What's it all about?

Chasing Wonder is a weekend-long, invitation-only, gathering of ~100 hand picked attendees. It’s a time to collect together a group of kind, curious, interesting people to share our passion and excitement — to spark new ideas and spread old ideas. People from many different fields, many different walks of life, get together and share, teach, and learn about uniquely interesting topics.

Thirsty For More?

Here’s the Meat:

Chasing Wonder is an invitation-only unconference in the San Francisco Bay Area. The one thing that all invitees have in common is that they are kind, passionate, and eager to learn new things. We hand-picked a group of people that will make the event interactive, stimulating, and thought provoking.

The purpose of Chasing Wonder is to bring together a group of kind and interesting people on the West Coast and beyond to create new connections and collaborations. We’ve invited people doing interesting work in fields such as art, education, writing, making, engineering, education, hardware hacking, and many other fields. Our hope is everyone will share what they’re excited about, interested in, and contributing to, regardless of how that relates to their “day job.”

Be Prepared

Get ready to demo or speak:

The attendees at this conference are also the presenters. If you’re invited, you’ve been selected because we think you have something interesting to say or show the other folks at the conference. Have something cool you’ve made? Bring it! Play an instrument? Bring it! (No grand pianos or pipe organs, please). Have something you’re excited to talk about? Give a talk! Some sessions that people have run at other events we have attended include:

What’s cool about squirrels
All about tardigrades
I wrote a book about... Let me tell you about it (but no sales!)
How to quilt
How to run a Kickstarter
What should the future of education look like
How to help children thrive
Lets make liquid nitrogen ice cream
Lets talk about Python
Hacking travel with points
How to run for office

The majority of the agenda will be determined by you, the attendees. If you have a talk you’d like to give, just sign up. Talks are meant to be more of a dialogue than a traditional conference–if you’re attending a talk, you’re encouraged to participate–think of it as more of a collaborative brainstorming effort than a one-way presentation.

We’ll Provide The Environment For It All

That includes space, electricity, wireless network, food, beverages, and a way to keep in touch online.

Chasing Wonder is about participation–it’s not a traditional event with speakers and participants, rather, all of you create the agenda and give (or facilitate) the discussions. We’ve invited each of you because you’re kind and do interesting things. At this event, the people are the content. Bring cool demos, cool toys, fun giveaways, musical instruments, interesting talks, and be an active participant by asking questions and sharing ideas.