Heiner Benking

From Future Worlds Center Wiki

Heiner Benking
Heiner Benking
With FWC Since 2008
Title SDD Senior International Expert
Key Project(s) Civil Society Dialogue Project in Cyprus
Degree(s) BSc
Filed(s) of study Mechanical Engineering (major): Research Program Planning, Technology Strategy, Design Methodology, Requirements Engineering, Multi-Criteria Decision Support, Systems Analysis, Process Re-design, Knowledge Engineering
University(ies) Northeastern University, USA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Specialization(s) Project Management
SDD Facilitation
Mediation



For a complete CV click Full CV of Heiner Benking.


Heiner Benking is a strong supporter of Future Worlds Center and its Structured Democratic Dialogue applications since 2008. He is the person who nominated Future Worlds Center for the Anna Lindh Award in 2010 for which Future Worlds Center received Honourable Mention for the highly-esteemed work on intercultural dialogue for the promotion of freedom and citizenship (2nd place).

Heiner has been collaborating with Aleco Christakis , Yiannis Laouris and many of the historic figures who have pioneered in the establishment of the Dialogic Design Science and has been actively supporting events. For example, Heiner has attended the 3rd International SDDP Facilitators Training School, which he has promoted publishing articles, such as the Commentary about the 3rd International Training School for SDD. He has also written an article following an interview he has taken from Aleco Christakis during the school [1]. On earlier occasions he has also interviewd Aleco Christakis to revisit the foundational phase of the Club of Rome (1968-1970) [2]


Short Bio

Heiner's professional live can be roughly divided into four decades:

  • In the 70ies: studies, globetrotting, surveyor, planner;
  • In the 80ies: marketing, management and organisation consulting, market research, agementcomputer-graphics industry, raising children, environmental research and management;
  • In the 90ies: Global Change research and communication, summits, UN-G7 Harmonisation, environmental NGO's, Foundations, Councils, think-tanking;
  • On the turn of the cenrury: EXPO 2000, future and technology studies, youth and media projects, Environmental Education and policy making, peace organisations, clubs, governance, facilitation, dialog and decision cultures, youth cross-media, independent journalist and science writer/curator.

The above rough "epoches" have of course overlaps, but details can be found in his Wikipedia user-page [3] and his Positive Nett-Works PNW member page [4]

Heiner served the International Peace University project in the early 90ies and helped to establish the Club of Budapest as its first editor and international co-ordinator, after having been invited to serve as Creative Member. He worked with Robert Jungk in the early 90ies and established with Bob's collegue Rüdiger Lutz Future Lab in Basel. He presently serves in the Board of Positive Nett-Works, and IHTEC, and as secretary of the Council on Global Issues and the Tagore-Einstein-Council, he is in the founding board and in the Elders Wisdom Council of the Youth-Leader magazine [5]

Heiner helped in the foundational phase (since 1993) to establish nodes and a cypernode and represented the Millennium Project and worked with ExperConsult and technology think- tanks like the Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing (FAW) in Ulm, Germany and The Club of Budapest. He is a technician, engineer, planner, consultant, communicator and facilitator with an academic background in engineering, planning and other studies ranging from geophysics to philosophy and including regional and global modeling geo-ecology and geomorphology, and computer graphics programming. Benking has served as a consultant and facilitator, writer, curator, and organizer - maybe he is an in-betweener, gate-crasher, go-getter, and starter.

He began using maps and models 1970s as a surveyor and geophysicist in exploration and planning on a regional and national level. In the 1980s he explored the realms of mapping and modelling further by using drafting, visualization and management software. Benking participated in several global change related gatherings, exhibitions, and conferences from 1988-1995, in particular the 1990 Global Change exhibition where he helped design posters and exhibits, and has build is Cognitive Space called Rubik's Cube of Ecology to help share and negotiate "Pointers to Possibilities". [1]

In the past ten years Benking has focussed on education and policy-making. This has led to new forms of conferencing, dialogue and projects in knowledge organization, multi-lingual repositories, metaphors as interface projects, and culture navigation - defining reference rooms for library and museum information concepts. His activity areas range from Future studies to questions related to culture, cyberculture, creativity and cognition.

For more details pls visit Heiner's BLOG: [2], the 21stCenturyAgora jumppage [3], his OPEN-FORUM dialog formats jump-page [4], and his WIKIPEDIA User page (needs update !!): [5] and as recently retrieved (10/2011) quite incomplete publications as collected by Google Scholar: [6]. He updates in his e-mail Signature File "hot" links and recent papers: [7] recommended is the Youth Media portal Youth-Leader (http://youth-leader.org], the Anna-Lindh-Salon [8], and this TALK-COMMUNICATION video-clip http://vimeo.com/15945332 done for the Entrepreneurship Summit in Berlin: [9] or this Video from Berlin Speakers' Corner the Brandenburg gate: [10], or the Slides and Interview at Nobel Peace Laureas gathering "breaking down new wall":[11] or at the Earthfocus Foundation in Geneva: [12]

His work is not only about "sharing" but "gifting" in traditional and modern times and how and why this is central to our very fabrik of society and humanity. He has published obout how we encourage and give voice for long: http://weturn.org/Spoons-Beads-Birds-Phaenomenon.pdf An update is due in May 2016 in Mother Pelican - A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability as the foundational and third part covering his work from many aspects: [13]

Heiner nominated Yiannis Laouris (FWC) in 2010 for the Anna Lindh Award to Future Worlds Center. 2 years later Yiannis Laouris nominated [14] Heiner Benking (CV) [15] for the Anna-Lindh-Foundation EuroMed Dialogue Award 2012: Youth for Change, Social Justice and a Shared Development successfully, Heiner was "short-listed"...

External Links

Asilomar-Ljubljana-Fuschl 1997-2004): ISSS- ISI: IFSR- ISSS -- ISI dialogues: http://benking.de/IFSRnov98pp.htm http://open-forum.de/agora-fuschl-lenser-benking.htm - - see aslo PATTERNS Newsletter: (1997): [17] Asilomar David Bohm Ljubljana Dialogues: [18], Asilomar IFSR, and Fsuchl Conversations: 2004 Team 1: New Agoras for the 21st Century-Conscious Self-Guided Evolution Fuschl Asilomar Agora "Heiner Benking" leading to the "LOVERS OF DEMOCRACY" http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/pursuitofwisdom.pdf & http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/Some_points.htm and later the GLOBAL AGORAs: http://www.globalagoras.org/ and 21stCenturyAgora collection: [21stCenturyAgora.org for more see: http://benking.de/open-forum/OF_Background_paper_5.html

Expertise Virtual Conferencing [19] prepared for the Anna-Lindh Foundation events in Weimar and Bonn (ESD-UNESCO): [20]


for UN ECOSOSC - AMR 2008 [21] and background-papers: [22]



and: [events.open-forum.de]

Video Gallery

Citations