Nan Nelson, Envision Board Member and Economic Transformation Signals Team
A new startup is using AI to make non-English call center employees, who are often located in India, Pakistan or the Philippines, sound American. Founded in 2020, Sanas now provides companies with a proprietary AI software that works in real-time to alter users’ voices to sound more “Western.” Its aim is to “improve human-to-human relationships,” but critics argue the plan is fraught with ethical and psychological implications. Some say it puts the onus on non-Westerners to cater to Western interests. Read more here.
Enjoy the September 2023 Horizons, Envision’s bi-monthly newsletter. Meet Alexa Naudziunas, Envision’s new executive director; read how Karmen Lemke, Director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Green Bay, has helped implement Strategic Foresight Training in her agency; and benefit from valuable insights on current trends and signals from Envision Board members.
Jim Golembeski, Envision Board member and Upward Mobility Signals Team
It takes 18 years to grow a worker.
That makes workforce forecasting one of the easiest things that Envision can do in our efforts to identify trends and challenges. It is easy to gather live birth data for our region on an annual basis and extrapolate out into the future.
We know the numbers of each age group, year by year, in NEW North. I have been speaking about these numbers for more than twenty years. The writing, as in the book of Daniel, has been on the wall: too many Baby Boomers retiring and not enough replacement workers coming into our workforce.
Karmen Lemke, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Green Bay
Although the future is really in the hands of our Almighty God, we can use our wisdom to best prepare Catholic Charities for our next years of service. That’s just what we’ve been doing since 1918. Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Green Bay began when the Rev. Paul P. Rhode was appointed to the position of Bishop. His familiarity with outreach to the poor prompted Bishop Rhode to conduct a local survey which highlighted needs for services within the Green Bay area. He created a plan to implement a social services arm of the Diocese of Green Bay.
Alexa Naudziunas, with deep roots in community-building, has accepted the position of Executive Director of Envision. She begins her term September 8 when she joins Envision’s eighth Garry Golden Strategic Foresight Workshop series along with 23 others. In October, she will enter the University of Houston’s certification program on Strategic Foresight.
Alexa was selected from a strong field of candidates after the resignation of Envision’s first Executive Director, Steve McCarthy, who left to return to his home in western Wisconsin. The search committee was impressed by her grassroots experience in building community involvement: She was employed by the city of Oshkosh for eight years, doing major event planning as well as coordinating neighborhood and city committees.
(Excerpts from Leatherby, Lauren. “How a Vast Demographic Shift Will Reshape the World,” New York Times, July 16, 2023.)
Excerpted by Phil Hauck, Envision Board and Economic Transformation Signals Team
The world’s demographics have already been transformed. Europe is shrinking. China is shrinking, with India, a much younger country, overtaking it this year as the world’s most populous nation.
Judy Nagel, Envision Board and Upward Mobility Signals Team
When you think of a drone, how high do you imagine it going, and how long do you imagine it staying in the air? Did you realize that the new “pseudo-satellite” drones can soar to heights of more than 60,000 feet and stay up there for months? That’s the report from Alistair MacDonald in The Wall Street Journal, which labeled such drones the “innovation of the week” recently.
Our first Network Cohort held its second meeting … and they know that ChatGPT will be on the agenda each meeting for quite some time. Participants recounted how they are using it so far, mainly to write contracts and publicity material. One member used ChatGPT to develop a service contract, needing only a few adjustments to make it workable; it saved them $4,000 in attorney costs. Another used it to develop the computer code for a new application, cutting coding time by 75%. And still another member of the cohort uses it daily, along with DALL-E (for images), as part of graphic marketing communications efforts. And yes, members are alert to bad information that might work its way in.
Post-Workshop, you are likely to need some advice or even ongoing consulting to help you implement the Strategic Foresight techniques you’ve learned, to make them more impactful within your team or organization. Envision offers that support. And we start during Garry Golden’s workshop! We now meet with participants after the second class session to make sure they’re using the tools correctly, making optimal use of Diigo and creating an effective Domain Map with good key words to use with Google Alerts or ChatGPT. Then, after the SF Workshop concludes, we meet with participants again to ascertain exactly how they want to ingrain what they’ve learned into their organization, and we offer to help them do that. That follow-up help comes in two ways: Advising and Consulting.
Heidi Selberg, Envision Board Member and Upward MobilitySignals Team
Our team’s previous reports have shown the importance of public policy in supporting upward mobility. Judy Nagel’s reports have outlined international comparisons, demonstrating that several government policies related to childcare, health, and other matters are critical to those countries’ higher rates of upward mobility. But what if upward mobility in the U.S. is not accelerating because our institutions are becoming weaker?
