Progress Conference 2025 is on track to once again be a main event for the progress community, now bringing together well over 300 attendees. Over the last two months we’ve added:
- 21 more great speakers. Additional speakers include Sampriti Bhattacharyya (Navier), Seemay Chou (Arcadia Science), Justin Lopas (Base Power), Emmett Shear (Softmax), Jan Sramek (California Forever), and more. Full speaker list here. Our speaker list is now closed—though we are taking ideas for 2026—and we’re excited about many additional interesting sessions that attendees will organize during the unconference slots.
- 8 additional sponsors. We welcome Jane Street, Renaissance Philanthropy, Common Group, Works in Progress, Halcyon Ventures, Inclusive Abundance, Circulate Planning, and the Institute for Progress as new sponsors. A couple of sponsorships at levels of $25K and $50K are still available. View sponsorship opportunities here.
- 5 facility tours. Astranis, Astro Mechanica, Longshot Space, Navier, and Zipline will host groups of conference attendees for tours during the conference. These tours and other interest-specific events will take place on Thursday and Sunday, the optional add-on days around the main event on Friday and Saturday.
- Over 700 applications to attend. Our open application is now closed for what will soon be a sold-out event. We were pleased to receive more than twice as many applications to attend as last year. The quality and range of people who applied is impressive, and it’s certainly a challenge to narrow the list down to our final invitees. The interest from highly-qualified, relevant, passionate people is enough to fill multiple conferences; we’re beginning to think about how to be able to welcome more people to related events in the future. (If you filled out the open application, you can expect to hear from us by June 30th). Freethink will again record conference talks, so that anyone can watch those soon afterwards. Last year’s talks are available on YouTube.
Last year, we were cautiously optimistic that 100-150 people might join our inaugural event. Now we can see that the progress and abundance community is numbering in the several hundreds thinkers, doers, builders, storytellers, policy makers, and others. Progress is important and not automatic. See you in October to meet great people, catalyze new projects, share ideas, and get energized and inspired to make progress happen, together.