Vice Minister voor Hoger Onderwijs en Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Yemen
…. participants were at first not feeling at ease when they were dealing with the past, including personal milestones, as well as international development and changes at the leve of ICT in higher education (the conference theme).
Some participants expressed a feeling of ambiguity and even frustration about the process and the apparent lack of connection between exercises. But gradually they began to realize the relation between the personal and systemic levels of approach and how they interact and influence each other. Their enthusiasm increased and began to gain more and more momentum. Each next participatory step made them more responsible for the present trends in ICT (positive and negative) and owners of the future vision for ICT in the Yemen higher education system.
Participants gradually began to develop from isolated individuals into an effective group or a system that developed a unified vision which is critical for future effective implementation.
The most striking differences in comparison to traditional methodologies are the high level of interest and enthusiaism of participants, the high level of attendance during the five days, the involvement of the whole system in the room in a well-planned and effective way, the great team-work spirit that prevailed (and continued afterwards), and the level of achievement was much higher than in most traditional workshop; the participants expressed their high interest of involvement in future related activities.
…. This approach creates a strong presure to innovate the ways of conducting traditional workshops. The participants’ satisfaction in the future with traditional workshops will decrease after their experience with the future search methodology.
We will definitely use future search in the future: We want Yemeni consultants to master the future search methodology for benefit of both the government and private sector and we see great potentials to diffuse its use in Yemen and may be in the Arab World at large….