The Country of the Future (145)

Warm greetings from a rainy Rio. I’m in town this week for the first edition of Brazil Futures Forum, a festival of ideas, experiences and provocations built around a familiar question: how might the country of the future finally begin to live up to its promise?I rarely write about myself in this newsletter, but Brazil is difficult for me to approach from a distance. I effectively became Brazilian in my teens and have spent half my life here, which leaves me somewhere between insider and outsider. I tend to hover between different states of belonging, feeling a responsibility to bring the best of Brazil to the world, and more of the world to Brazil.Our reach may be small, but our involvement in the Forum has been deep. Envisioning has contributed research, tools and methodologies to both the organization and the surrounding community, while helping structure and share some of the ideas emerging here beyond the event itself.Part of the beauty of Brazil is the difficulty of pinning it…