 This is going to be our workshop session for the day. It will take place all in this room. So you will go to different rooms tomorrow for the workshop, but this exercise is all in here. So you're in the right place. I have the pleasure of introducing my colleague, Susan Lupo, who is a senior policy associated corporation for a skilled workforce. She has expertise in community college transformation, systems change, credentialing, and is an expert in design and organizational development. She has 25 years of community college leadership experience and is a bit of a futurist, which is why we chose her for this activity. To that end, we're going to take all of this context that we've established throughout the day today about the future of education and work and skills and the change in how they're being validated and the fact that if we're reacting to what's current or already a little bit behind, we're going to take all that and actually do at tables. So one last note before I turn it over to Susan to run the exercise, we just ask you to be open-minded and be willing to stretch your minds a little bit for this hour, and then you can go out and drink beer and wine after that. Tomorrow we have a panel on innovation and disruption, which will be our third of the conference. And those panelists are fairly familiar with doing exercises like this and with design. So Kathleen DeLaskey, Christopher Kent, Anna Leonard and Cheryl Grant will be around if you get stuck or you have a question about the exercise or an occupation or the process. So just raise your hand or keep an eye out for one of them. They'll be milling about to help you. So with that, I will turn it over to Susan. Yes. No, you're good. You're good. You get to stay where you are, you know? Don't you love that? A process person that doesn't say, let's count off 200 people. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Hi, everybody. So here I am. I will apologize. I'm a little bit under the weather, so I'm gonna try to stay as focused as possible on the many, many pharmaceuticals that are now coursing through my body, you know? Who knew we were gonna talk about drugs at the beginning and now here at the end? But, you know, that's the way synergy's in the world work. So it's been quite a day, right? I mean, we were living in an extraordinary explanation of a post-modern world and then we moved to the reality of what goes on in the district and then we had conversations about the supply and demand space that people are working in trying to think about this new reality that we're all eventually going to have to occupy and then a panel discussion that, again, circled back to the notion of what equity looks like in the world and where privilege sits. So those were pretty deep and heavy conversations. Now you get to play a little bit, maybe. My good colleague and friend, Katie, asked me originally to try to design a structured scenario building session and for any of you who are familiar with structured scenario building, it was part of the work that was done in the 1970s by Shell Oil Company to begin to understand how their own obsolescence would occur over a 20 or 30 year period. Structured scenario building is also used by futurists. It's used in the Department of Defense. It's used in many, many, many, many, many occupations. I first encountered it almost 25 years ago. Oh my God, she said 25 years ago. 25 years ago. And when I first became a member of the World Future Society, and at that first conference, I encountered Ray Kurzweil. Any of you know who Ray Kurzweil is? Kind of pretty much, yeah, yeah. So Ray Kurzweil has been one of those futurists who have been predicting that there will be an endpoint called the singularity and he actually produced that phrase where human beings and machines combine and ultimately maybe machines become smarter than we are. So that notion terrified me and I thought, well, you know, any machine could be smarter than I am, I guess, at any point along the way. And I began to think about what the future of work looks like and what the world of work looks like and how people can access it and what the design of those systems might be. So that's been sort of my journey of inquiry and as Katie said, I also love the notion of design. Human-centered design, are any of you familiar with IDEO? Aha, IDEO folk in the room. So IDEO is an extraordinary company, if you don't know about it, go online and look. They began to really think about human-centered design in terms of solving world problems. So in a social context, how human-centered design can work in a world that we often ignore. So at the core of human-centered design is humanity, what we are and how we sit and feel in the world. One last little story. In my quest to understand what this technology world that was emerging around me would be, I also participated in conferences produced by SIGGRAPH. And SIGGRAPH is an international conference that was started in the entertainment industry. And again, 25 years ago, I went to the initial conference and they have something called a black box. And in the black box, all students that were interested in technology, advancing technology, produced products. This is the first time I really encountered augmented reality. I went in and there were machines and I put them on and I was playing with dolphins and who knew? And we also found that there were machines that were tactile, that were going to be embedded in clothing, where our wallpaper could move. We could see the conference program by moving our arms and orchestrating it. So our physicality and our physical environment began to interact with the technology in those stages and places. Now fast forward to this period of time, my 10 year old granddaughter just sent a photograph from a birthday party that she attended. And at that birthday party, she was wearing augmented reality glasses with 15 other little girls not interacting with each other at all, but interacting with the augmented reality. And she loved it. So that's the kind of journey. And when we start to think about obsolescence, I don't know if any of you saw the New York Times article about five months ago that began to describe that 47% of existing retail jobs may disappear within five to seven years. So as we look at obsolescence and as it moves forward as we look about the combination between our technology and ourselves, the interface and interaction between our humanity or lack thereof once we become machines that all has implications. So that's the big speech at the front of the game. So what Katie said to me is, well, how do we get people to start to explore this with a table grouping and in a big room? And I said, well, how about if we think about something very analog and tactile? So we came up with this idea and I hope you'll play along just because I need for you to play along. I really, really, really do. So the idea is that at each of your tables, you're gonna create and design what a supply-demand ecosystem might look like in 2025. And we want you to use your table as your canvas and you'll be using sticky notes as the content to help shape the design. And I'll give you some clues along the way. Oh, I'm so glad you're smiling. That's so lovely. It's so great. So I know this is gonna be kind of a very big, deep departure from what we've done in the last four hours, but it's also a chance to play. We're adults, but we rarely play a lot. So this is imaginative space. Wherever your imagination can take you, however you can think about this is fine. There are no right answers, there are no wrong answers. There's just the exploration. There's just the moment to engage in some kind of a creative activity with people who you may or may not know sitting at a table with you. So are you game? Yes, okay. Are you game? Okay, all right. So Ms. Katie, oh God, pictures. At this age, a woman of this age, right? All right, so there's our first slide. Don't you love it? I did the proper slide, it gave you a title. 2025, supply-and-demand ecosystem. Now supply-and-demand implies a linear process, right, right? So action, result, ecosystem, much more complicated. So think about ecosystems, think about mess. Think about networks. Think about processes that are messy when we get into the design. Okay, next slide. So these are purposes we're gonna play a little bit. We're gonna synthesize some information and maybe come up with something interesting. Who knows? Okay, you ready? Next one. Katie's doing the whole thing over here so I can dance and play. This was how we were gonna play it. We're not gonna play it like that anymore. I came in the room and thought, nope, this is way too complicated. So what you do with design usually is try to get as simple and elegant as you possibly can. So we're gonna play it a little bit differently. Next slide. Don't you love that? I'm in control. We have identified five, and I'm gonna use this horrible old fashioned analog word, jobs of the future. Okay, so look at those five jobs. We found them. They are predicted. And our wonderful future is in the room. You know, the Rockefeller Foundation article on the future of work identifies these jobs and then what happens when these jobs exist to poor and vulnerable populations. So the first job up here is our robotics human ethicist. At your table, there are PowerPoints that describe and you can read, all right? And this job really requires the rise of cloning and ethically dubious practices. So people are gonna be needed to ensure that there's some humanity engaged in that. That's a job predicted for the future. Another one is a space tour guide. I thought, well, this one probably isn't too much different than, you know, cruising the rapid somewhere. However, it probably is because how it comes about and is executed would be very different. The next one we have is vertical farmers. We already know that's here, right? I mean, many, many vertical farms are being developed. Okay, if we think about people clustering in urban communities, vertical farming becomes a really critical and important part of work. In Detroit where I live, farming, urban farming and vertical farming is becoming one of the ways to eliminate the food desert within that area. So vertical farmers and the way they come about and think about farming is one of the jobs of the future. Excuse me. And then I love this one because we kind of talked about it today. The statistician, well, there's gonna be a waste data handler. What do you do with wasted data? How do you identify data that needs to go away? How do you kill data? I mean, we're all told that our data records are forever, so somebody's gonna have to manage data and understand how to turn it into waste. What does that look like? What does data waste become? Where is it stored? Can you find it again? I mean, is it a dump somewhere? Who knows? But it's a job of the future. And then the last one, and I think all of you may appreciate that in the educational space that we live in, is that there would be a classroom avatar manager. So how and where teaching and learning occurs will probably be delivered through avatars of some sort. But how do you match a human being with an avatar? Or does the human being create the avatar? You're all looking at me. So these are jobs that are predicted for the future. They will likely be described as work and they will likely be described as competencies. Okay, so what I would like you to do at your table is look at these five jobs and choose one that you wanna focus on. So y'all get to talk at the table for a minute. Choose a job. Any job. Stratta, social stratta, based on this combination of. All right, they're all talking. Yeah. All right. There is some serious ethical. Yeah. And philosophical concerns about what it means to be a human. I know. And eventually, and we're already augmented. Okay, about two more seconds to decide. No laboring over decisions. Rapid prototyping is now entering the room. Okay, have we all decided what our future work is? I got a thumbs up over here. All right, at your tables, everybody's got a decision. Oh, and what I really wanna do is ask everybody what they chose, but we don't have time. But at some point, we may. So we all got a choice, right? We've got a job or work of the future that we're gonna focus on for this exercise. Cool, now we really are gonna go into an analog mode. As I said before, IDEO is one of my idolized corporations, design corporations, and they still use analog technology and they use what's on your table, sticky notes. Y'all have some sticky notes? Sticky notes and pens, tactile. Okay, and I want you to think of your table as your canvas. All right? You need to probably move stuff so that you can design on the table. Next slide. Next slide. There we go. And the questions are no. Oh, okay. So do you want me to read the questions? Yeah, well, yeah. I can do that. Just say, I know there's many of you. Okay. Okay, has everybody cleared their space? So what I'd like you to do is, individually, gather up a few sticky notes and as quickly as you can, you've got your job in front of you, right? Have you got your job? Know what it is? Everybody knows what it is? Okay. So the first design question is, and our little person, notice this little person is kind of an interesting mix of stuff, so our little person is asking how do I find out about the work? So the first process in the ecosystem is discovery. How does one find out about this work that you're focusing on in 2025? Not today, not tomorrow, but in 2025. And so generate on your sticky notes as many ideas as you can about how a human, not a human-robot combination, but a human would find out about the work that you're focusing on, okay? We'll give you about, oh, five, seven minutes to generate that content. Okay, have at it. The land of future reams. Yeah, yeah, you're doing great. All right, well, you jump in here if you need help. You were concerned that you were scared by Rick Kurzweil, but you were scared by Rick Kurzweil. Mostly harmless. Okay. Oh, and by the way, you have futurists hidden amongst you. Did you know that? You have futurists prowling the floor. If you have questions of the futurists that have been hidden amongst you, they're here. Futurists, you wanna raise your hands? Right, so if you need ideas, they're more than willing to come and help you. Okay, think about what, how I find that work. Go crazy. Should we give them five minutes? Oh, okay, we need five. One, two, three, four, five. Okay, five minutes for each path, okay. Okay, we're cross-fertilizing. Somebody asked how learning disabled people would find out about that. Data wrangler, but that's another job. Data wrangler. Over there said there's a data wrangler in our ranks. So, okay, wrangling data. And then somebody else asked, well, if you're disabled, how do you find out? And my response was, you won't be disabled because you have a chip in your brain that corrects your disability. So, hey, how we doing? Good, that's kinda cool. Okay, because this is rapid prototyping, have you kind of talked about what you wrote down? And you have not. So what I'd like you to do now is take those sticky notes and cluster them on a space on your table, have everybody look at the sticky notes, and then we're gonna move on to the next phase of design. So what you want is those processes and tools clustered together on your table, like you're making a map. At least I'm not singing a musical theater piece right now. Okay, have you clustered it? This clustering of this process and tools on your table. All right, next slide. What? No, nothing yet. I feel like I've lost control of the room. Okay, we're gonna move on to design question two. Okay, so cluster your competencies, your work, your descriptions, your processes. Have I got everybody? Not necessarily. Hey, okay, all right, we're moving to the next design question. Same process, sticky notes, next design question. This one you ought to be able to think about in terms of our current reality, stretch your brain. We're all asking questions about what the competency is currency is gonna look like. So this is how I find out about the work. How do I get the competencies so that I can fulfill the obligations of that work? So your next cluster in your ecosystem is finding competencies and acquiring them. Okay, so that's your next cluster. This is how I find out about it. This is how I get the skill sets that I need, okay? Cool, have at it. Your cluster's clustered. That's like my favorite. How many other people do you have? I don't know. Some people put it on a table table, so I don't know. You may be the only robotic cleaner that is available. No, I don't know. I should be able to see it. I love it. It's so fun to think about. World Future Conference about four years ago, when they started to talk about the strata within society, like what kind of a robot would be and then what kind of an enhanced human you would be and what that would mean in terms of your social status, your compensation and where you work in the world. Wait, what do you mean? I'm sorry, what do you mean? Like what kind of a robot you would be? Yeah, because human, eventually, they're predicting that human beings' bodies would be combined with augmented... I'm gonna take one of these, because I don't know how to do it. Thank you. We gotta get to three. Okay, we're ready to go to question design, question three. Design, question three. Employers, locate me or how will I find employers? How will employers locate me? How will I find employers? So we had a little bit of a discussion about how we're going to be able to find employees. So we had a little bit of that conversation today, right? There might be a universal pool, but within this field, how will employers find me? How will I find employers? Yeah. As you're working, it'll help to cluster the answers to each question. So cluster one when you're done, put two together when you're done, cluster three together when you're done, because five questions is a lot of stickies. Yeah, what were you gonna say? And when you cluster, you can put things in circles, they don't have to be in lines. System, this is a bunch of lines. The picture's gonna show clusters. And then we're gonna ask them to cluster their ecosystem parts, what overlaps, what doesn't, and then they'll get their paid table future. Yeah, so what would happen is, I were doing this, I'd put all my sticky notes for question one here. I'd put all my sticky notes for question two here. Three here, four here. Human in the middle. And then use objects on the table to show the lines. We're gonna have to ask them to do that, label. Number one, that's what I thought. Who do they email it to? Get 12 pictures, 15 pictures. Okay, I'm gonna rush you to number four. Question number four, question number four is how will I get paid? How will I get paid? On question four, how will I get paid? How will I get paid as where we should be? We've got one more design question, then we're gonna put our systems together. How do I get paid and by whom? Hate to rush you along. Whoops, Katie. We've got one, take it to the very end. Take your email, take your email to the very end. Take your email. So let question five, yup. Okay, here's the last question, and this one is really a big one. How will the work disappear and get replaced by new work? This category of the ecosystem is obsolescence. How will the work disappear and get replaced by new work? Okay, what I'd like to ask you to do now, even though we could do this for another couple of hours, is organize your five design questions on the table like a system with a human in the center. So this is just a little bit of a model, how it could look. We're gonna ask you to label question one, two, three, four, five after you've done your design, and then we're gonna ask you to take pictures of your ecosystem and send them to us so that we can share your wonderful collective thinking. All right, so this was my attempt at saying what would this look like? So maybe my compensation is an avatar upgrade. There might be different kinds of ways to think about your ecosystem map on your table. So look at your answers, organize them into an ecosystem picture, and then we're gonna take photographs of them, okay, so that we can see what great content you've generated. It doesn't necessarily have to look like this, but you want a human being at the center. You can use anything on your table to represent the human being. You can use Dixie cups. You can use water pitchers, anything at the table. Oh my gosh, you guys, that's wondrous. I love this. You are wondrous. Okay, we've only got about five minutes, and I hate to be a taskmaster, but you created some pretty cool things. So let's get a system picture with a human at the center and how these things relate to one another. You can use pens, you can use Dixie cups, you can use anything to represent the ecosystem. My gosh, oh, this is so cool. This is so cool. Is that five? Okay, come over and do it. Awesome. We'll have K do it. So does somebody have a phone that can take a picture of this table, too? Yeah. We can do that, okay. Okay, we're gonna come around and look at these ecosystem pictures, designs. Oh, this is so cool. And then the other thing that would be helpful, we don't know what job you chose. So if you have the job on the person, that's okay. Once you're done, you'll take a photo. We'll give you Katie's address to send it to, but I would also suggest that when you walk out for your break, walk around and look at these tables, because it's like totally cool. So once you've taken your photo, I have a question. Are you interested in having a kind of collective debrief, or would you like to just sort of walk around and look at stuff? Either way is fine. Walk around, everybody walk around the art gallery. Cool, we gotta take pictures of them walking around. Be sure to take your picture of your wonderful ecosystem, send it to Katie Hall, that's khaul at skilledwork.org. And then cruise the gallery. Okay guys, walk around, look at the tables, and then we're gonna take our last break.