Why foresight should be in the DNA of the social change field

An OGR and JustLabs Guide on futures thinking

 

The Guide for Foresight in the Social Change Field is available for free download on the Futures section of the JustLabs website.

 

Foresight is about systematically imagining different probable futures, and identifying what future it is that we prefer, then making that future happen starting today. It is like having a new intelligence system that feeds into our every strategy and activity. Foresight is also a key skill for social change practitioners


If we in the social change field are in the business of making a better future, why are our methods and agendas so often reactive? In this JustLabs Guide for Foresight in the Social Change Field, written by Krizna Gomez, you'll find over a dozen activities and exercises to assist you in making foresight thinking actionable in your organization and your own social change practice.

 

Global
Futures
Foresight Guide

Error Occurred While Processing Request The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes.
Error Occurred While Processing Request

Complex object types cannot be converted to simple values.

The expression has requested a variable or an intermediate expression result as a simple value. However, the result cannot be converted to a simple value. Simple values are strings, numbers, boolean values, and date/time values. Queries, arrays, and COM objects are examples of complex values.

The most likely cause of the error is that you tried to use a complex value as a simple one. For example, you tried to use a query variable in a cfif tag.

 
The error occurred in C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm: line 4008
Called from C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm: line 4007
Called from C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm: line 4006
Called from C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm: line 3628
Called from C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm: line 3568
Called from C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm: line 1
Called from C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/foresight-guide/index.cfm: line 1
 
4006 : <cfif isDefined("url.lang")>
4007 : <cfoutput query="get_content_topic"><div class="col-md-4" style="height:540px;">
4008 : <div class="teaser-box"><cfif CGI.QUERY_STRING gt 1><a href="#Replace(url,'index.cfm','')#?#CGI.QUERY_STRING#"><cfelse><a href="#Replace(url,'index.cfm','')#"></cfif><cfif page_title neq ''><img src="/userfiles/image/placeholder.png" style="width:100%; background-image:url('#page_title#'); background-size:cover; background-position: center center; background-repeat: no-repeat;" /><cfelse><img src="/userfiles/image/placeholder.png" style="width:100%; background-image:url(/userfiles/image/no-photo-available.png); background-size:cover; background-position: center center; background-repeat: no-repeat;" /></cfif></a><div style="width:100%; vertical-align:middle;"><cfif CGI.QUERY_STRING gt 1><a href="#Replace(url,'index.cfm','')#?#CGI.QUERY_STRING#" style="vertical-align:middle;"><cfelse><a href="#Replace(url,'index.cfm','')#?#CGI.QUERY_STRING#" style="vertical-align:middle;"></cfif><h3 style="margin-top:12px; font-size:22px; line-height:24px; margin-bottom:0px; vertical-align:middle; text-align:left"><strong style="vertical-align:middle; color:##000000;">#page#</strong></h3></a><p style="margin-top:8px; font-family:'Open Sans',Helvetica; font-size:18px"><!---#DateFormat(start_date, "mmmm d, yyyy")#<br />--->By: <a href="#Replace(author_url,'index.cfm','')#" style="font-family:Lora, Tinos, serif; color: ##262D70; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold;">#author_name#</a><cfif coauthor1_name neq ''><span style="font-size:16px"> &amp; </span></cfif><cfif coauthor1_name neq ''><a href="#Replace(coauthor1_url,'index.cfm','')#" style="font-family:Lora, Tinos, serif; color: ##262D70; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold;">#coauthor1_name#</a></cfif><cfif coauthor2_name neq ''><span style="font-size:16px"> &amp; </span></cfif><cfif coauthor2_name neq ''><a href="#Replace(coauthor2_url,'index.cfm','')#" style="font-family:Lora, Tinos, serif; color: ##262D70; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold;">#coauthor2_name#</a></cfif><cfif coauthor3_name neq ''><span style="font-size:16px"> &amp; </span></cfif><cfif coauthor3_name neq ''><a href="#Replace(coauthor3_url,'index.cfm','')#" style="font-family:Lora, Tinos, serif; color: ##262D70; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold;">#coauthor3_name#</a></cfif><br />
4009 : 
4010 : <cfquery name="get_content_topic_translations" datasource="#datasource#">
Resources:

Browser   CCBot/2.0 (https://commoncrawl.org/faq/)
Remote Address   3.238.125.76
Referrer  
Date/Time   04-Jul-22 05:04 PM
Stack Trace
at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor48(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm:4008) at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor50(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm:4007) at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor78(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm:4006) at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor99(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm:3628) at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor104(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm:3568) at cfindex2ecfm389513140.runPage(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/index.cfm:1) at cfindex2ecfm1858872904.runPage(C:/websites/openglobalrights.com/wwwroot/foresight-guide/index.cfm:1) 

coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage$ComplexObjectException: Complex object types cannot be converted to simple values.
	at coldfusion.runtime.Cast._String(Cast.java:1049)
	at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor48(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\index.cfm:4008)
	at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor50(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\index.cfm:4007)
	at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor78(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\index.cfm:4006)
	at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor99(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\index.cfm:3628)
	at cfindex2ecfm389513140._factor104(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\index.cfm:3568)
	at cfindex2ecfm389513140.runPage(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\index.cfm:1)
	at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:244)
	at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:446)
	at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage._emptyTcfTag(CfJspPage.java:2795)
	at cfindex2ecfm1858872904.runPage(C:\websites\openglobalrights.com\wwwroot\foresight-guide\index.cfm:1)
	at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:244)
	at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:446)
	at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:65)
	at coldfusion.filter.IpFilter.invoke(IpFilter.java:64)
	at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:451)
	at coldfusion.filter.RequestMonitorFilter.invoke(RequestMonitorFilter.java:48)
	at coldfusion.filter.MonitoringFilter.invoke(MonitoringFilter.java:40)
	at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:112)
	at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:94)
	at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28)
	at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38)
	at coldfusion.filter.NoCacheFilter.invoke(NoCacheFilter.java:58)
	at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38)
	at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)
	at coldfusion.filter.CachingFilter.invoke(CachingFilter.java:62)
	at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:219)
	at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:89)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:303)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208)
	at coldfusion.monitor.event.MonitoringServletFilter.doFilter(MonitoringServletFilter.java:42)
	at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:46)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:241)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:208)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:218)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:110)
	at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:506)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:169)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:103)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:962)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:116)
	at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:466)
	at org.apache.coyote.ajp.AjpProcessor.process(AjpProcessor.java:197)
	at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:637)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:316)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)