Megatrends Project Update Q3 2012

Linking Citizens. Spreading Knowledge.

with support from

3rd Quarterly Update August - September 2012

Guns and Roses Future Day in Nairobi November 12, 2012 For the next Future Day, the Bertelsmann Foundation is partnering with the Society for International Development with support from the Rockefeller Foundation to create a dynamic event in Nairobi, Kenya.

The day will be comprised of plenary sessions and small group discussions aimed at exploring future ecological and security challenges and opportunities, as seen from an East African regional perspective.

The Future Day will bring together voices from East Africa to discuss how regional integration is perceived by its citizens and how they predict it will affect their lives. East Africa is one of the youngest regions in the world today and we are particularly interested in giving a voice to youth in this discussion. The East Africa Future Day aims to explore the opportunities and challenges facing the region’s younger citizens in two main issue areas: ecology and security.

FutureChallenges’ next content package will be about the topics covered in the Future Day, and we’re looking forward to reading our blogger network’s ideas on youth involvement in regional integration in their part of the world.

FutureChallenges will be live tweeting the event, and will have several followup posts on FutureChallenges.org from our staff and our blogger network. Stay tuned for more updates!

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Website Statistics

By Peter Kimball FutureChallenges.org is pleased to announce a dramatic increase in both the volume and quality of web traffic. More people are coming to the website than ever before and those who come are spending more time than ever before.

Since the beginning of the year, the FutureChallenges team has been using Google AdWords to advertise and drive traffic to the website. In the third quarter, by launching a new campaign of specifically targeted ads, the team has been able to focus on appealing to the people most likely to be seriously interested in FutureChallenges content. This has been extremely successful; the percentage of people who click on a FutureChallenges ad has gone from 1.98% to 5.20%.

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These targeted ads have helped increase total traffic dramatically, up 15% over the previous quarter.

Total Visitors per Quarter 72000 70000 68000 66000 64000 62000 60000 58000 56000

Q1

Q2

Q3

The success of the targeted ad campaign has brought in visitors to the site who are more likely to spend more time and read more pages of content. The average visitor in the third quarter spent 1:35 minutes on the site, up 14% from the second quarter.

Utilizing targeted ads has also allowed FutureChallenges to expand the geographic reach of the website and increase the diversity of readership. In the past quarter, traffic from Central and South America is up 76% while traffic from Africa is up 42%.

By continuing to create thoughtful, provocative content, and by targeting ads toward the people most likely to be genuinely interested in engaging with that content, FutureChallenges looks forward to continued growth.

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Megatrends in Global Interaction Update The last two months have marked the successful launch and ongoing promotion of the Megatrends in Global Interaction book, as seen in our last newsletter. We have received positive feedback on the book from many experts working in the forecasting and futures fields.

Demographic Change and Migration

Economic Globalization

Global Governance

The next step for this publication is publishing an eBook onto FutureChallenges. org. Look for this in the coming months.

Climate Change and Biodiversity

Megatrends in Global Interaction Events August 17 MIT Media Lab August 27 UPS, Western Union September 5 Youth Services America September 26 Johns Hopkins University October 1 Gallaudet University October 10 US State Department November 9 University of Houston (see next page for detailed info)

Security

Natural Resources and Biodiversity

Additional events to be announced.

For information on these events, please contact Jonathan Stevens at jonathan.stevens@bfna.org.

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Update on FutureChallenges.org At our Regional Editors’ meeting this summer in Berlin, we brainstormed ideas to make FutureChallenges a better experience for users. Over the past few months, we’ve been making some changes to the website. Here are a few of the changes you will see on our site: t All Spanish-language content on the site is now available on one page: http://futurechallenges.org/news/spanish-language-content-on-fc-org/ t We have begun to encourage our network to submit multimedia content in lieu of traditional content, including video and photo posts. The first photo blog from Shahzeb Younas in Pakistan was a very popular post, which you can view at this link: bit.ly/O58Q9m t We have begin to post more often on our social media channels, target a broader range of time zones and incorporate more multimedia into these posts. As a reult, we have had an increase of more than 50 Twitter followers since July, and have a click-through-rate of 12%, well above the 7% average. Follow us on Twitter !'VUVSF$IBMM@PSH or Facebook at FutureChallenges. t We will begin posting shorter, punchier lead articles. We intend for these shorter articles to spark debate and inspire our bloggers and readers to think about many sides of each issue. We will also aim to post more articles about specific days, like International Women’s Day or Earth Day . In the past, these posts have generated a significant amout of feedback and discussion on the site.

We are always striving to be a more efficient and useful platform, so please contact us if you have any suggestions for improving the website. We welcome your feedback!

For further information on Future Challenges and the Megatrends Project, contact +POBUIBO 4UFWFOT t %JSFDUPS (MPCBM 'VUVSFT 1SPKFDU t t KPOBUIBO TUFWFOT!CGOB PSH "OOFMJFTF (VFTT t 1SPKFDU .BOBHFS *OUFSOBUJPOBM 3FMBUJPOT t t BOOFMJFTF HVFTT!CGOB PSH

Visit us online at: www.futurechallenges.org www.bfna.org