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Backcasting: or how I learned to stop predicting and help my clients [Session Audio]

Matthew Milan & Sam Ladner

[audio:http://www.thechickentest.com/vid/IASummit2007/Backcasting_or_how_I_learned_to_stop_predicting_and_help_my_clients.mp3]

Download the MP3 of the presentation ( 28 megs )

A mashup of scenario development and social learning, backcasting is a strategy framework that allows practitioners to successfully conceptualize, scope and structure multiple future states. It also provides a framework for successfully negotiating obstacles and threats to achieving those states. Originally used in the environmental planning field, backcasting has been hacked and refined for use in web strategy discovery activities.

Other recorded talks from the 2007 IA summit

  • http://blog.leapfrog.nl/archives/2007/05/03/strategy-fourth-of-five-ia-summit-2007-themes/ Strategy — fourth of five IA Summit 2007 themes (Leapfroglog)

    [...] Gene Smith and Matthew Milan discussed conceptual models (which I’ve been playing around with for a while) and the more involved rich mapping, from soft systems thinking. Key takeaway for me was when modelling a system we should also describe its context (including the project itself). Other good stuff by people of Critical Mass (Milan again together with Sam Ladner) was provided in the form of ‘backcasting’, a very visual brainstorming method to be used in a workshop session with a client in order to envision desired project outcomes and map paths from the current situation to those outcomes (notes at The Chicken Test). [...]