Glen Hiemstra, the founder of Futurist.com, basks in the red glow of a corridor at the Seattle Public Library during the Association of Professional Futurists’ gathering. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)
Professional futurists are gathering in Seattle, for the second time in 15 years. But don’t expect to recognize them by their business cards.
Many modern-day futurists tend to call themselves something else – for example, foresight specialist, which is Jonelle Simunich’s title at Arup, an engineering and consulting firm based in San Francisco.
“I tell people I’m a futurist, and they say, ‘So, what, you’re like a psychic?’” Simunich told GeekWire today during the 15th-anniversary gathering of the Association of Professional Futurists.
The annual gathering is structured as a series of seminars for about 40 futurists, rather than your typical trade convention. The group that became APF had its first gathering in Seattle in 2002. “It didn’t even have a name yet,” Cindy Frewen, who chairs the association’s board.
This year marks “the first time we have ever been in the same place twice,” Frewen told attendees at the Seattle Central Library.
