Convening Remarkable Innovators
How does Reinvent Futures come up with answers to those four key questions: what’s really going on, what’s probably coming, what’s possible to achieve, and what we should do?
We start from the premise that “No one is as smart as everyone,” which Leyden attributes to his mentor Kevin Kelly, the founding Executive Editor of WIRED. No one mind can figure out all the answers to those four huge questions, but the chances go up with the more minds you get in the mix.
So Reinvent Futures has one line of business that convenes remarkable innovators into various gatherings to help figure out the future and deepen our collective understanding of what to do right now.
We convene what we call the A team: top innovators and creatives, technologists and entrepreneurs, intellectuals and academics, scientists and strategists. Some are world-class thought leaders, others up-and-coming next generation founders and innovators, most are experts of some kind, but all have some valuable contribution to make from a wide range of fields impacting the future.
Our Signature Event Series
The Great Progression Series is our signature series of convenings that forms the core of what we are learning going forward, particularly focused on the world-historic technologies of Artificial Intelligence, Clean Energies and Bioengineering.
The event series starts with the frame that America and the world are heading into a decade of many fundamental system changes that will lay the foundation for a new era of great progress that will go a long way towards solving the many challenges of our time like climate change.
The series systematically takes a deeper dive look at each of the fields that can expect to go through a transformation in the 2020s. We are particularly focused on how the latest advances in AI could supercharge great progress in each of these fields.
We then convene a meeting of the minds of up to 250 innovators to help us answer a key question for that night. We showcase up to a dozen of the most remarkable thought leaders in short 5-minute talks.
Watch the adjacent 5-minute video that gives a terrific overview of what we have already accomplished and where we will go next. For more Information on what’s coming go to Series, and go to Media for essays and videos on the past events.
Big Events of up to 250
We have a proven track record of hosting invite-only events of from 125 to 250 people that attract top innovators from throughout Silicon Valley and the San Franicsco Bay Are region.
The team behind Reinvent Futures, Peter Leyden and Joe Boggio, co-hosted What’s Now San Francisco, a popular event series held in an innovation lab in the heart of San Francisco that ran each month for five years before the pandemic shut it down.
You can still watch the entire series through a playlist on YouTube. Or watch the adjacent video on a remarkable gathering of a who’s who of Silicon Valley luminaries to pay tribute to the one-and-only Stewart Brand, a longtime mentor of Leyden’s.
Now we’re building on that legacy but putting on similar events in the hip new Shack15 club in the Ferry Building overlooking San Francisco bay.
We can help others design, recruit, produce, and carry out convenings of this size and complexity too.
Roundtables of a Dozen
The explosion of activity around Generative AI is raising many questions from the big picture ones that we address in our larger events to more granular ones that many companies or industries or fields are now grappling with.
We have developed a new kind of series of smaller convenings that drive more intimate and practical conversations in roundtables of about a dozen people with a diverse set of perspectives and expertise. The key ingredients are getting the right mix of remarkable innovators from our network and making the most of skillful moderation.
One version that we are launching in 2024 is organized around the question: Are you thinking big enough? We gather one group from a particular industry that breaks down into two roundtables, one focused on the strategic implications of the impact of Generative AI on that industry, and one that focuses on the operational implications for a company working within that industry.
After going through deep dives that look outward and inward we gather back together to synthesize what we learned, talk about new ways forward, as well as connect and socialize over drinks. All this can take place in an ideal setting overlooking the San Francisco Bay in our base in the Shack15 club in the Ferry Building.
We also can orchestrate similar one-off roundtable discussions in private rooms of great restaurants over dinner and drinks.
Tailored Mid-size Convenings
Our ability to convene the right mix of innovators and drive an important conversation can be applied to gatherings of various sizes too.
We are able to tailor a convening or a series of convenings to a topic that needs a deeper dive or a field that warrants sustained focus. These tailored versions can adapt within reason to the needs of a potential partner.
One version we are launching in 2024 is organized around the question: How can AI supercharge great progress in [your field]? How could it supercharge healthcare or education or synthetic biology or fusion energy?
These gatherings can take the form of events of 50 to 100 to 200 people. They all can take place in a large private room in Shack15, one of the premier venues in San Francisco, and the home of Reinvent Futures.