Future Day Melbourne 2015 (Main Event)

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Event Schedule (note main event starts at 5pm but there is lunch beforehand at 1pm - hence the 2 events)

1.00pm Lunch, lightning talks and a whole lot of fun at Fitzroy Gardens near the gazebo/’Old Bandstand’ (https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Old+Bandstand,+East+Melbourne+VIC+3002/@-37.81208,144.983178,18z/data=!4m6!1m3!3m2!1s0x0:0xf04567605318610!2sFitzroy+Gardens!3m1!1s0x6ad642c285bb01a5:0xecfd6336bf7de9cd) [map (https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Old+Bandstand,+East+Melbourne+VIC+3002/@-37.81208,144.983178,18z/data=!4m6!1m3!3m2!1s0x0:0xf04567605318610!2sFitzroy+Gardens!3m1!1s0x6ad642c285bb01a5:0xecfd6336bf7de9cd)]
5.00pm Main Event at Unitarian Hall (see below for speaker list) (Unitarian Hall, 110 Grey St East Melbourne (https://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=Unitarian+Church,+Grey+St,+East+Melbourne,+Victoria&hl=en&sll=-37.811678,144.984797&sspn=0.015511,0.033023&oq=Unitaria110+Grey+St+East+Melbourne&gl=au&t=m&z=17&iwloc=A) [map (https://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=Unitarian+Church,+Grey+St,+East+Melbourne,+Victoria&hl=en&sll=-37.811678,144.984797&sspn=0.015511,0.033023&oq=Unitaria110+Grey+St+East+Melbourne&gl=au&t=m&z=17&iwloc=A)])
8.00pm (approx) Dinner at Gong De Lin (Level 3, 264 Swanston St – Take Lift inside Noodle Kingdom [map (https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Gong+De+Lin/@-37.811807,144.965146,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x1301f6156a8559c8)] [urban spoon (http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/1730282/restaurant/CBD/Gong-De-Lin-Melbourne)])
9.00pm (approx) Drinks at Rooftop Bar (Rooftop, Curtin House, 252 Swanston St [map (https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Rooftop+Bar+%26+Cinema/@-37.811986,144.965269,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x63d6a35720dfe0db)] [urban spoon (http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/1491642/restaurant/CBD/Rooftop-Bar-Melbourne)])

Speakers (Main Event)

5.00 Introduction

5.15 Lyn Allison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Allison) – “Climate Change & the Future”
Lyn is the Vice President of the Rationalist Society and a former long term Senator for Victoria (Democrats). Among other things, she is very experienced in the area of environmental politics and climate change denialism. I thought the Future Day conference would benefit greatly from her insights into the potential implications of ignoring climate change.

6.00 John Wilkins (http://evolvingthoughts.net/) – “Philosophy and the Future – Can we know the future?”
Has spoken previously at SciFuture and has participated in an interview series – eloquent and insightful – philosopher of science with focus on taxonomy of speciation (I think..)

6.45 Greg Adamson (http://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/gadamson/greg_adamson.htm) – “Future challenges in technology”
Over the past 30 years the technical community has developed an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the impact of technology on society. Global climate change, the importance of humanitarian technologies, technology for development, privacy and security, and the importance of ethics are all now accepted as part of the technology challenge. Is our job done? In this talk, Dr Greg Adamson (University of Melbourne), President of the IEEE’s Society on Social Implications of Technology, will speak about three important challenges for the next 20 to 50 years: the future of work; autonomous warfare; and, human-machine boundaries.

7.30 Panel “Navigating the Future” – Lyn Allison, John Wilkins, Greg Adamson

8.00 Dinner (see above)

http://fd2015.scifuture.org - more details to come :)

"We all have aspirations, and we know that we are all too often sidetracked in this age of distraction - however, to firmly ritualize our commitment to the future, each year we celebrate the future, and address the glorious problem of arriving at a future that we want. Lurking behind every unfolding minute is the potential for a random tangent with no real benefit for our future selves - so it is Future Day to the rescue! A day to remind us to include more of the future in our attention economies, and help us to procrastinate being distracted by the usual gauntlet of noise we run every other day. We take seriously the premise that our future is very important - the notion that accelerating technological progress will change the world deserves a lot more attention than that which can be gleaned from most other days of celebration. So, let us remind ourselves to remember the future - an editable history of a time to come - a future, that without our conscious deliberation and positive action, may not be the future that we intended."

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