How to play IFTF's Superstruct game

From my colleagues...here are some thoughts about how you might play Superstruct:

• Play by yourself, or choose a team (or teams) of 3 to 10 people from your organization to play Superstruct as a team project for the six weeks the game will run. Players will probably need to devote a minimum of an hour a week to make it worthwhile, but if you can devote at least three hours a week, you'll get a lot more out of it. Give different members of the team different assignments, such as: 1) telling stories about what your organization is doing to address one or more of the superthreats; 2) starting Superstruct discussion groups focused specifically on your community (for example, new ways your community can come together to assure that everyone has safe Internet access in 2019); create a superstructure to engage with new kinds of groups you don't ordinary work with to solve the community dilemmas in 2019 and then personally invite people in those groups to join you--either people who are playing the game already or people you know in the community who might be willing to play.

• Use the superstructures as a way to engage the organizations that you currently support. Create a superstructure with a mission that you would like to see addressed, and invite your community/business groups or other participants to join the game and come up with new approaches to that mission, engaging the resources of other the SEHIs in Superstruct.

• Convene your peers in other organizations in Superstruct to start discussions on issues you all share. To get the most innovative thinking in your discussions, set them up the discussions in a way that invites input from the vast range of SEHIs who will play the game. If interesting ideas come up in the discussions, start a superstructure to test drive the ideas.

• Look for other institutional players you may not have worked with in the past. Many of IFTFs Ten-Year Forecast members are large corporations engaged in the food industry, the health industry, and the information industry. We also have a number of government and nonprofit members, like the CDC and United Cerebral Palsy, for example. Superstruct is a low-risk way to try out collaborations you might not have considered in the past.

• Use Superstruct as a "windtunnel" for testing your long-term strategies. Tell stories in Superstruct about how you've succeeded in your long-range goals in the challenging world of 2019. Then see how other players respond to the stories--how many "raves" you get for your stories or how they comment. The more compelling the stories are, with images or videos, the more likely you will be to get responses.

You can play the game with any name you choose, so you can be as public or anonymous as you want. And you can't really lose. Everything that happens in the game will almost certainly enrich your understanding of the dilemmas we face locally and globally--and of unique ways to collaborate to on a very large scale to address these complex problems.

Please feel free to contact me/IFTF if you have more questions or would like some hands-on help getting started in the game. We look forward to working together in the world of 2019!

Be sure and visit the video page now at http://superstructgame.org and game play starts on October 6.