Flipping the Future at the Charleston Conference

Futures thinking is a process by which individuals and organizations can explore how systems and relationships might evolve over time, with the goal of understanding and shaping those changes. It involves carefully analyzing current conditions, including existing pressures, risks, resources, and trends. This analysis helps participants identify which futures are possible, likely, or desirable—and which are not. After gaining this clarity, they can create strategies and policies that work toward achieving preferred futures while avoiding undesirable ones. While no future is guaranteed, futures thinking increases the chances of success by guiding purposeful actions toward feasible and desirable outcomes.

The Trendspotting Initiative is a futures-thinking process we designed to allow groups of participants to collaboratively explore trends and issues in librarianship and scholarly publishing and then forecast the impacts of these trends on the industry. The initiative arose from a 2016 conversation at the Charleston Conference between Katina Strauch, the founder of the conference, and several attendees that stressed the importance of librarians being proactive rather than reactive to trends and issues. The general feeling was that, on the whole, librarians have traditionally had to play “catch up” after letting trends come to them rather than looking into the future and taking initiative to shape their institutional strategy accordingly.

In response to these concerns, Katina established the Charleston Trend Lab, a small, informal forum in which participants discuss current trends and issues in libraries, brainstorm, and plot paths forward.

We reorganized this grassroots effort into the Charleston Trendspotting Initiative in 2017 and have met annually since then. Now in its seventh year, this popular session engages participants in small group dialogue and activities to explore the ways they might shape policies and strategies for academic libraries and scholarly communications.

We’ve hosted the initiative at several different events, including the Charleston Library Conference, Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) annual meetings, and the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche - Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) meeting. Though we typically conduct a one-hour session, we also have a three-hour format for a preconference or workshop.

At each event, the general format is the same, but we use different futures thinking tools to engage the attendees in structured brainstorming and small group activities. The program opens with some history and background about the Charleston Hub and the Trendspotting Initiative, followed by an introduction to “Futures Thinking 101” that outlines the goals for the group and steps we’ll take to reach them. We take a quote from the OECD as our touchstone: “Futures thinking offers ways of addressing, even helping to shape, the future; it is not about gazing into a crystal ball. It illuminates the ways that policy, strategies and actions can promote desirable futures and help prevent those we consider undesirable. It stimulates strategic dialogue, widens our understanding of the possible, strengthens leadership, and informs decision-making” (2021).

We also discuss a common mistake made in futures thinking activities: conflating how we think the world should be rather than addressing the fact of how it actually is. This can lead to adopting strategies that have unintended consequences and inadvertently decrease the likelihood of desirable futures.

We then move into the small group activities portion of the agenda. For the 2024 Charleston Conference, we used a tool called “Flip the Future.” Attendees were seated at round tables and were given a large sheet of poster-sized paper, colored pens and markers, and several colors and sizes of sticky notes. Each small group followed this process:

1. Choose a topic for your central focus. The topic should be narrower than “libraries” or “scholarly publishing” but still broad enough to have multiple facets to consider, e.g., “peer review” or “paper mills.”
2. Brainstorm statements that are generally true about the topic. Write each statement on a sticky note. Then, “flip” each statement by rewriting it on the sticky note to be the opposite or alternative to what it is today. For example, if it is currently true that there is a shortage of qualified peer reviewers in scholarly publishing, a flipped fact might be that there are too many peer reviewers, or another one might be that there are no peer reviewers at all!
3. Pick one of the “flipped facts” as your focus and imagine a world in which it is true.
4. Discuss: Why and how did this come to be true? What’s it like in this future? Use what you know about how the industry is already changing to support this story, even if it feels unlikely. Are there any trends and signals that are driving towards the flip?

Our next small group activity was called “Headline the Future.” Attendees were given an 11x17 inch handout formatted to look like a newspaper front page. They were asked to select one of their flipped facts from the previous activity, then:

1. Imagine that you are the editors of the primary trade news outlet for the information industry ten years in the future.
2. What are the stories you will publish this week about how this flipped fact is playing out in the industry?
3. Create at least one article—headline, description, and image. Try for more.

After 20 minutes, each table was asked to select a spokesperson to share with the larger group at least one statement of fact, one flipped fact, and one headline. The topics selected by the groups varied greatly, from peer review, to open access, to generative AI, to library collections. The conversations were wide-ranging, creative, and spirited. Participants reflected on how the activities prompted new thinking and shared how they might use the techniques in their own organizations.

Most of us don’t have time built into our weekly or even monthly workflows to think deeply about such issues and trends, or to cast our gaze into the future and imagine what they might mean for us or our organizations, so time spent with colleagues to work on this together is especially valuable. Participants in the Charleston Trendspotting sessions can take the tools and activities they learn back and apply them in their own libraries or organizations.

Furthermore, futures thinking and strategic planning aren’t just for organizations—you can use them personally to shape your career and strengthen your skills in a number of ways:

1. Stay ahead by spotting trends. Once you have identified current or upcoming trends in your field, such as emerging technologies or new methodologies, ask yourself: “What skills or expertise will be most valued in the next five years?” Plan professional development to align with these future needs.
2. Align your goals with the future vision. Reflect on your long-term career vision. Where do you want to be in five years? How can you position yourself to succeed in future scenarios? What would success look like for you in five years? Use this vision to prioritize projects, skills, and tools that move you closer to that goal.
3. Experiment with innovation. Take small steps to explore new areas you’ve identified as future trends with an impact on your organization. Consider a proposal to pilot a project or learn emerging tools. Treat these as opportunities to test your ability to adapt and grow.
4. Build resilience through planning. Identify potential risks in your career trajectory, like skills obsolescence or industry shifts, then build a plan to upskill or pivot if necessary. Conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to prepare for challenges and opportunities, allocate resources effectively, and mitigate risks.

Futures thinking is a powerful tool for individuals and organizations in scholarly publishing. This forward-looking approach empowers individuals to shape their careers strategically and organizations to innovate, adapt, and lead in an industry shaped by rapid technological advances, evolving academic practices, and shifting funding models. By focusing on “the futures” of scholarly communications and their probabilities, organizations can work to stave off undesirable futures and to proactively and confidently build toward the future they prefer (Hinchliffe 2020).

References

OECD. (2021). OECD Schooling for Tomorrow Knowledgebase: Futures Thinking in Brief.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210403154146/https://www.oecd.org/site/schoolingfortomorrowknowledgebase/futuresthinking/futuresthinkinginbrief.htm

Hinchliffe, L. (2020). The Futures of Scholarly Communications: Techniques and Tools for Futures Thinking. The Serials Librarian, 78(1–4), 28–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2020.1739473