, see the sweeping grass plane beneath the cliffs on which the central village sits, imagine the tidal wave sweeping toward the distant shore, and long to enter the mysterious silver ship.

Moreover, as I know from the study of today’s scientific developments, the dilemmas posed in Brenda’s breakout novel, her first as a solo author, are not the stuff of the distant future but rather the very issues we may face as soon as twenty or thirty years from now. In fact, Brenda has grabbed the latest headlines about genetic engineering and nanotech and artificial intelligence and turned them into flesh and blood in a story that will transport you to another place and time, yet remind you of the choices that loom in our own day.

Brenda has been contributing to Futurist.com since the beginning and it is fun to see her witing career blossoming with this, her second novel.