Progress Conference 2026

Hosted by: the Roots of Progress Institute, together with Abundance Institute, Foresight Institute, Foundation for American Innovation, Human Progress, the Institute for Progress, the Institute for Humane Studies, and Works in Progress.

When: October 8–11, 2026

Where: Berkeley, CA—back for a third year at the Lighthaven campus which received rave reviews the last two years.

Speakers: We’ll announce an initial slate of speakers by April. Last year’s speakers included Sam Altman, Tyler Cowen, Jennifer Pahlka, and many others. You can see all 2025 speakers on this page (scroll down) and watch recorded talks here.

Program: The main two-day conference will happen all day Friday and Saturday, same as 2025. Attend speaker talks on topics from robotics to education to construction, workshop new projects, sign up to run an unconference session, and more. Thursday and Sunday will be optional add-on days, with factory tours, interest group events, and other activities.

Our mission is to establish a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century, and to build a culture of progress. Bringing the members of the progress movement together is a core part of our strategy: the large annual conference is a first step; we’re also organizing more in person and virtual events.

The post Save the date: Progress Conference 2026 appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

Starting today, high school students can apply to Progress in Medicine, a new program by the Roots of Progress Institute.

What the Progress in Medicine program offers

In this summer program, high school students will explore careers in in medicine, biotech, health policy, and longevity. We will inspire them with stories of historical progress and future opportunities in medicine, help them think about a wider range of careers, and raise their aspirations about how they can contribute to progress in medicine. The program centers on this central question:

People today live longer, healthier, and less painful lives than ever before. Why? Who made those changes possible? Can we keep this going? And could you play a part?

Teens will:

• Learn about and be inspired by the heroes of the past—the people who conquered infectious diseases and gave us anesthesia and all of modern medicine.
• Meet inspiring role models—like a PhD drop-out who is now a CEO of a company curing aging in dogs, and a pre-med student who shifted gears to work on an organ-freezing ambulance to the future.
• Explore hands-on skills that give them a taste of medical training and practice.
• Find community in a cohort of ambitious high school students who share their interest in medicine and related fields
• Experience life in Stanford’s dorms for four days and tour research labs and Bay Area biotech companies.
• Think differently about what happens after high school by zeroing in on a problem they are excited to help solve.
• Prepare for college, scholarship, and grant applications. They will become clearer on their goals and practice writing a personal essay in a structured, 10-hour essay process.

When & where Progress in Medicine takes place

This is a six-week hybrid program for high school students from all over the US. It’s designed to fit around teens’ other summer plans, from family travel to part-time jobs or sports programs.

• 5 weeks live online, 2 hours a day (1-3 pm PT/4-6 pm ET), 4 days/week, Monday – Thursday. June 15-July 10 & July 20-24
• 4 days in person in-residency program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA with small-group tours to labs and bio-tech companies in the Bay Area. July 15-19

Program cost is $2,000; scholarships are available.

Who this program is for

High school students—current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in the 2025/26 school year. Students who are curious about careers in medicine, biotech, health policy, longevity and who have demonstrated the ability to handle a fast-paced, rigorous program. Participants will be selected via an online written application and a Zoom interview with Roots of Progress Institute staff; we expect this program to be competitive, like our RPI’s other programs.

Program advisors and and near-peer mentors

We have a great group of experts lined up to speak to modern problems they solve, including:

• Celine Halioua (CEO at Loyal, dog longevity drugs)
• Amesh Adalja (Senior Scholar at John Hopkins University, infectious diseases)
• Jared Seehafer (Senior Advisor, FDA Office of the Commissioner, accelerating life-saving technology)
• Jake Swett (CEO Blueprint Biosecurity, clean air for infectious disease prevention)

Teens will also meet in smaller groups with several near-peer mentors—young professionals 5-15 years older who will give them a real feel of what working in the field may look like for them. These young mentors’ work ranges widely, from being a NICU nurse, functional medicine doctor, or ER doctor—to such things as researching sleep and the body’s self-repair system, to digitizing dog’s smelling superpower, to improving clinical trials and designing hardware to cryopreserve organs for transplantation.

Why the Roots of Progress Institute is creating this program

To keep progress going—in science and technology generally, and specifically in medicine, biotech, and health—we have to believe that it is is possible and desirable.

Too many young people aren’t aware of how we built the modern world and thus see today’s problems as overwhelming and anxiety-provoking. We want to inspire talented teens to realize that the heroes who gave us modern medicine—from germ theory to vaccines and cancer medicines—are people like them who solved tough problems they faced, in their times. With this historical context and exposure to role models, teens will be inspired to solve today’s problems and become the ambitious builders of a better, techno-humanist future.

This a pilot program and our first foray into programs that reach out to the broader culture beyond the progress community. Education is one of the key cultural channels that spreads new ideas. Reaching young people has a dual benefit: it shifts the overall culture and it inspires future builders and thinkers. If this goes well, we will expand on and scale the program.

Applications are now open. The priority deadline to apply is February 8th, 2026.

Help spread the word by sharing this announcement and the program website with parents, teens, and teachers in your network: rootsofprogress.org/progress-in-medicine

The post Announcing Progress in Medicine, a high school summer career exploration program appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

• Check out videos of the conference talks, articles from well known writers, and a new Big Think special issue on progress.
• The second annual progress conference was a great success. Progress Conference 2026 will be October 8th-11th in Berkeley. More info early next year!

This is the best conference I have ever been to. The attendees quality, the venue and the operations details are top notch. Will be a forever attendee from now on!

You will meet more excellent people and get to think about more challenging ideas in 48 hours than in any other environment/event.

If building a great culture is the really hard part, Progress Conference gives us a solid foundation to build on. The quality of ideas is extremely high and overflowing, but it’s the openness, honest discussions, and friendliness that makes it so energizing.

We’re about a month past the second annual Progress Conference. The 2025 conference was bigger than 2024: more days and more people, bringing together over 350 builders, academics, policy makers, investors, and writers who care about progress. Many attendees said it was yet again one of the best (or the best!) conference they had ever attended.

Attendees are extremely likely to recommend the conference to a friend or colleague, with an average rating of 9.3/10 and an excellent net promoter score of +83. We also received dozens of pages of feedback, even more than last year, giving us lots of ideas on how to keep improving the event.

It costs a lot of people’s time and money to get together. Why have an in-person conference in the age of video meetings, chatbots, and endless social media? In-person gatherings are necessary to build community and grow a movement. Here are the goals we had for the conference, and what people had to say about them:

Meet great people

It’s 2 days of living in the future. You meet people who are at the frontier of emerging fields and fill up on inspiration and ideas.

I really liked meeting the other attendees + spending time with them; very useful. A very orthogonal slice of people to those with whom I typically interact professionally, which makes it thought-provoking and high marginal value.

It was the best blend of academics/policy oriented folks/investors/entrepreneurs of all the conferences I’ve been to this year.

Catalyze new projects

Really really impressive work putting on such a great event. I came away with dozens of ideas, memories and contacts that I suspect will be paying dividends for many years!

Thanks for building this movement. The ideas and connections from these conferences have fueled my organization over the last year.

Be energized and inspired

THE BUZZ! Gosh I had so many wonderful conversations. It was amazing to be in a space filled with the greatest minds, working on such critical problems, without ugly ego. Still grinning from the experience.

If building a great culture is the really hard part, Progress Conference gives us a solid foundation to build on. The quality of ideas is extremely high and overflowing, but it’s the openness, honest discussions, and friendliness that makes it so energizing.

All I can say about the progress conference is that I always felt both welcome & certain I was the dumbest person in the room, which is an incredibly fortunate situation to be in. The conference sets the tone of my personal year: will I have done something meaningful enough to share next year?

Sharing ideas

Our other core goal for the event is to share ideas. You can watch videos of the talks, read articles and blog posts from the event, and browse the latest Big Think special issue on progress (just published!)

Videos of conference talks will be published over the next several weeks. We’ll post on the RPI YouTube channel (2025 specific playlist here) and on social media. Two plenary interviews are already available:

• Sam Altman in conversation with Tyler Cowen. Sam and Tyler talked about when GPT-6 will be released; what might happen to margins on food, healthcare, and housing; conspiracy theories; and much more.
• Blake Scholl in conversation with Tyler Cowen. Blake and Tyler cover the future of supersonic flight; whether the Apollo and Concord programs were good for the aerospace industry; how to design airports for the future; and more.

The buzz continued after the event, with many writers sharing ideas inspired by the conference. We’ve collected essays, blog posts, and social media commentary here. A few highlights:

• Kevin Kohler on A Culture of Progress: “Mokyr would be a great speaker for the Progress Conference. Still, the agenda that brings together frontier entrepreneurs, science and tech policy leaders, and authors is more future-oriented and action-oriented than disinterested historical analysis. In that sense, the Progress Conference is not the annual meeting of Industrial Revolution scholars, rather it is a modern form of the ‘culture of growth’ that **Mokyr studied as part of the Industrial Revolution. Lighthaven is kind of an ‘enlightenment salon’ of the singularity. Loose networks of substacks are a modern take on the ‘Republic of Letters’.”
• Ruy Teixeira on Democrats Could Learn a Lot from the Progress Movement: “Here are my impressions: 1. There was more political diversity than among abundance advocates who tend to lean a bit left and mostly aspire to be a faction within the Democratic Party. The progress movement/studies umbrella includes such people but also many who lean right and/or libertarian and don’t have much use for the Democrats. 2. There was an entrepreneurial, as opposed to technocratic, feel to the crowd and many of the discussions, not least because there were quite a few startup founders and VCs present. That’s not to say there weren’t quite a few policy wonks too, but the entrepreneurial vibe helped give a sense of people creating progress, rather than twisting policy dials to help it along. 3. There was a fierce and generalized techno-optimism to the crowd that far surpassed what you see in Democratic-oriented abundance circles where it tends to be focused on favored goals like clean energy. These are people who deeply believe in the potential of technological advance and the process of scientific discovery that leads to such advance—‘the endless frontier’ if you will.”
• Zvi Mowshowitz on Dan Rothschild’s thread about our conference badges: “There’s basically no reason for everyone not to outright copy this format, forever.”

Big Think just published The Engine of Progress, exploring the people and ideas driving humanity forward. This special issue featuring original reporting and essays from many conference attendees and RPI fellows, and much more. Here are some of our favorite pieces:

• The common thread of progress by Jason Crawford
• The grim truth about the “good old days” by Chelsea Follett
• The hidden legal engine of progress — from railroads to AI by Dean Ball
• Were Concorde and Apollo good for the future of aerospace? by Blake Scholl
• Physical dynamism and the immigrant’s edge by Afra Wang
• A new progressive era may be emerging by Peter Leyden

Building a culture of progress

At the Roots of Progress Institute, our programs are dedicated to building the progress community and movement.

The annual progress conference is becoming a must-attend, central event for the progress community. But there is clearly much more room to grow: the conference sold out in June, five months before the event, and there were hundreds of interested, qualified people that we wish we’d had space to include.

As we plan out more events for 2026, we are thinking about how to include many more people in our RPI events, and how to gather smaller groups at functional events aimed at solving specific questions or kickstarting projects.

A personal reflection: I joined RPI this year to organize the second annual conference (and more events to come). It’s energizing to be around so many people who believe that progress is possible and worthwhile, and that the work can be done with taste, craft, and thoughtfulness. I became a father just a few weeks before this conference, and now I feel like I have a lot more skin in the game. We can build a future that we want our grandchildren to live in!

Save the date for Progress Conference 2026: October 8th-11th at Lighthaven in Berkeley, CA.

The post Reflections on Progress Conference 2025 appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

• 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.
• 7 additional sponsors. We welcome Jane Street, Renaissance Philanthropy, Common Group, Works in Progress, Halcyon Ventures, Inclusive Abundance, and Circulate Planning 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.

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Applications are now open for the third Blog-Building Intensive fellowship! 

This year we have two new tracks available for applicants to our Blog Building Intensive Fellowship: agriculture and health, longevity or biotech. 

For each of these tracks, we’re looking for 5-7 fellows who are passionate about the topic and who bring relevant expertise. If you join a themed track, you’ll be attending all the advisor sessions for that track, and you’re committing to focus your writing in the program on how agriculture or health, longevity & biotech are related to and enable progress. 

We will also accept fellows writing on any progress or abundance-related topic, but will give preference for a handful of spots to applicants focusing on these areas, and we will have dedicated programming for these tracks.

If you are thinking of applying for one of our themed tracks, here are some example topics you might explore or write about.

These examples are meant to give you a sense of what we’re thinking about when we think about progress and agriculture or progress and health, longevity and biotech. They are not meant to constrain you. If you have an angel not articulated here, we’d still love to hear from you. 

Learn more and apply here

The progress movement needs more people writing intelligently about (1) agriculture and (2) health, longevity, and biotech.* Maybe you’re one of those people?

Find out by applying to the third cohort of the Roots of Progress blog-building intensive!

Who you are:

• Someone who is deeply fascinated by how we feed the world (agriculture track) and how humans can live healthier, longer lives (health, biotech, longevity track)
• You are immersed or deeply knowledgeable in these fields. Maybe you’re a university-based researcher, or you work for a start-up and are passionate about an ag or health/bio mission. Or maybe you work for a think tank going deep about these fields, and want to reach a broader audience. Or maybe a specific topic in these areas is a long-held hobby interest that you’re ready to go deeper on. 
• You like to write, or at least have dabbled seriously enough in writing to want to get better at it–in the pursuit of your passion for agriculture or biotech/health/longevity
• You’re excited about building a better, techno-humanist future; you’re on board with progress being good and with solutions being possible and desirable to improve human flourishing 

What you’ll get if admitted to the program:

• Access to expert advisors in the field to learn from & grow your network
• A structured writing course and a chance to write four essays on topics in agriculture or health/biotech/longevity
• A community of progress-minded peers who also love to write and support each other

Not sure what writing about agriculture or health/longevity/bio could look like? Here are some example topic areas. They are just examples; if admitted, you decide what to write about. 

Agriculture Track 

• Adapting to climate change. Agriculture both contributes to and is affected by climate change. What does adapting to climate change look like? Which strategies seem promising, which seem less promising? What should farmers be doing to mitigate their farm’s contribution to agriculture?
• On-farm Data, prediction models and precision agriculture. One of the biggest frontiers in agriculture relates to the collection and use of data. More data than ever before is available from the ground (sensors), air (drones) and sky (satellites).  What are the barriers to adoption? What is the current state of adoption? 
• Lab grown, climate change and animal welfare. Lab grown meats are improving quickly. Proponents are excited about lab grown meats because they could reduce the carbon footprint of animal agriculture, and reduce animal suffering. What technological challenges need to be overcome to get there? What about regulatory and cultural challenges? 
• “Sparing” the land vs “Sharing” the land.  Some environmentalists and agriculture thinkers believe we should “spare” as much land as possible from farming. Others believe we should “share” land, that is: use land for multiple purposes including agriculture. How much should we value “wild” places? What are the benefits to be derived from preserving “wild” land? How do we define “wild” land? What does optimal land “sharing” look like? How much land should be “spared” versus “shared?”
• Safety-ism and Regulation.  From successful anti-GMO lobbying to onerous and non-meaningful “Organic” food regulations, food “safety” advocates have done a lot to hamper progress. What do smart/effective safety standards/regulations look like? How can pseudoscientific safety claims be eliminated from the conversation?

Given the broad list of topics, we’d love to see fellows with a range of backgrounds—from people with deep expertise in agronomy, to those who research new ways to develop fertilizers, from animal welfare advocates to agriculture journalists.

Agriculture fellows will learn from an all-star case of advisors including: Brad Zamft, Sledge Taylor, Tim Hammerich, Robert Yaman and Alison Van Eenennaman. 

Learn more and apply here

Health, longevity & biotech track 

• Longevity.  Why should pro-progress people care about longevity? Why should people want to live longer themselves and want other people to live longer? What is the current state of longevity research? 
• Biotech innovation and AI. AI scientists? AI-driven drug discovery? There is a lot of excitement about how AI could accelerate improvements in healthcare, medicine and drug development. What are the most promising applications of AI? What kinds of transformations should we expect to see? What is still unknown? 
• Regulation and policy reform. Getting promising drugs and therapies to patients quickly would have obvious benefits. Delays cost lives. But safety concerns are real. What kinds of regulatory reforms will help get effective drugs to patients faster? 
• History of medicine. Human lifespan and healthspan has radically increased in the last two hundred years. But unnecessary delays cost lives, too. What can we learn from the history of medicine about how to accelerate progress in the future? 
• Prevention vs. treatment. While the US spends more than most other countries on medical care, our life expectancy lags behind. How should we think about preventing chronic diseases vs. treating them? Does our healthcare system provide the right incentives for prevention vs. treatment? How could new wearable tech and other data-based innovations help guide healthier lifestyles?

With the focus on health, longevity and biotech, an ideal fellow may be someone who has worked in one of these fields! You might also be a great candidate if you’ve spent some time researching these fields, whether at a think tank, as a personal passion project, or in academia.

Health fellows will learn from an all-star cast of advisors include: Ruxandra Teslo, Sam Rodrigues, Niko McCarty, Saloni Dattani, Meri Beckwith, John Willbanks. 

Learn more and apply here

* We also accept people writing about broader topics of progress and of abundance. This particular post is just going deeper into our themed tracks as we’ve been getting questions about those.

The post We have two new tracks for our 2025 Blog-Building Intensive Fellowship appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

Applications are now open for the 2025 cohort of The Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive, a 10-week program for aspiring progress writers. 

Last year, 24 fellows, selected from well over 300 applicants, completed the program. They have sung the program’s praises:

• “It took me to another level as a writer” — Rob L’Heureux 
• “I felt a sense of belonging and community I didn’t have before” — Grant Mulligan 
• “It gave me the tools and confidence to actually start publishing’— Rosie Campbell

Last year’s fellows are now leading the AI policy debate, earning recognition for their writing on biotechnology, being cited in the Financial Times on China’s penetration of Western markets, and earning the top spot on the Hacker News forum. They published 81 essays in total during the program, on topics like techno urbanism, how China hacked comparative advantage, the pace of progress in medicine, the case for positive-sum environmentalism, why air conditioning is a survival technology, progress in metascience, why we should take AI welfare seriously, marine carbon dioxide removal, how EVs could change the grid, and so much more.

Now, you can join this optimistic intellectual community. You will launch (or re-launch) a blog/Substack, get into a regular writing habit, improve your writing, and make progress on building your audience.

You will also meet and learn from progress studies leaders, authors, and industry experts. You’ll participate in a structured 10-week writing course designed to specifically support the type of writing our fellows want to excel at: long-form, informational essays that explain and persuade, often in technical topic areas or tricky policy topics. 

You will learn how to write more, create writing habits, and develop a writing system. You’ll write and publish four essays, one every other week, and you’ll receive detailed feedback from an experienced professional editor, from the Roots of Progress team, and from your peers. At the end of the program, you’ll meet your peers in person in San Francisco and get to attend the 2025 Progress Conference, where you’ll join 300 authors, technologists, policy experts, academics, nonprofit leaders, and storytellers.

Themes

In addition to a general focus on progress studies, this year’s fellowship features two themes: (1) agriculture and (2) health, biotech & longevity. We welcome fellows writing on any progress-related topic, but for a handful of spots, we will give preference to applicants focusing on these themes, for which there will be dedicated programming.

Advisors

We have a fantastic group of advisors for you to meet and learn from: 

• Progress thinkers, writers, and media leaders, including Tyler Cowen (Mercatus Center), Virginia Postrel (author, The Future and Its Enemies), Noah Smith (Noahpinion), Tomas Pueyo (Uncharted Territories), Saloni Dattani (Our World in Data and Works in Progress), Eli Dourado (Astera Institute) and Brian Potter (institute for Progress). 
• Industry experts, including Sam Rodriques (FutureHouse), Alison Van Eenennaam (U.C. Davis), Brad Zamft (Heritable), Meri Beckwith (Lindus Health), Robert Yaman  (Innovate Animal Ag), John Wilbanks (Astera Institute), Tim Hammerich (Future of Agriculture Podcast), Niko McCarty (Asimov Press), Ruxandra Tesloianu (Wellcome Sanger Institute), and Sledge Taylor (Como Consolidated Gin Co).

Who

This program may be for you if you’re excited about progress studies and you love to write. Maybe you’d like to explore a career in writing about progress, or maybe you’re already blogging but would like to get to the next level—find your own topic area, increase your productivity, get more plugged into the community, and grow your audience.

If you have a background in and are passionate about agriculture and health, longevity and biotech, please apply to those specific tracks: it will be great to have a community of people with similar focused interests to support each other.

Commitment

10–15 hours a week, for 10 weeks. There is also a lighter week-long onboarding program that precedes the main program. You’ll use the time to read, to write, to participate in discussions with experts, to provide editing and feedback to your peers, and to participate in group meetings.

There is no cost to you.

When

The program online runs July 28th–October 10. You’ll then participate in the 2025 Progress Conference in San Francisco October 17–19; with a dedicated day of in-person fellow activities on October 16th, right before the conference.

Applications are now open, with rolling admissions; the final deadline is June 1st. Learn more and apply: 2025 Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive

Special thanks to program sponsor, Alpha School, for helping to make this program possible!

The post Announcing the 2025 Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

Last fall we hosted the first annual Progress Conference. 200 people excited about human progress gathered for two days in Berkeley, California, to share ideas in deep conversation, catalyze new projects, and get energized and inspired. Several attendees even said it was the best conference they had ever attended. We shared more about our reflections here, including a list of over a dozen write-ups from writers such as Noah Smith, Packy McCormick, Scott Alexander, and many more.

Whenever a new movement is growing, an annual event like this is important to build its community and establish its identity. So, after last year’s great reception, we’re excited to announce Progress Conference 2025. It will be bigger, longer, and better, as we build on last year’s success and participant feedback.

Hosted by: the Roots of Progress Institute, together with Abundance Institute, Foresight Institute, Foundation for American Innovation, Human Progress, the Institute for Progress, the Institute for Humane Studies, and Works in Progress.

When: October 16-19, 2025

Where: Berkeley, CA, back at the Lighthaven campus that received rave reviews for the first conference.

Speakers: Keynotes include Sam Altman, Tyler Cowen, Jennifer Pahlka, and Blake Scholl. 30+ additional speakers will share ideas on four tracks: AI protopia, health/biotech/longevity, policy, and American Dynamism. Full speaker list so far.

Attendees: We expect 300+ builders, storytellers, policy makers, intellectuals, and students. This is an invitation-only event, but anyone can apply for an invitation. Complete the open application by May 15th.

Program: The main two-day conference will happen all day Friday and Saturday, similar to 2024—attend talks on topics from AI protopia to longevity to policy, sign up to run an unconference session, pitch your ideas to those who could help make your dreams a reality, and more. 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.

Sponsorships: Special thanks to our early sponsors Open Philanthropy, Astera Institute, Freethink, the Future of Life Institute, Human Progress, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Foundation for Economic Education, Good Science Project, Kindred Subjects, and Manifold. We have more sponsorships available. View sponsorship opportunities here.

Our mission is to establish a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century, and to build a culture of progress. Bringing the members of the progress movement together is a core part of our strategy: the annual large conference is just a first step; we’re already planning more in-person and virtual events.

The post Announcing Progress Conference 2025 appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

• Save the date: Progress Conference 2025 will be October 16 – 19 in Berkeley, CA. Speakers and more details to be announced this spring.
• Our team is growing! We’re excited to welcome Ben Thomas as our Event Manager.

Last year we hosted the first annual Progress Conference. 200 people excited about human progress gathered for two days in Berkeley, California, to share ideas in deep conversation, catalyze new projects to make even more progress, and get energize and inspired. Many attendees even said it was one of the best conferences (or even the best!) they had ever attended. We shared more about our reflections here, including a list of over a dozen write-ups from writers such as Noah Smith, Packy McCormick, Scott Alexander, and many more.

With this great reception, we’re excited to announce plans for Progress Conference 2025. It will be bigger, longer, and better, as we build on last year’s success and participant feedback.

Progress Conference 2025 Overview

Hosted by: the Roots of Progress Institute, together with Abundance Institute, Foresight Institute, Foundation for American Innovation, HumanProgress, the Institute for Progress, the Institute for Humane Studies, and Works in Progress.

When: October 16 – 19, 2025

Where: Berkeley, CA — back at the Lighthaven Campus that received rave reviews for the first conference.

Speakers: We’ll announce an initial slate of speakers by April. Last year’s speakers included Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen, Steven Pinker, and many others. You can see all 2024 speakers on this page (scroll down) and watch recorded talks here.

Attendees: We expect 300+ builders, storytellers, policy makers, intellectuals, and students. This is an invitation-only event, but anyone can apply for an invitation. The open application period will start in April.

Program: The main two-day conference will happen all day Friday and Saturday, similar to 2024 — attend talks on topics from AI protopia to longevity to policy, sign up to run an unconference session, pitch your ideas to those who could help make your dreams a reality, and more. 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.

Our mission is to establish a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century, and to build a culture of progress. Bringing the members of the progress movement together is a core part of our strategy: the annual large conference is just a first step; we’re already planning more in person and virtual events.

Our team is growing: Welcome, Ben Thomas

To make all this happen, our team is growing: Ben Thomas is joining us as our Event Manager!

Ben has a background in operations working with organizations of almost any size, from small nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies. He started his career in management consulting at McKinsey & Company, including a rotation at the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s technology, business, and economics research group. Then he worked in strategy, operations, data, customer support, and marketing at technology and media nonprofit BibleProject. Ben has been following the progress movement from the sidelines ever since his economics professor had “the” Our World in Data charts pinned up on the office door, and he’s thrilled to contribute directly now.

At the Roots of Progress Institute, Ben will lead the annual progress conference, create more in-person events for the progress community, and support other community building initiatives. If you’ve got ideas for events you’d like to see happen in the progress movement, please reach out, and if you’re a speaker, sponsor, or conference guest, look out for emails from Ben in your inbox.

The post Save the date: Progress Conference 2025 appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

This fall, our second class of 24 blog-building fellows completed our eight-week blog building intensive.

The second interaction of our fellowship program was a success: several RPI fellows are in the vanguard of the growing progress studies movement. You’ll find them leading the AI policy debate, earning recognition for their writing on biotechnology, being cited in the Financial Times on China’s penetration of Western markets, and earning the top spot on the Hacker News forum.

They published 81 essays in total during the program, on topics like techno urbanism, how China hacked comparative advantage, AI as “Black Boxes,” the pace of progress in medicine, the case for positive-sum environmentalism, why air conditioning is a survival technology, progress in metascience, why we should take AI welfare seriously, marine carbon dioxide removal, the non-existent Germany YIMBY movement, how EVs could change the grid, the benefits of microgravity, many different analogies for thinking about AI, and so much more.

As with our first cohort, our 2024 fellows said the blog-building intensive program raised their ambition, improved their writing, and gave them a newfound sense of community and belonging.

By the numbers:

• Over 60% of fellows rated the blog-building intensive at an 8, 9 or 10 (out of 10) for having accelerated their career as a progress intellectual.
• Of our 24 fellows, 7 had no online writing presence when they joined the program and launched their newsletter or blog during the program.
• For those who already had blogs or newsletters, the median audience growth during the program was 84%.
• 80% of fellows said they would stay in touch with one or more of their peers from the program.

Here’s what the fellows had to say:

“RPI made me more ambitious about my progress career”

The advisor sessions, along with individual mentorship and exposure to the other talented fellows, were all designed to inspire fellows and raise their ambition. We feel we’ve succeeded in this area. Here’s what the fellows had to say:

• “BBI has raised my standards. I saw a new standard of intellect, purpose, and execution on display in BBI that opened my eyes to what it means to be truly excellent”
• “The support and encouragement have taken my ambition and sense of purpose to another level.”
• “The RPI fellowship helped me achieve every personal and professional objective I set out for it.”

“It took me to another level as a writer”

We included several elements designed to help fellows improve their writing in the blog-building intensive. Fellows participated in Rob Tracinski’s Think Like A Writer course, workshopped their writing twice per week with peers, and had their essays edited by professional editors. Here’s what the fellows had to say:

• “I felt like it took me to another level as a writer, dusting off ways of thinking I have not used since writing papers in college. The experience of being edited, learning how to pitch, and exploring the possible kinds of writing on my blog are not things I would have done on my own.”
• “When I started in the BBI, I had only barely found my voice. By the end of the program, I felt the wind at my back as a writer. The quality of the group, the visibility participation provided me, and the benefits of RPI staff feedback were invaluable.”
• “The Roots of Progress Fellowship is the single best way I’ve found to hone storytelling skills and, importantly, break into a supportive community of other writers and editors.

“I feel a sense of belonging and community I didn’t have before.”

Without question, the community was the most significant aspect of the program for fellows. Through our 4-week onboarding period leading up to the fellowships, or daily sessions during the fellowships and time spent together in Berkeley and at the Progress Conference, fellows forged a lasting sense of community. Here’s what the fellows had to say:

• “It was wonderful to meet the rest of the fellows: a gathering of smart people who are optimistic, and who care. They find cynicism as boring and shallow as I do, and are actively working to make the world better. It’s their example and their camaraderie that fills me with energy. I look forward to seeing them grow, and to growing alongside them.”
• “I’ve always felt progress-adjacent; being a BBI fellow made me feel more part of the progress community.”
• “I feel incredibly inspired, the community is amazing, which feels very motivating – I want to contribute.”

We couldn’t be prouder of our 2024 fellows, and we’re looking forward to improving upon this year’s program in 2025. Stay tuned; we’ll have more to share late in Q1 2025 about next year’s Roots of Progress Institute blog-building intensive.

The post Looking back on the 2024 Blog-Building Intensive Fellowship  appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.

• 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.

The post Progress Conference Reflections – and 2025 Plans (We’re Hiring!) appeared first on Roots of Progress Institute.