We brave the future
One day. One question. Many voices. No key speakers.
Participate in our first Future Skills Unconference.
For experienced innovators, change-makers and researchers from corporates, public organisations and NGOs.
Together we explore which human skills the future asks of us and what they mean for you, as a person and as a professional. You and your peers set the agenda, pick the topics and plan the day.
A much needed conversation about future skills. What comes next for the people who lead change in corporates, public organisations and NGOs? We search for that answer together with the people who live it. We start small, with a few catalyst sessions. The aim is a community that owns this conversation and carries it further.
A much needed conversation.
With the people who do the work.
Work is changing for everyone who leads change, in the private and the public sector alike. Yet most of the conversation about what comes next happens without them.
The Future Skills Unconference is a shared search for what comes next: which human skills will carry people forward, how they build them and how we steer towards the futures we would prefer. What the rooms find will become a published white paper on future skills.
Dates and cities
Find the room nearest you.
Every unconference is announced on our calendar, with its city, its host and its date. Rooms are small, so places go quickly. Subscribe and you will hear the moment a new city opens, including the big conference when it lands.
Nothing listed yet? That means the first cities are still being agreed. Subscribe, or tell us where you are.
Who it is for
People who are already changing things.
The rooms are for experienced people who work on change from the inside and for the researchers who study it. What they share is years of practice and a real stake in what comes next.
Innovators
People who build new products, services or ways of working. They see first hand what new work asks of people.
Change-makers
People who lead transformation in teams and organisations. They live with its human side every day.
Researchers
Researchers in future skills, learning and the future of work who want to test their questions against practice.
Across sectors
Corporates, public organisations and NGOs in one room. The same questions look different from each side.
Experience matters here. Every room is built for people with years of practice behind them, so every voice at the table brings lived experience. Not sure whether that is you? Tell us what you would bring.
The conversation
The questions on the table
We do not start with answers. We start with better questions and every room sharpens them further. These are the ones that decide how the next ten years of work actually feel. Most of them are being answered somewhere else, by people who will not be doing the work.
- 01
What is actually changing in how we work, underneath all the noise?
- 02
Which human skills matter more now and which are quietly losing their value?
- 03
Which futures of work are genuinely possible and which one are we drifting into by default?
- 04
What has to be learned and what has to be unlearned first?
- 05
Who gets to decide any of this and how do the people doing the work get a seat?
How it works
One conversation that travels.
The unconferences move from city to city and country to country, each on its own date. Every room adds to the same growing body of knowledge on future skills, so each one can build on what the rooms before it found.
- Step one
A university opens its doors
A local host gives a room and helps fill it. Neutral ground, no commercial venue, no sales pitch in the programme.
- Step two
About twenty experienced people spend a day on it
Innovators, change-makers and researchers from corporates, public organisations and NGOs. Small enough that nobody gets to sit quietly at the back.
- Step three
What it finds is added to the whole
The futures each room mapped, the questions it could not settle, the commitments people made. Captured, shared and carried to the next room.
In the room
The day is yours.
No stage, no keynote, no programme handed down. We bring the question, the space and a light method. You and the people around you set the agenda, pick the topics and plan the day.
One question to start
The day opens on a single question that runs through every unconference. No framing talk. Just enough to get everyone pointed the same way.
An agenda you build
In the first hour the room proposes the sessions, picks the topics and plans the rest of the day. Open space methods, lightly held.
Futures thinking, practised
Possible, plausible, preferred and undesirable futures of work and the human skills each of them asks for. Not forecasting. A way of thinking you take home.
Commitments, not conclusions
The day closes on what each person will actually do next and on what the room wants to see at the following one. That is how a series becomes a movement.
The exchange
What you give. What you get.
A day in this room is a trade. We would rather say so upfront. You bring your experience. We make sure it goes somewhere.
You bring
- Your lived experience of how work is changing
- Honest opinions, including the unpopular ones
- A day of your time and your full attention
- Openness to people who see it differently
You take home
- Peers across sectors: corporates, public organisations, NGOs and research
- A clearer view of what future skills mean for you, as a person and as a professional
- A futures thinking method you can use at work on Monday
- Your perspective in the white paper on future skills, credited to you
- A place in a growing community that carries this conversation on
- First sight of what the whole movement is learning, before anyone else
The white paper
Your perspective, carried forward.
Every unconference feeds one growing knowledge base on future skills, built from what is said in the rooms and reviewed by the people who said it. The aim is a white paper on future skills: written from the lived experience of the people in the rooms and published with their names on it.
What the rooms find also shapes our own work. It informs how Future Skills Academy develops future skills, steered towards the futures we would prefer rather than the ones we drift into.
- 01
Conversations
What is said in every room is captured the same way, wherever and whenever it takes place.
- 02
Synthesis
We shape it into a vision from what you and your peers said, not from what we think.
- 03
Review
Contributors read it and push back before anything is shared.
- 04
Credit and publish
Contributors are named in the white paper. Nobody is quoted without their consent.
For universities
Host a city.
We are looking for universities to host rooms. You already know how to run a day like this. Your building carries a neutrality no rented venue can buy. There is no fee to you.
The ask is one conversation, not a commitment. Thirty minutes to see whether it fits your programme and your calendar.
What you get
- Experienced innovators, change-makers and researchers in your building, with no procurement process
- Your students close to real practice, in a role on the day we agree with you
- A visible position on future skills and the future of work
- Relationships that lead to internships, live projects and guest teaching
- Your city’s findings in the white paper on future skills, with your name on them
What you provide
- A room for 25 to 30 people for one day
- Coffee and lunch, or a plan we make together
- One local contact who helps fill the room
- Student involvement on your terms, in a role we shape together
What we bring
- The format, written down and tested, so nobody improvises
- A facilitator, or training for one of yours
- The shared question that runs through every edition
- Identity, invitation templates and registration
- Synthesis of what your room produced, added to the white paper
Where this is heading
The Future Skills Conference
The unconferences are how it starts and how it stays honest. The conference is the same conversation and the same practice, at a scale where a field can see itself. Two days for 200 to 400 professionals, built around Labs and interactive keynote experiences rather than a stage and an audience.
- Lab one
The Decision Arena
High-stakes scenarios with incomplete information. Fast, intense and revealing. Participants discover how they behave under pressure.
- Lab two
The Creative Edge Playground
A playful environment for breaking patterns, exploring bold ideas and rebuilding creative confidence through rapid challenges and prototyping.
- Lab three
The Systems Mapping Room
A slower, reflective space for mapping complex systems, uncovering hidden relationships and finding where meaningful change is possible.
Four ways in
Build it with us
This is early. We run the first sessions as catalysts. The aim is for the community to own this: to host its own rooms, set its own questions and carry the conversation further. What you bring now shapes what it becomes.
Host a city
For universities with a room, a network and an interest in what practice is actually doing with all this.
See what hosting meansPartner with us
Not simply to be visible, but to be present where these conversations happen. Bring a real challenge into the room.
Talk about partneringCo-create the format
For facilitators and designers who want to build and host a session rather than deliver a talk.
Offer a sessionCome to one
Rooms are small and built for people with experience to share. Tell us what you would bring, or watch the calendar for your city.
See the calendarWho is behind this
Future Skills Academy
The unconferences were started by Future Skills Academy, a global learning ecosystem focused on developing Power Skills: the essential human capabilities needed to navigate complexity, lead change and create meaningful impact in a fast-evolving world.
The questions on the table here are the ones we work on every day, with teams and organisations.
Get in touch
Tell us what you would bring.
We read everything ourselves. A sentence about who you are and what interests you is enough to start.
info@futureskills.academy
Book a conversation
Follow the calendar