The Roots of Progress Institute

Progress Conference 2025

A four-day event to connect people & ideas in the progress movement

October 16-19, 2025  •  Berkeley, California

Meet great people • Catalyze new projects • Share ideas • Be energized & inspired

The first annual progress conference was a resounding success. Well over 200 people came together to discuss ideas, at what many said was the best conference they ever attended. We're excited to continue this regular gathering of the progress community. Let's get together again in Berkeley this fall!

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Progress Conference 2025 Overview

October 16-19 in Berkeley, California

LOCATION. We'll be back at the beautiful Lighthaven Campus that received rave reviews for the first conference. 

EXPANDED TIME. The main two-day conference will happen all day Friday and Saturday, similar to 2024. New for 2025, Thursday and Sunday will be add-on days, with optional gatherings for interest groups and other activities, such as SF Bay Area company tours. 

SPEAKERS. Our initial slate of speakers is below. More speakers will be announced soon. 

ACCESS. This will again be an invitation-only event, with ~300 attendees. Tickets are now available for purchase by invited guests. We also have an open application period where anyone can apply for a ticket. 

Apply to attend

Sponsors: Contact us to support the progress community!

Sponsorships are available at levels from $5K–$100K. You can sponsor the keynotes, a speaker track, book signings, audio-visual support, or food/fun at the event.

Depending on the sponsorship level, you’ll get access to:

  • Branding at the event, from signs to lanyards to book plates
  • VIP reception ticket(s)
  • Conference ticket(s)
  • A room at the venue

Progress Conference 2025: Sponsorship Oppurtunities

Email progress-conference@rootsofprogress.org for details or to set up a call with Heike Larson, RPI’s Vice President of Programs, to discuss sponsorships.

Show details

The 2025 conference speakers

Top thinkers and doers in the progress community

Authors, founders, journalists, technologists, academics, nonprofit leaders

Our speakers all are inspired to create an ambitious, technologically advanced future—yet they may disagree (sometimes vehemently) about how we get there. They come from a wide range of backgrounds, from academics to company founders to investors, from journalists to scientists. They’ll provide thoughtful perspectives about all kinds of ways we can make progress happen—from building the bold future with AI, biotech innovation, and hard tech, to ensuring policy enables builders in housing, longevity, AI, energy, and more.


Sam Altman

OpenAI

Alex Armlovich

Niskanen Center

John Burn-Murdoch

The Financial Times

Tyler Cowen

Mercatus Center

Misha Chellam

Abundance Network
JC

Jason Crawford

Roots of Progress Institute

Laura Deming

Cradle

Jerusalem Demsas

The Atlantic

Eli Dourado

Astera Institute

Chris Elmendorf

UC Davis School of Law

Tim Fist

Institute for Progress

Samuel Hammond

Foundation for American Innovation

Luke Iseman

Make Sunsets

Martin Borch Jensen

Gordian Biotechnology

Tom Kalil

Renaissance Philanthropy

Bret Kugelmass

Last Energy

Séb Krier

Google DeepMind

Francisco LePort

Gordian Biotechnology

Mark Lutter

Charter Cities Institute

Charles C. Mann

Author, The Wizard and the Prophet

Lada Nuzhna

Aging biotech NewCo; Impetus Grants

Jennifer Pahlka

Niskanen Center

Dwarkesh Patel

Podcaster, fireside chat moderator

Nico Perrino

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

Erin Price-Wright

Andreessen Horowitz

Ryan Puzycki

City of Yes; RPI Fellow

Sam Rodriques

FutureHouse

Santi Ruiz

Institute for Progress

Blake Scholl

Boom Supersonic

Alec Stapp

Institute for Progress

Isaiah Taylor

Valar Atomics

Ruxandra Teslo

Sanger Institute; RPI Fellow

Derek Thompson

The Atlantic; Author, Abundance

Caleb Watney

Institute for Progress

... and more

Additional speakers announced soon

Four tracks will go deep on specific topics within the progress movement: 

1. AI Protopia: How AI can improve the world

And how to not mess up beneficial AI deployment. AI to accelerate science, how to secure free speech in an AI-enabled world, AI to break through government inertia, and discussions on how fast and in what ways AI will re-shape our world more broadly

2. From policy idea to real-world change: how movements impact the world

Agenda-setting and improving the policy-readiness of ideas, the abundance policy agenda, and pro-progress policy implementation at the city, state, and federal level. Case studies in policy, from the pending lawsuit against the NRC, to freedom cities and how we might apply federal leverage to drive local policy change

3. Toward healthier, longer lives: how to extend human flourishing

Biotech approaches to longevity, discussions about specific bottlenecks in longevity, visions for the FDA in the age of AI, AI's potential for accelerating innovation, fertility and its impact on population growth or decline, healthcare reform focused on prevention rather than treatment, and more broadly, a positive vision for a world where we regularly live to be 100

4. American Dynamism: deep tech to support the national interest

Innovations in aerospace, defense, supply chain, industrials, manufacturing, and other deep-tech industries. Other topics may be the importance of founders and their impact on policy, how to invest in American Dynamism, and how AI will shape these industries and the jobs of the future

General talks outside of these tracks will cover a wide range of topics, such as education and its role in appreciating and being inspired to make progress, the climate and our ability to engineer it to our benefit, and telling stories that inspire progress.

2024 Testimonials

Fabulous event!! Loved it and will be back!!

Danielle Strachman
General Partner, 1517 Fund
A professional portrait of writer Jonah Messinger

It is rare to find people interested in metascience who truly delve really deep into various qualitative case studies of scientific progress and discovery. There were several sessions and multiple people who understood and appreciated the importance of such study in a deep way. That was super valuable.

Jonah Messinger
Physics PhD student, University of Cambridge

The rooms and organization of the venue were fantastic. I also really appreciated the speaker volunteers who helped answer questions and any issues I had.

Saloni Dattani
Conference Speaker, Writer, Works in Progress & Our World in Data

Most valuable to me was meeting new amazing, productive individuals that I can collaborate with in real ways to help each other achieve our near term missions. Congratulations on the incredible success of this first event, it blew away my expectations! 

Francisco LePort
CEO, Gordian Biotechnology

This was great guys. Seriously, well done. I forgot how much I needed the time/energy/space to be around like minded people who both understand the challenges of building something ambitious and are aligned with enabling progress. This was a great event, I'm grateful for it, and excited for the next one!

Cameron Wiese
Founder & President, World's Fair Co. 

It was one of the best curated events I've ever attended, both in terms of attendees and speakers. Every single person was super interesting. High profile people mingled with more ordinary exceptional people. As they say, surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

This may have been the first room I've ever been in where talking moonshots made me blend in rather than stand out — in a good way.

Laura Fingal-Surma
Founder, Urbanist Ventures

Great job! I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the conference. I heard many people express that it was the best food they had ever eaten at a conference. I felt good after I left the conference because of the sunshine, fresh air, good food, and great company.

Grant Denver

RPI Fellow

Great people met and exchanged ideas on a wide range of topics—and wrote about it after the 2024 conference. 

Here are a few key write-ups; you can see more write-ups and social media commentary here.

Noah Smith

How long can we sustain economic growth?

This past weekend I went to a conference hosted by the Roots of Progress Institute. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been to an event where the ideals and ideas of the other attendees so closely aligned with my own. Pretty much everyone there was a techno-optimist like myself. Everyone was thinking and talking about how we could accelerate economic growth.

Bryan Walsh on Vox

How progress creates its own obstacles

I spent last weekend at a fascinating two-day conference put on by the Roots of Progress Institute in Berkeley, California. Founded and led by Jason Crawford, a writer and thinker (and past Future Perfect 50 honoree), Roots of Progress aims to build the intellectual foundation of what Crawford has called “a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century.” The conference was a chance for a few hundred people in the movement to meet, mingle, and plot how to create a future that would presumably look like this [image in blog post].

Future Perfect was founded in part to counter those tendencies. It doesn’t mean we put a big happy face on all of our coverage; rather, we try to identify the problems that are truly important, which includes substantial problems the media too often ignores because they don’t make for good headlines (like the millions of people in the Global South who still die because of preventable diseases or our failure to learn the lessons of past pandemics). But we do try to recognize, and even celebrate, progress when it happens. It’s still an uphill battle in the media overall, however.

Scott Alexander

Notes From The Progress Studies Conference

Tyler Cowen is an economics professor and blogger at Marginal Revolution. Patrick Collison is the billionaire founder of the online payments company Stripe. In 2019, they wrote an article calling for a discipline of Progress Studies, which would figure out what progress was and how to increase it. Later that year, tech entrepreneur Jason Crawford stepped up to spearhead the effort.

The immediate reaction was mostly negative. There were the usual gripes that “progress” was problematic because it could imply that some cultures/times/places/ideas were better than others. But there were also more specific objections: weren’t historians already studying progress? Wasn’t business academia already studying innovation? Are you really allowed to just invent a new field every time you think of something it would be cool to study? 

It seems like you are. Five years later, Progress Studies has grown enough to hold its first conference. I got to attend, and it was great. 

The objections failed because Progress Studies is the same type of field as Gender Studies: the Studying serves as the nucleus of a network of scientists, activists, entrepreneurs and journalists working to produce radical change. [...]

It’s popular to blame environmentalists and government regulators for this, and they do deserve part of the blame, but the speakers at the conference urged us to also blame existing nuclear companies, who lobby the government to add more and more burdensome safety regulations so they can charge more and keep out competitors. Again, this isn’t a war between economy-boosters and sympathetic activists who want some other good. It’s just dumb laws and regulatory capture hurting everybody. [...]

You might expect Progress Studies conference-goers to be natural accelerationists, but the mood was more subdued. Most of the people I talked to (again, maybe there was an unintentional bias) were worried about safety, understood intelligence explosion dynamics, and didn’t really know where this whole thing was going. Most continued to awkwardly support AI anyway, out of some generic loyalty to Progress. “Within ten years, AI progress could threaten the future of the human race - and if we fight really hard, we can bring that down to five!” I mock them, but I have a little of this impulse in me too, and will always be a little suspicious of anyone who doesn’t. [...]

Most of the victories discussed at the conference have nothing to do with Progress Studies. The solar industry, the self-driving car industry, etc, don’t even know it exists. Even the YIMBYs, whose leading representatives did attend, predate the field. 

My theory is that it all came from the same wellspring. Silicon Valley gathered all the pro-tech people together in one place, a lot of them became rich, and some of them spent their wealth reflecting on the nature of technological advance. This created a critical mass of people who were all talking to each other and motivated to see things that other people were missing. This isn’t the whole story: non-Silicon-Valley economists like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers helped build the foundational narrative. But it’s the story that makes the most sense for “why now”. 

I mocked the people in 2019 who thought a conference could affect the Gods Of Straight Lines. But it seems like maybe there was something - an idealized spiritual conference in 1971 between Ralph Nader, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, hippies, protectionists, and all those people - that knocked them off their thrones once. So who knows? 

I’m definitely making the same mistake of which I half-accused Tyler Cowen - going off vibes in a notoriously difficult field. But at least at this conference, the vibes were good.

Packy McCormick

What Do You Do With an Idea?

Happy Wednesday! I’m sending a day late because I spent the weekend at the Roots of Progress Institute’s Progress Conference and the last couple of days in San Francisco. As much of a New Yorker as I am, I gotta say, it feels like SF is back. People are turning ideas into products, and at the right price point, products turn into progress. This is an essay based on conversations from the past week on how to do that. Let’s get to it.

I spent the weekend at Progress Conference 2024, hosted by Jason Crawford, Heike Larson, and the team at the Roots of Progress Institute. It was awesome. A group of my favorite progress thinkers and doers from the internet came to Lighthaven in Berkeley to discuss the question: how do we make more progress?

Instead of harder-to-find ideas, we might have an abundance of great ideas for those with the skill and entrepreneurial vigor to bring to life. That would imply that we don’t necessarily need more researchers; we just need more people putting the ideas the researchers come up with to work. In addition to making new Einsteins  - genius researchers will always be important – we need to make new Vanderbilts and Fords and Wrights. Tinkerers who can pluck from the pile of withered ideas and combine them in new ways. We might also need new Librarians, who can help surface those great old ideas, and track which technologies and costs might make them economically viable after all of these years. Maybe that’s where AI can be most helpful.

Zachary Karabell

In Praise of Progress

I just got back from a conference in Berkeley sponsored by the Roots of Progress Institute, an organization dedicated to developing a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century. It is one of a panoply of relatively new groups forming a self-anointed “Progress Movement,” which the organization I created, The Progress Network, is also part of. No one leads this movement. And to be fair, it is not yet clear if this even is a movement rather than the aspiration to be one. It remains to be seen if these atoms in motion ever coalesce into something more focused and more culturally potent. All we know now is that there is a set of voices, people, institutions loosely aligned around the idea that human progress is real and magnificent and that we are selling ourselves and our culture short by over-emphasizing the harbingers of doom and underestimating the forces of progress.

One of the more notable aspects of two days of progress studies was what wasn’t said. Twelve hours each day, countless side conversations and panels and discussions, and I didn’t hear the words “Trump, Harris, Israel or Gaza.” Not one. Aside from how refreshing that was, it also spoke to a larger truth frequently forgotten in the haze of our dystopian media landscape. The U.S. election is important, but it isn’t nearly as important as the attention it receives would suggest. There are things going on with nuclear energy or AI or land use or education that will shape our near future profoundly and have precious little to do with who occupies the oval office. For sure, the regulatory framework here matters greatly, but that is often less about the party in power than the years of rules and bureaucracy that have accreted. Maybe one party will be better at reforming those, but few would argue that reform isn’t needed.

There is something infectious, contagious about optimism, about several hundred people jazzed at the idea of what is possible, and hard-nosed about what it takes to make it real. There is something heady about discussions of AI that don’t begin with The Terminator and end with the Matrix. There is something energizing about reflecting on the material progress humans have made even while recognizing that it’s neither complete nor encompasses the non-material needs of the spirit and family and communities. And above all, we all need frequent reminders that golden ages are not just myths of the past but aspirations, and that often, the greatest obstacles are the ones we create. Two days of progress talk was that reminder for me. This column is my reminder for you.

Jonah Messinger (RPI Fellow)

Making progress on metascience

This was a genuinely generative and intellectually stimulating conference. The progress studies community has retained a healthy level of debate and quibbling. That is a good thing! Embracing and leaning into disagreement is necessary for a successful intellectual community and a cultural movement with broad attraction. I have observed something similar in the Ecomodernist movement. For example, at the annual Dialogue conference series—which concluded this year after over a decade and was the flagship Ecomodernist conference put on by the Breakthrough Institute where I have a non-resident appointment—one was likely to find full-fledged socialists, free-market evangelists, and milk toast centrists. In both cases, intellectual diversity is not a gimmick; folks really do have clashes of ideas. It is much more fun this way.

Benjamin Parry, proprietor of the Skillful Notes Substack, recently summarized his thoughts on the event. He observed that the formal academic discipline of progress studies originally intended by Collison and Cowen has not quite materialized but has emerged as “a vibe.” Instead, it is a sort of mood or cultural moment that is unabashedly pro-human and keen on technological advancement. I think that is right. But from the academic perspective, I think it is good that progress studies has not become a formal academic discipline of its own and one can only hope it will not become one. There is a sense in which formalizing too much and erecting the fences endemic to fields of academia means that progress studies would inevitably consolidate, rigidify, and stagnate. It would cease to be a dynamic melting pot of dozens of academic disciplines from the humanities to physical and social science departments, along with startup technologists, think tank policy wonks, essayists, filmmakers, and the works.The progress studies movement needs to focus on the tail of the distribution of science. If metascience is left to the scientometricians or science and technology studies departments, there is little hope for progress of the same order as the breakthroughs made in the 20th century. It is as important as ever for the progress studies community to fund truly ambitious scientific work, which conventional institutions such as the National Science Foundation will likely never have the risk appetite to support. This requires continued experimentation with different research models, some of which will be better suited for different types of science. Progress studies should also lean into the qualitative study of discovery, recognizing the social dynamics very much at play in the history and present of science.

Kevin Kohler (RPI Fellow)

Americans are from Musk, Europeans are from Greta

Europeans care a lot about recycling. The European Union has banned regular single-use plastics in straws and mandated that lids of plastic bottles remain attached to marginally decrease the already low likelihood of plastic bottle lids in Europe ending up in the ocean. Surely then, recycling 200-ton rockets rather than letting them fall into the ocean is a no brainer. Not just due to an ideological commitment to recycling but because it makes economic sense, allowing for significant cost savings. Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent the first recycled rocket into space in 2017. Yet, surprisingly, the CEO of ArianeGroup the leading European space launch provider, has remained dismissive of the potential of re-usable rockets for Europe as recent as July 2024. In contrast, SpaceX has just successfully landed and recaptured a rocket the size of a skyscraper. The juxtaposition of the plastic bottle lid attachment and the Starship recycling is one mental picture that I take away from the first annual progress conference in Berkeley, which I have attended as a Roots of Progress blog-building fellow. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but there is a kernel of truth to it and that should give us Europeans sufficient reason to reflect. The need for European progress is one of four brief notes that I have jotted down as a post-digest to the conference.

Europe needs a progress movement that pushes for things from simplifying requirements for start-ups through EU Inc. to unlocking more housing to ensuring that environmental impact assessments that take forever don’t keep slowing down the energy transition (counter-intuitively Texas of all places is the Western champion of building renewables…). European progress is not just a copy-paste of American progress. For example, I don’t think we should copy American car-centric cities with ridiculously broad roads & walkways but mediocre public transport. In terms of accessibility, density and transport a city like Barcelona is objectively superior to Los Angeles. The European progress aesthetic does not have to be “Metropolis” with skyscrapers, automated driving, and lots of concrete. It can be green, clean, safe, and walkable cities with skyscrapers, air conditioning as well as restaurants and trees on the streets. Europe can define its own way of doing things, however, for this to work, we also need to remain competitive.

Ben Parry

I went to Berkeley, and All I Got Was a Vibe 

Last Friday and Saturday, I attended the 2024 Progress Conference in Berkeley, California. I agree with Dean Ball: It was the best event of its kind that I have been to. The people assembled were excellent, the ideas that were brought to the space were fascinating, and the 'machines' (i.e., the handling of logistics) was top-tier. All credit is due to Jason CrawfordHeike Larson, and Emma McAleavy, they put on an amazing show.

This conference was an opportunity, 5 years after this initial suggestion, to take stock of what has emerged so far. There was a lot of energy. Many people from all over the world have been doing interesting and impactful work. Those associated with Progress Studies have learned a great deal. It felt like a moment to commemorate some of the successes the ‘movement’ has achieved. But the closest thing to a one-line summary came from a keynote discussion between Dwarkesh Patel and Patrick Collison. In this discussion, Collison suggested that today he sees Progress Studies less as an academic discipline or even a gentleman’s science and more as an aesthetic. “A vibe.”

The attendees

300+ thinkers, builders, policymakers, storytellers, and students

Spend four days hanging out with others in our community and help shape the progress movement into a cultural force.

Whether you identify as a supply-side or abundance progressive, e/acc or EA, whether you come at progress from a classical liberal background or study meta-science, advocate for broad YIMBY or American Dynamism—you are invited to meet each other, share ideas in unconference sessions, and leave energized.

As an event invitee, you’ll join people from a wide range of backgrounds:

  • Key academics and public intellectuals in the progress movement
  • Leaders of progress-related organizations, from science to policy
  • Founders and engineers working on solving the world’s biggest problems and building an ambitious future, from space to nanotech, from AI to deep tech
  • Cultural leaders, from science fiction authors to YouTubers to Hollywood producers and script writers
  • The Roots of Progress fellows and other up-and-coming progress intellectuals
  • Supporters of the progress movement (including the conference sponsors)
Attendance is by invitation only. We want to maintain a high bar on participant relevance & engagement to ensure a great experience for everyone. 
If you didn't get invited yet you can ping us via our open application; share as much info as you think we'll need to decide whether to invite you. 

The venue

Back at the inviting Berkeley campus perfect 
for mingling and engaging in deep conversations

This gathering is all about connecting interesting people so ideas can flow and new projects can be cooked up. Our venue, the Lighthaven campus in Berkeley, was perfect for this last year and so we're glad to be back. It’s a cluster of old homes with a wide range of lounge areas that invite conversation, several living-room and larger areas to hold sessions of up to 100 people, and a garden with many places to sit and chat or walk around. Plenary sessions will happen in the garden auditorium, or be held in a large session space & livestreamed to smaller spaces.

The program 
Four days of intellectual exploration, inspiration & interaction

We aim to make this event a highlight of your year.

Attend talks on topics from tech to policy to culture, build relationships with new people as you hang out on cozy sofas or enjoy the sun in the garden, sign up to run an unconference session and find others who share your interests and passions, or pitch your ideas to those who could help make your dreams a reality.

Friday & Saturday

The main event

Optional add-on days
Thursday & Sunday

Two extra days for interest-specific events—some open to all, some focused on specific groups. More details to be announced. 

  • Factory tours at Bay Area deep tech companies
  • Sessions on specific topics, such as far-future meta-science and funding, housing abundance policy, and bringing progress studies to universities
  • Unconference time and space for 1:1 meetings at Lighthaven
  • Demos, such as a balloon launch of a stratospheric aerosol injection
  • Capstone gathering for the 2025 Roots of Progress blog-building fellows
  • An invitation-only pitch session for progress-focused not-for-profit initiatives

Open sessions are included in your ticket, and you may also just hang out and mingle at Lighthaven on either day. 

Buy your ticket now or apply to attend!

  • If you have received an invitation, check your email for the link to purchase a ticket. Invitation doesn't guarantee a ticket as we expect to sell out. 
  • Not on our invitation list (yet)? We have an open application. Share just your contact info / company / website, or provide as much info as you think we’ll need to decide whether to invite you. Application deadline is May 15th; decisions will be made and shared by June 30th. 
Scholarship tickets and financial support

We want every qualified person to be able to attend, so we’re keeping costs low. Regular tickets are $600, and cover food and beverage costs during the two core days (six meals, snacks, and drinks). Participants are responsible for their own travel and lodging; limited scholarships and waived ticket fees are available. 

If you’re applying to attend via the open application, we’ll ask about financial need there. 

If you received an invitation to attend and need financial support, email us and let us know: (1) what level of support you need (free ticket, travel stipend, lodging support), (2) why we should support you, and (3) whether you’re willing to volunteer at the conference.

Questions? Email us: progress-conference@rootsofprogress.org

Recommended event hotels

We have reserved blocks of rooms at a handful of nearby hotels. Each hotel has a different rate and way to book; please see details below. 

Hilton Doubletree at the Berkeley Marina

A limited block of rooms is available at the Hilton DoubleTree at the Berkeley Marina. 15 minutes by Uber/Lyft or 40 min by bus from the venue and right on the Bay, this hotel is both convenient and nice.

Reserve your room while our special rate of $219 per room, per night is available. The rate is available for any nights from October 16th through October 18th. Book as soon as possible; only a limited number of rooms are available at this rate.

To book, use this reservation link or enter group code "CDT923".

Sens Hotel Berkeley

Located close to the venue, SenS hotel is 10 minute drive or a 40 minute walk from Lighthaven. Newly renovated, this charming local hotel is centrally-located in one of the best walking neighborhoods around. This hotel is cozy and convenient. 

Our special rate is $175 per room, per night, valid on any nights from October 16th through October 18th. Book as soon as possible, as this hotel is small there are only a handful of rooms available at this rate. 

To book, call the hotel directly at (510) 548-9930 and mention the group name "Progress Conference".

Marriott Residence Inn Walnut Creek

Located right by the Walnut Creek BART station, the Residence Inn is a great option if you're willing to stay a bit further away. It's just 5 stops (1 transfer) to the Ashby station which is less than one mile from Lighthaven. 

Our special rate is $175 per night, valid on any nights from October 16th through October 18th, and includes a reduced parking rate to $10/day. 

To book, use this group link

Marriott Walnut Creek

This hotel is also located near the Walnut Creek BART station. We don't have a block of rooms reserved but you can use this link for a 15% discount, subject to availability, booked at least 7 days in advance.

Hilton Garden Inn Walnut Creek

Brand new! This hotel is located a few blocks from the Walnut Creek BART Station. This is a great value option if you're willing to stay outside of Berkeley. It's only 5 stops (1 transfer) to the Ashby station, less than one mile from Lighthaven. 

Our rate is $179 per night, available for any nights from October 16th through October 18th. 

To book, call the hotel directly at (877) 782-9444 and ask for group "Roots of Progress". 

We recommend booking accommodations early as some hotels in the area are already sold out. 

FAQs

How do I get to Lighthaven?

Once you purchase your ticket, you'll be able to see the exact address on the Luma registration page & we'll email it to you. Lighthaven is just south of downtown Berkeley/UC Berkeley. 

There is no parking on site, and parking in the neighborhood streets is limited. We recommend either Ride Share services or taking public transport: Ashby BART is 0.9 miles from Lighthaven and Downtown Berkeley BART 1.2 miles, a nice walk past UC Berkeley and through residential neighborhoods.

If you drive, you can park at the Telegraph Channing Parking Garage (15 min walk). from campus). 

What is the dress code?

The dress code is nice casual. Make sure to bring layers: some of the events, including keynotes and fireside chats, will be in the outdoor auditorium, weather permitting. Plus, we’ll be hanging out in the nice outdoor spaces late on Friday night. Bring fleece or down layers to stay comfy as you chat!

Is there wifi at the venue?

Yes: Lighthaven offers a strong wifi throughout the venue, indoors and outside. There are also extension cords galore, so you can recharge your devices.

What options are there to lower cost? Can you help me find a roommate? 

We don't want cost preventing people from attending the event. If you need financial support, please complete the open application here. There's a section that asks for what kind of financial support you need, and a "what else?" question where you can provide additional info to help us decide on the level of support we can provide. 

Later this summer, we'll invite all registered attendees to private Slack channels, including one on travel & logistics, where you can post to find roommates.

What are your terms & conditions or code of conduct?

Yes, we have some basic terms and conditions, which include general waivers, photo and video policies, and code of conduct around sharing what you learn at the event. You'll need to agree to these terms and conditions when you register for the event. 

How do I find out who else is attending?

We’ll put together an attendee directory this summer. You’ll receive a link to a survey, where you can share your interests, goals for the conference, topics you’d like to discuss, etc. We’ll pull all that together into a searchable database to help you discover people you want to make sure you meet at the conference.

How can I connect with other attendees?

Join the Progress Studies Slack! We’re setting up dedicated channels for the conference, so people can chat with each other and we can share quick updates with everyone.

What is your cancellation policy?

Tickets are non-refundable; the ticket price only covers a part of the cost of putting on this conference. If you must cancel and would like your money back, rather than donating it to our organization and supporting the conference, email us at progress-conference@rootsofprogress.org

Is there a different ticket for one or two days only? 

Nope, all tickets get you access the whole event. There is not a separate ticket for just Friday and Saturday, for example. The ticket price only covers a part of the cost of putting on the conference, even consider just the two main days.