This year’s World Conference for the World Futures Studies Federation is coming up in Cape Town, South Africa on 29-31 October 2025 and Peter is discussing it with Doris Viljoen from the Stellenbosch Business School who are hosting it.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward
References
Email for any conference queries - WFSFCONFERENCE@sun.ac.za
Audio Transcript
Peter Hayward: The World Futures Studies Federation World Conference is happening again and we are here to talk about it.
Doris Viljoen: One of the big reasons why I would come to the conference is to just spend time with like-minded individuals, that community and just being with other people that are all also sharing the passion that you are sharing that is motivational in its own. And I think it's like stopping at the food stand kinda now and just saying, yes, these are my people.
Peter Hayward: That is my guest today on FuturePod. Doris Viljoen returns to tell us about the next WFSF conference that is coming up soon
Peter Hayward: Welcome back to Future Pod Doris.
Doris Viljoen: Thank you very much, Peter. It is so lovely to talk to you again.
Peter Hayward: Doris, we're here to talk about the next World conference for the World Future Studies Federation, and this year, where is the conference taking place?
Doris Viljoen: Oh, the conference is coming to Africa, more specifically to Cape Town, to the Stellenbosch Business School.
Peter Hayward: That's awesome. Is this the first Federation conference that's going to actually be held in Africa?
Doris Viljoen: No. Apparently there has been in the very, very early years long ago, there has been one, I think somewhere in North Africa. It's not the first one.
Peter Hayward: And congratulations that Stellenbosch you're gonna be hosting and that will be the location of it?
Doris Viljoen: Yes. We are going to be at the business school. The business school is not, even though we call Stellenbosch Business School, the big residential university is in the small town of Stellenbosch. But the business school itself is in Cape Town. So the location is Belville Cape Town, where the Stellenbosch Business School campus is, and that is the location for the conference.
Peter Hayward: When is the conference Doris?
Doris Viljoen: End of October. So if you are listening, put it in your diary and then immediately book your tickets and register. We are starting on Wednesday the 29th of October, and we continue until Friday the 31st.
Peter Hayward: Okay. What's the conference theme this year?
Doris Viljoen: Oh, we thought about it and just looking at the news and everything and how people and people are with each other, people and nature and everything, people and machines.
It seems as though there's such a contentious lot of tension building that we said, no, let's go. Let's think, how can we thrive together? So the conference theme is thriving together in its widest possible, meaning thriving between people and nature, between nature and itself, and us, and machines and technology and everything.
Thriving together: a big umbrella term.
Peter Hayward: We certainly can do with some thrive in the current conditions in the world. Doris, when we were chatting before we started, I also am very interested in Africa as a place to go to talk about thriving together. How does that kind of fit together in your mind?
Doris Viljoen: Africa is on the agenda of very many people because it's an interesting place; the marketers love Africa because that's where the next billion potential consumers will live. So there's a lot of interest in Africa for multiple reasons. We still have big swaths of arable land, but we also haveimmense issues and tensions and things. So Africa is on the agenda of very many people, but I would say come to Africa just to experience it because if you just read what you read,, you get a very skewed view of Africa. Africa's an amazing place with amazing people, amazing spaces, amazing everything.
So start with a conference, then you have one country, then there are . more than 50, more absolutely unique spaces to explore because one of those big misunderstandings out there is that Africa's one place. It is not one place. It is very many unique, amazing spaces.
So, start your Africa list with the conference. Then at least you have Cape Town South Africa ticked off because yeah, there's also very many other places in South Africa even that is totally unique and different. So I think come experience it for yourself. That would be the biggest reason to come see the blue sky, breathe the air and see the sun of Africa.
Peter Hayward: You would obviously be an experienced conference goer. Is thislikely to be like a conference like people would attend if they went to Europe or America or somewhere. And it's just held in South Africa, or is this going to be a conference from Africa? About Africa as well as the others.
Doris Viljoen: We are trying from the organizer side, we trying to weave in a little bit of tastes of Africa. So the gala dinner, there is a little bit of exposure. And, we've organized with Cape Town Tourism. So what I would suggest is that you add a day or two; why fly all the way and not do a little bit of extra something special?
Cape Town Tourism agreed to have a hot desk at the conference where people can think about other things to do and explore while they are here. I think if you come to Cape Town that is being voted the most beautiful city in the world many times every year by different places. If you come here, we are making a plan from our side, we are talking to the caterers to make sure that they are serving beautiful tastes.
Your conference badge is going to be looking different to any conference badge you've ever seen before. Just weaving in a little bit of “Hey, you're not elsewhere. You are actually right here in Cape Town.” Many of the presentations will be people from Africa speaking about Africa, but there is also very many global presentations.
I think there's a nice balance. We've just finished looking through all of the abstracts and things like that, and there's a nice balance. Between people from Africa speaking about Africa, but also many people from the world. Speaking about other spaces and places.
Peter Hayward: Is there anything you can tell the listeners about some of the themes or the, how the actual information's gonna be presented?
Doris Viljoen: Like with many other conferences, and I think similar to previous World Future Studies Federation conferences, there will be plenary sessions where we will have keynotes and things like that.
And then quite a lot of breakout sessions where people get the chances to present their work. And so yeah, all kinds of different themes and beautiful things coming through. Very techie things. I dunno whether I'm allowed to say this, but there's this one person, when we talk about techie kind of things that actually schooled AI agents on real life experts, then did a Delphi with those AI agents and afterwards compared it or asked the real experts whether they agreed with the AI agents..
. So we have very techy, cool stuff, and very philosophical kind of things. Real projects, people coming and tell what they did, what they really did. Nature-based things where national parks Asked: “How do we reimagine the future for national parks?”
All kinds of presentations, I think there's a really well balanced spread One of the hardest things is probably going to be if you attend the conference to choose which stream to go to because it's gonna be cool either way.
Peter Hayward: I would imagine there will be online attending as well as physical attending or there'll be an ability for people who cannot get to South Africa to actually still be able to participate.
Doris Viljoen: There will be a little bit, we will record the plenary sessions. So we'll be recording the plenary sessions, but not the breakouts. No, this is an in-person one. We spoke about it a lot and then we said, no, you know what, this time we need to be in physical proximity to each other. Okay. So there will be recordings ofplenary sessions and things like that, but it's an in-person conference.
When we talk about the conference, there is a beautiful website dedicated to the conference. So if you go to wfsf2025capetown.org, that is where you will find all of the information about the conference.
Abstracts obviously are closed for now, but registrations are open. We are going to be able to accommodate a maximum of 150 people and the seats are filling up. We are quite excited. So register as soon as what you can. We try to make it really easy, so you just press the buttons and fill in the form.
And there you go. You are going to attend. If you need a Visa letter, you can apply and we willdraw up a Visa letter and send it to you. Unfortunately, the WFSF does not have sponsorship or anything like that for, to pay for people to attend. I know that in some conferences that is a case that you can apply and people will sponsor you.
For this one we tried, butthere are none. So if a big sponsor is listening and you want to sponsor people, we will take the sponsorship and help people to attend for free. But we looked and we couldn't. That's one of the sad things. But yeah, that's probably a problem across the world, Peter, that nobody has money anymore.
It's no more extra money.
Peter Hayward: Doris why should someone come to Cape Town to attend what is a very small but exclusive conference like this one?
Doris Viljoen: We've spoken just now about why come to Cape Town specifically, but I think we must also share a few thoughts about why it's beneficial to attend a future studies conference. If you are working in the field. My experience is that we do cool stuff, but sometimes it gets a little bit lonely to do our work.
So one of the big reasons why I would come to the conference is to just spend time with like-minded individuals, that community and just being withother people that are all also sharing the passion that you are sharing, that is motivational in its own. And I think it's like stopping at the food stand kinda now and just saying, yes, these are my people.
This is why we are doing this work. Let's go again. So I think that community is one of the big things why I would choose to attend. a future studies conference. And then fresh insights. We do what we do thinking that we are doing it well, but then listening to what other people are doing, what they are busy with, how they did it, what kind of methods they used, what worked, what didn't work, helps.
I think that fresh insights is a beautiful reason to attend because then you just learn new things. And then, for me, at the first conferences in future studies that I attended, to meet your yeroes, that was so cool for me to just see, meet people in real life. Sometimes we communicate via email or things like that, but to meet them in real life, that's special, but also to make new connections, listening to presentations, realizing that, oh, I think we are thinking about this thing in the same manner.
We're probably gonna identify potential synergies for future work going forward. If you're coming to present, it always looksgood on your CV to say, Hey, you were a presenter at the WFSF Conference, but don't come here just for the cv.
Come here for the connections and stuff but also to stay updated because we can get stale after a while and start believing ourselves. It is good to justcome and listen and see what everybody else is doing so that we can stay updated with where the field is moving, what we are doing, especially frameworks, tools, techniques, what people are doing, how they are doing stuff.
And then, yeah, I think also then being challenged because that's what happens at a conference. You sit and you listen to people and you realize. Oh, okay. They see and they're coming at this from a totally different angle, and I think that is one of the big things too, to be challenged, to have our minds shaken a little bit.
So that weo start developing new perspectives and things. So yeah, that would be the reasons I think it would be a bargain to spend the money, come to Cape Town, do the conference.
Peter Hayward: Sounds good. Doris. I congratulate Stellenbosch and yourself on getting the conference up and running it on behalf of the Federation. I hope as many of the future pod listeners as can do, make the effort to have, I suspect what would be a quite life changing experience to get to Africa, see what Africa's and as you say plug into the community. For the people who listen to Future Pod, they know it's a very varied community. The chance to meet them in person rather than just hear them would be pretty special. But thanks Doris for spending some time with the community and good luck for the conference.
Doris Viljoen: Thank you very much, Peter. It's always nice to share thoughts with you.
Peter Hayward: Thanks to Doris and for what sounds like an amazing conference in Cape Town. Future Pod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support the pod, then please check out the Patreon link on our website. I'm Peter Hayward. Thanks for joining me today. Till next time.