I was listening to a video offered by Writers of the Future. Someone commented that (not an exact quotation): "this is how young writers learn their craft, and the skills to keep the field alive."
Writer's workshops certainly try to teach writing skills. But writers shape fictional worlds by making visits to their own head and letting the vision flow out through their fingers. Otherwise, it's rote fiction.
The sf field has gone through many gyrations since Hugo Gernsback's original vision. I think the field began to decelerate in 1969, when the first human walked on a world not Earth; the field turned inward. But I think humans need Gernsback's vision still. Sf anticipates change, so that the world can be prepared when it comes. And if fiction finds answers to the unexpected consequences of change, it shapes our future in positive ways.