In this 3 day virtual symposium, we invite a curated group of thought leaders, practitioners, policymakers, funders, systems designers, educators, and technologists to come together in action, practice, and theory in service to some of the most pressing needs of our time.
Watch the sessions
We look forward to coming together for our next Open Future Forum.
In the meantime, catch up on the 2022 sessions in the playlist here.
OUR CONVENING PARTNERS
OCTOBER 18:
Civic Infrastructure,
Energy, & Built Environment
OCTOBER 19:
Hunger, Food Systems, & Nutrition
OCTOBER 20:
Ecorestoration & Climate Action
Participants are invited to engage in a series of cross sectoral discussions, design sprints, and topical roundtables to advance participatory demonstration projects, share models and examples from their own efforts, and cross pollinate theories and frameworks based on these examples of applied action.
Our intent is to amplify the rich ecosystem of partners we are weaving to co-resource existing needs and strengthen the capacities of each of our initiatives, emerging with tangible plans and context for ongoing, mutually supportive engagement in our collective efforts. We know that in order to liberate our common future, we must be willing to positively disrupt concentrations of power, deepen our practices for self-organizing, question our assumptions, and lean into shared emergence.
OCTOBER 18
“How do we prepare our cities, our built environments, and our communities to be resilient in a time of growing instability?”
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A participatory visioning exercise in collaboration with the Guild of Future Architects.
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In this roundtable discussion, we will look at issues of displacement through the lens of SDG17—partnership towards the goals. We will highlight some existing examples of inter-agency, public, and private collaboration within the space, name common obstacles to collaboration, and identify possible paths forward.
Panelists include:
Shivani Singh - Pathfinders
Kevin Rowell - United Refuge
Bahati Kanyamanza - Asylum Access
Alexander Svechenko - Restart Ukraine
Annegret Wulff - Vidnova -
Human health and wellbeing are increasingly dependent on the health and wellbeing of our planet’s ecosystems, as well as the built environment. Historically, the green building movement focused on energy efficiency, conservation, and raising environmental standards in the built environment: overlooking the harmful chemicals often present in our building materials. Please join this roundtable discussion and meet some of the pioneers in the green building movement, as well as the Executive Director of the Helen R. Walton Children’s Enrichment Center, one of the first early childcare centers in the nation to eliminate six classes of the harmful toxic chemicals in the built environment and the Dean of the Parsons School of Design and the Healthy Building Materials Lab.
Panelists include:
Michelle Barnes - Helen R. Walton Center
Dave Lewis - Co-Founder of LTL Architects & Dean of the Parsons School of Design
Bob Berkebile - BNIM Architects, U.S. Green Building Council, & Heartland P5
Anne Robertson - Toxic Free Futures
John Porretto - Verde Capital Resources -
A roundtable of equitable real estate developers, funders, & policymakers sharing learnings from current demonstration projects, with opportunities to participate in skill & value exchange.
Presenters include:
Juan Saldana - P3 Markets
Ann Helmke - Compassionate San Antonio
Tyler Wood - Carbotura & Hot Planet Repair
Madebo Fatunde - IFAfrica
Laura Burgis - Human Values Center
Tayyib Smith - Growth Collective
Karuna Warren - WaterNow
Alexander Svechenko - Restart Ukraine
Dr. Gajanan G. Sabhahit, Sri Sathya Sai Premaarpitham Foundation
Deborah Marton - Van Alen Institute Alan Dones - SUDA LLC
Bob Berkebile - Heartland P5 & BNIM Architects -
Community resilience has a lot of dimensions, from housing and disaster readiness to economic development and wealth creation. In this roundtable discussion, we will showcase existing models for funding community resilience on local and regional scales, learn from one another’s challenges, and identify common paths forward.
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Cohesion within, and compatibility between, networks require innovative and responsive social and legal governance to enable stewardship and cooperation. In this interactive roundtable, we will explore the question, "how do we network networks?", highlighting examples of what has worked well, and where we face collective challenges in modeling organizing patterns for dynamic, distributed, yet interrelated commons of sovereign and integral networks. Facilitated in partnership with Prosocial.
Participants include:
Jeff Genung- Prosocial
Dounia Saeme- Prosocial
Donna Nelham - Unstitution
Mark Beam - Guild of Future Architects
Elliot Bayev - Global Unity
Faith Flannigan - Buckminster Fuller Institute
Lauren Archer - Kinship Earth
Stephen Gomes, Ph.D - Kinship Earth
Jordan Sukut - Lionsberg
Rieki Cordon - Hypha/ Regen Civics Alliance
Jeff Clearwater - Village Lab
Keala Young - Collaborative Tech Alliance
Elizabeth Herald - Water Unity Network
(all times are in PST)
OCTOBER 19
“What key interventions can we advance in service of more resilient, healthful, and just food systems?”
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Item description
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A facilitated roundtable of practitioner presentations and dialogue showcasing bioregional regenerative agriculture and agroforestry demonstration projects.
Presenters include:
Dan Krull & Jacob Canyon - Regen Partners
Josh Hughes - Verde Energia
Katharina Serafimova - Associação Terra Sintrópica
Kirk Bergstrom & Aram Armstrong- Nourish Hawai’i
Prishani Satyapal - Sustainability Truthing
Geoffrey Kwala- Uganda Regenerative Agriculture
Nathan Lou - Mongol Tribe
Dan Ward - Wales Transition Lab
Chris Hardy- Grow Hardy Seeds
Cindy Tolle- Evergreen Ranching -
In this interdisciplinary panel, food and agriculture professionals will explore their challenges and successes in funding regenerative behavior in their production and business practices, from farm to table. After the panel discussion, practitioners will engage in an interactive discussion to identify remaining hopes, needs, opportunities to solve them, and how Open Impact may help them achieve their goals.
Panelists include:
Chef Michael Foust, Chartwells
Dan Kuebler, Salad Garden, Columbia Farmers Market
Nelson Sousa, Boys Grow
Lindsey Jones, Missouri Organic Association
Jacob Canyon & Dan Krull, Regen Partners
Dari Biswanath, NC A&T Cooperative Extension
Emily Wright, Three Creeks Farm and Forest
Bill Stoddart, Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT
Arno Hesse, Slow Money Norcal -
In this participatory discussion on the fundamental right to access of nutritious, affordable, and culturally-appropriate food for all, we will explore disparities in food access, particularly for communities of color and low-income communities, examining the structural roots of our food system, and solutions for ensuring resilience and health in communities.
Panelists include:
Malik Yakini - Detroit Black Community Security Network
Coach D Williams - Get Fit, Fly Right NY
Andres Jara - Roots, Rice & Beans
Mafah Cornelius Kuta - Wandusoa Organic Cameroon
Suparna Kudesia - CoFED
Alison Hensley-Sexaur - Rouge Valley Food Systems -
As a culmination of the morning’s conversation on “Funding from farm to table,” we’ll dive into the collaborative effort between Open Future Coalition, NC A&T, and a coalition of university and community partners to restore federal matching dollars to local communities and fund smallholder farmers and producers throughout the U.S.
After an overview of the effort and its aims, this participatory design session will invite shared thinking on an ongoing collaborative effort to better unlock and apply hundreds of millions in federal funding currently being left on the table.
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Workshop and roundtable discussion on Regenerate America Initiative focused on for the 2023 US Farm Bill, hosted by American Sustainable Business Network.
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Hosted by Reconsider.
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In this participatory roundtable, we will explore how health, nutrition, and community security is intimately tied to the vitality of the land, water, and soils. We'll outline the inherent connection between soil microbiomes and human microbiomes and discuss how transitioning to regenerative agriculture is a direct intervention to ensuring wellbeing in our communities.
Panelists include:
Dan Kittredge - Bionutrient Food Association
Dr. Nasha Winters- Metabolic Terrain Institute of Health
Marianne Wyne - Planetary Care
Dr. Melanie Carlone DPT- NuraHealth & Planetary Care
Adam Fishman - Onora
(All times in PST)
Sponsored by:
OCTOBER 20
“How do we cooperate to avert planetary tipping points while working to regenerate and restore a thriving biosphere?”
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A participatory visioning exercise in collaboration with the Guild of Future Architects.
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This session will examine models for local stewardship in the funding of ecological restoration, including the highlight of several emerging funds and pilot projects focused on indigenous stewarded land restoration.
Pablo Friedlander - Treeangle Foundation
Amanda Efthimiou - El Puente
Kaitlin Archambault - Open Future Fund
Angela Martínez - Amazon Defenders Fund
Miriam Volat - Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund -
A facilitated roundtable of presentations and dialogue showcasing bioregional demonstration projects practicing ecological restoration in dynamic ecologies.
Presenters include:
Minni Jain - The Flow Partnership
John D Liu - Ecosystem Restoration Camps
Stefan Schwarzer - Climate Landscapes
Atossa Soltani - Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance
Marcel DeBerg - Green Water Cools
Mark Nelson, Meridel Rubenstein, Dr. Davide Tocchetto - Eden in Iraq
Kyle Hence - Many Rivers, One Ocean
Rob DeLaet - World Climate School
Florent Kaiser - Accion Andina
Johnathan Kabat - Hotlum Ecorestoration Camp
Oriol Tarragó Costa- Montserrat Project
Cindy Tolle- Evergreen Ranching
Pablo Friedlander- Treeangle Foundation -
Facilitated roundtable sharing science and ecological knowledge of the inter-related interactions between water, soil, vegetation and climate. We'll dive into the cascading benefits when these dynamic ecologies are intact, and the devastating consequences to the entire web of life when the balance of these ecologies are disrupted.
Panelists Include;Ananda Fitzsimmons - Regeneration Canada
Philip Franses - The Flow Partnership
Rob DeLaet - World Climate School
Marcel De Berg - Green Water Cools
Erica Gies - Author: “Water Always Wins: Thriving in an age of drought and deluge”
Stefan Schwarzer - Climate Landscapes
Alpha Lo - Regenerative Water Alliance
Jackson Buzingo- Syntropic Agroforestry -
To advance solutions for ecological restoration (and systems change at large) at scale, we must challenge and expand upon existing practices for collective learning and knowledge sharing. In this facilitated roundtable discussion, we will share our current successes, challenges, and explore possibilities for our shared path ahead.
Panelists Include;Deborah Snyder - Institute of Ecotechnics
Keala Young- Culture Seed/ VillageLab
Kirk Bergstrom - Imagine.World
Jon Schull - Ecorestoration Alliance
Jeff Clearwater - VillageLab
Nathan Gray - Geoversity
Caroline Paulick-Thiel - Politics for Tomorrow
Vincent Arena - Catalyst
Mickael Levy - Academia Biospherica
Rebecca Harman - Regen Network -
In this session, we’ll hear from projects the challenges of funding ecological restoration, and explore possible paths forward.
Participants include:
Chid Liberty, Made in Africa
Deborah Stern, Capital for Climate
Karl Burkart, One Earth
Sushant Shrestha, Humanitas Smart Planet Systems
Rebecca Harman, Regen Network -
We are living in a time of massive intergenerational transition of wealth, culture, and knowledge. With a new generation inheriting both a wealth of innovation and planetary risk, this panel will examine successful practices in intergenerational bridge building, followed by a participatory inquiry into the path forward. Facilitated in partnership with Intergen.
Panelists Include;Sofia Sunaga - Intergen
David Chang - Intergen
Lauren Archer - Kinship Earth
Jeff Genung - Prosocial
Astrid Montuclard - The East Point Peace Academy -
Participatory dialogue co-sensing strategic opportunities to cooperatively leverage the power of storytelling and media to shape solutions-focused narratives and drive collective action.
Participants include:
Roberta Baskin - Investigative Journalist
Eric Watson - Protozoa Pictures
Paul Redman - If Not Us Then Who
Sanjeev Chatterjee - Media for Change
Marcina Hale - Reconsider
David Hernandez - If Not Us Then Who
Kojo Sankofa - Filmmaker, Journalist, Storyteller
Isa Santana- If Not Us Then Who
Fran Sterling - Blueshift Education
Jake Kelley - Our Planet, Our Future
John D Liu - Environmental Education Media Project
Jon Schull- Ecorestoration Alliance
Moran Sol Broza- Be
Elizabeth Herald - Water Unity Network
Ian Mackenzie - Reculture North Studios -
Facilitated participatory discussion of co-liberation, how it cannot be experienced without recognizing the sovereignty and inherent rights of traditional peoples of place AND of nature itself; exploring how stewardship, accountability, recognition, reciprocity, reparations and reconciliation are foundational to any true systemic change.
Panelists include:
Atossa Soltani - Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance
Osprey Orielle - Womens’ Environmental and Climate Action Network
Carmen Sandoval - Santa Ynez Chumash - Artist & Educator
Iniquilipi Gracilio Chiari Lombardo - Guna Nation- Panama
Cassandra Ferrara - Center for Ethical Land Transition
David Hernandez- If Not Us Then Who
Nathan Lou - Mongol Tribe
Mariana Bandera - Vivencia Project
Miguel Rivera - Guild of Future Architects
Nathan Gray - Geoversity
Emanuel Brown - Acorn Center -
This participatory roundtable discussion will explore the risks of using technology to reinforce our separation from living systems, and the power of technology to serve nature and human evolution. By viewing technology through a living systems lens, we can harness the capacity to unlock true human potential and planetary flourishing.
Participants include:
Ferananda Ibarra - Commons Engine
Adina Popescu - AERTH
Keala Young - Collaborative Tech Alliance
Tibet Sprague - Hylo
Adam Apollo - Superluminal
Rieki Cordon - Hypha
Ale Salvot - TUVO
Brad DeGraf - Sociative
Kaitlin Archambault - Open Future Coalition
(All times in PST)