Tl;dr:
- The first progress conference was a huge success. Progress Conference 2025 will happen in October 2025, in Berkeley. More info early next year!
- We’re hiring an Event Manager to help us make this an annual event and to convene other in-person events for the progress community.
It’s been a month since the first annual Progress Conference brought together well over 200 thinkers, builders, policy makers, storytellers, and students of progress. Many attendees said it was one of the best conferences (or even the best!) they ever attended:
I had high expectations and you exceeded them. I’ve been to a bunch of conferences, I honestly think this was the best. The organization, the venue, the speakers, the structure, the participants, the esprit de corps, just outstanding job all around. Extremely well done!
Hats off for a truly memorable experience of this inaugural (of many needed) community building events for Progress.
Thank you for everything. This was life-giving. Genuinely.
Those quotes are from the feedback survey, which more than 100 people completed. On average, they’d be extremely likely to come back next year (average rating of 9 out of 10), or the equivalent of a 68 NPS score. We received 16,000 words of feedback, highlighting all that got people excited, and giving us many ideas on what to do even better next year.
Take-aways
The conference achieved its to priority, to connect people and build relationships: 
Great people + venue that invites conversation + great weather = magic!
The people/attendees were expertly curated and very high quality. The venue made social interactions inevitable, because you would randomly bump into people. This was a highlight for me.
Meeting some of my heroes working on Progress-related topics, and having a forum to not just listen to them speak, but also to engage with them.
Conversations with the right people: a conference and venue optimized for precisely this
The curation of all the participants with each bringing something valuable to the table. They were extremely high capacity people and we all shared a generally aligned worldview. That meant almost every interaction led to some learning and something worthwhile. Rare to see that at other kinds of conferences that are open-ended and have people buy their way in.
This is THE network to connect with the founders, writers, academics, and activists working to build a better world.
The buzz continued post-conference, with over a dozen write-ups sharing impressions of the conference and writing up ideas generated by the event.
- Noah Smith: “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”
- Packy McCormick: “It was awesome. A group of my favorite progress thinkers and doers from the internet”
- Scott Alexander: “it was great… the sort of conference you would expect in a world where the Great Stagnation was ending”
- Bryan Walsh, in Vox: “An effort to better understand how progress has happened is the first step to making it fully real once again”
- Zachary Karabell: “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”
- Dean Ball: “part of what made it such an exceptional event was the palpable sense of urgency in every panel, every keynote, and every impromptu debate”
- Ben Parry: “I loved this conference. It was a true celebration. I’m sure there will be much to process for many days to come”
- And more from Lynne Kiesling, Kevin Kohler, Laura Fingal-Surma, Gina Gorlin, Rob Tracinski, Jonah Messinger, Bob Ewing, and The Entrepreneurs Network
And some love on social media (just a sample!)
- Rob L’Heureux: “the best conference I’ve ever been to”
- Quade MacDonald: “Reflecting on how much I learned this weekend at the Progress Conference. Talks were fantastic; but listening to and meeting heroes of mine … really inspired me”
- Lucia Asanache: “If progress studies are a vibe … I can’t think of a better way to get a feel for it + power the engines. Hats off @rootsofprogress for the inaugural conference”
- Asimov Press: “We went to this conference and left with enough ideas to fill our entire calendar in 2025”
- Beatriz Gietner: “mind was blown and the future is bright!”
- Andrew Miller: “The sessions were excellent … but the conversations between sessions were even better. I have never left a conference so energized and eager”
Read all the essays and blog posts here.
Videos of the talks will be available by mid-December. We’ll post a link on the conference website, and they’ll be on our YouTube channel.
Planning the Second Annual Progress Conference
With all this great feedback, we will host the second annual progress conference in 2025. Details will be announced early next year; for now, we can share that we’re planning for early- to mid-October, in the SF Bay Area, where we are working with Lighthaven to again be our venue.
We’re hiring an Event Manager to help us make this an annual event and to run other in-person events for the progress community.
Please help us find a great person for this role by sharing our jobs description—or apply if you’re interested in joining our team:
Event Manager – Roots of Progress Institute
This is a great opportunity for someone who is both great at project management and loves people and building community; it’s a full-time, remote position based in the US. Applications are now open, and our goal is to fill this position by the end of Q1, 2025.