Das Tegernsee 2023
A few weeks ago, together with my friend Reilly Brennan, we hosted our 6th annual invite-only Future of Transportation conference, called Das Tegernsee. For 48 hours, 80 transportation industry pioneers and leaders from all over the world converged at the historic Das Tegernsee resort in Germany, which sits high on a hill overlooking a mountain lake in the Alps.
Our logo for the event is the infamous end of restrictions sign, which marks the sections of German Autobahn without speed limits. Over 48 hours we hold a series of sessions and activities, including daily Tegernsee Talks (pictured above), a mountain hike, a boat cruise, and two group dinners.
What sets Das Tegernsee apart is attendee commitment. We have three simple ground rules:
- All attendees commit to the entire 48 hours of the event — no late arrivals or early departures.
- Absolutely no phones or laptops in any of the group sessions and activities.
- Strict adherence to the Chatham House Rule.
Taken together, these rules create a unique environment for open discussion with, learning from, and bonding between the 80 attendees. In today’s always-online world, it’s a unique experience.
Another part of the magic is that we don’t announce speakers in advance, and we assemble the speaker list shortly before the event from the committed attendee list. This year’s “attendee speakers” included Boris Sofman, Danny Shapiro, Diego Rodriguez, Alex Roy, Shiro Nakamura, Richard Kramer, Regina Lawrence Savage and Gur Kimchi. In prior years, attendee speakers have included Swamy Kotagiri, Tony Fadell, Mamatha Chamarthi, Andre Haddad, Clare Jones, James Kuffner, Rob Meyerson, Ralph Gilles, Klaus Busse, Jeff Zwart, Matt Farah, and JR Hildebrand.
Speaker topics, ideas and stories range widely, and have included personal stories about building out EV charging networks, setting public policy for transportation, exploring the complexities of software for autonomous vehicles, racing cars, philosophies of vehicle design, user interaction considerations, vehicle photography, launching spacecraft, and sharing ideas for novel new enabling technologies.
I am incredibly grateful to the hundreds of people who have made the commitment to join and contribute to the event over the years, starting in 2016. It’s not easy to get to a resort town in the German Alps, and without the strong support of alumni recommending the event to their friends and colleagues, we collectively couldn’t have built such a strong community of event alumni. Thank you all for your engagement, encouragement, and support. And a special thanks to Lars Kamp, who co-founded the event and introduced me and Reilly to the location.
Finally, I’d like to thank our industry sponsors who have made this possible. It’s an amazing group of great people and companies, but in particular I’d like to recognize Kersten Heineke, Andreas Cornet and Ruth Heuss of McKinsey & Company, as well as their former colleague Florian Weig who was the original advocate within McKinsey for supporting Das Tegernsee when we started the event in 2017.
Here are a few photos which capture a bit of the spirit of this year’s event:
