Who would you nominate for Curiosity Camp?
We’re headed into winter. This means that time spent outdoors will likely consist of walks to inspect neighborhood holiday decorations or winter sports. Our favorite time of year — the first weekend of June when we convene for Curiosity Camp — is behind us, or should we say ahead? We’re ready to gear up for next summer!
Nominations for Curiosity Camp 2024 are open now! If you have ever wanted to join the most illustrious and enriching campout you could imagine, now’s your chance to lock in a spot for yourself or nominate a curiosity-driven human we should have on our radar.
A little history
We hosted our first Curiosity Camp back in 2013. And throughout the last nine Camps (we took a COVID hiatus), we’ve stuck to our beloved unconference structure. Unconferences are events with no preset schedule, no booths, no panels, no stuffy board rooms, and no ego. Each unconference speaking session is proposed that day by attendees, and the conversations that follow are propelled by those who join the session. We’ve watched government officials, biologists, and technologists all converge to tackle how we might solve our wildfire and climate crisis. We’ve eagerly practiced the art of deepening human connection with physicists, researchers, highly successful entrepreneurs, and well-known CEOs.
Our campers range from Nobel laureates to government officials, executives, founders, and academic researchers. But the best part is, our campers don’t know who is who before they arrive. Each year we save the bios and lists of accolades for after Camp. Instead, we encourage campers to bring an open mind and a sense of curiosity. You never know who your lunch buddy might be.
Each camper contributes to unconference sessions, shares insights, explores scientific discoveries they are curious about, shares their progress and challenges around company building, and builds on each other’s ideas. The conversations are powerful.
To ensure that Camp remains a safe space for bold ideas and honest conversations, we follow Chatham House Rules, meaning we don’t go into detail about who led each session and what each unconference guest shared.
Here’s a peek at some of our favorite sessions from last year
- The future of work is… unclear. But could Universal Basic Income (UBI) and the gig economy be leveraged to unleash our creativity and propel our economy to greater heights? Attendees explored how these two crucial components might help us unlock unprecedented levels of creativity and productivity.
- Gamifying our world: What if we take a global problem, abstract it, gamify it and track how people solve it? What if we could crowdsource problem-solving and use the intelligence of millions to learn more about our world? Tech enthusiasts and creative minds alike met during this session to map out the intersection of fun and learning.
- Battle of the physicists: Is time travel real? What math proves the multiverse? And what does Hollywood get right about space, time, and quantum computing? All this and more was hotly debated in a session co-led by a theoretical physicist and a mathematical physicist. We left with a deeper understanding of space and where the fields of physics intersect and venture away from one another.
- Saving nature with biotechnology: what tools and biotechnologies can we use to intervene in nature for conservation and regeneration applications? What are the technical, social, and financial dimensions of genetic intervention and rescue? Because let’s face it, we all want to live in a vibrant world and feel like we’re contributing to a healthy ecosystem.
- International Ocean Station: how much do we really know about our oceans and the underwater world? This session explored the potential implications of an International Ocean Station. Scientists, technologists, and environmentalists met to debate what’s really possible below the water’s surface.
- The ethics of it all: Biotechnology is advancing. And with it come the ethical concerns and implications of enhancing the human genome. What is truly equitable, just, and fair? What Pandora’s Box will we open the further we delve into designing life? This session led to a fascinating discussion that blended technology, ethics, and society.
Next year’s Curiosity Camp will be extra special, and we need your help to make it happen
This coming Camp will be our 10th! And we fully intend to make this extra special. Expect more opportunities to learn from one another, more inspiring hikes, more ways to expand the mind and explore your work from different perspectives, and more opportunities to grow with our special community.
Curiosity Camp is a weekend unlike any other. You truly have to see it to believe it. Most importantly, it’s our guests and the questions they come ready to ask that make Camp so special. Help us make this year’s Camp the biggest, brightest, and most inspiring event yet.
