Thank you very much.

No. This is great. There is alignment and synergy. The benefit of you and your practice says that it’s absolutely clear what the subject and topic should be. I’m excited that there’s alignment, and I can’t wait to hear the talk. It’s going to be amazing.

Of course, you want them all especially the briefs to be formatted in a similar way, so we tend to go back and forth on this language and shape that together. I’m curious your appetite on process and that way…

I was going to say, in terms of brief development to find the right language, with the other speakers, we tend to go back and forth and a word doc or paper doc and Dropbox, having a first draft looking at the formatting of it.

That was a master class, presenting those.

The talk will be slightly bigger, talking about the division and so forth, and then the brief can be slightly more drilled down to get to something specific intangible.

Introducing that digital democracy theme or topic, as part of your talk, will be very interesting. It sets us up for brief that really centers around enabling civic participation and dialogue between citizens and government. It’s a click-down from traditional democracy that could lead to digital democracy.

That feels like it’s actionable, and grounded and real, but also, there’s a sense of hope in there, that I’m really excited about.

I’m not from the US, but I’ve been here long enough to understand how people are talking about it. I love the way you’re rethinking and reformatting democracy as something positive and something future forward that we can change, and have an impact on.

Awesome. We think the same thing. The new democracy the way you talk about that topic it’s so fresh for the United States. There’s such a stigma around democracy. It’s so stuck in the old way of thinking about it and almost the politicized version of democracy that we see.

That is short, one liner, also we’re excited, different from the other briefs. It does talk about misinformation. It does talk about all these other themes as well as all wrapped into it, but it’s slightly bigger, slightly grander than those themes as well. That was what we were getting ...

Whether it’s increase of dialogue, increase of participation, increase of back and forth, whatever that may be, but creating infrastructure or a brief around this idea of how do we reshape and rebuild that connection, that dialogue between government and the society, civilians in United States.

Thinking about how can these young innovators, designers, developers create tools and systems and practices that we build that connection between government and society.

There’s still this distinction, this friction of politicians just saying, “You should just trust us,” and almost the society, you can take that face value and accept that that’s the way it is. We are excited about this idea of leading and civic participation, which is so much more of ...

One key thing that we were thinking about and really excited about, was the idea that through the last two, three years, the last decade, let’s say, the trust between government and society has eroded in the United States drastically.

Absolutely. Thinking about the bigger concept of the festival, what your work at the highest level is all about, it’s a one to one with the festival as well.

Blew us away. We had four winners come out of it. The format worked. That got us on a path towards year two, which is where we are now and thinking about, what’s the lineup? Where are those urgent problems that we can help rally ideas around. That’s where we ...

The idea was to connect these thought leaders, these change makers, with young, passionate creators, inventors, developers, designers, to create this bottom-up change and enable the difference in the world. Last year, we had four briefs, we had four speakers. We ended up with about 70 to 80 submissions of ...

Something that people, whether developers, designers, architects, scientists, whatever their skill is, they could actually create, invent an idea and submit it as as a potential solution to counter that brief.

The thing, the TED type format, where people, ambassadors, thought leaders, and so forth, represents a topic, an idea, a concept that has the potential to change something in the world. The paradigm of an actionable brief.

We wanted to create something that could bring people together, that could empower people. That, the tools that they use on a daily basis with service of corporate organizations, Google and so forth, could be used for good as well. The format that we landed on was really part conference.

Obviously, the idea of conferences and events and make it almost…The format of that was evolving and growing and changing rapidly.

Wanted to create something, a platform, a tool, an experience that will enable and empower people, anyone to make a difference. That was the brief that we started out with. We arrived at this idea of a virtual festival. This was the start of COVID.

Didn’t have the tools or didn’t have the power to make a difference in the world. We’re depending on the government’s solutions to see solutions, to see progress out in the world, society and so forth. Our partners set the great foundation.

Absolutely. The festival started about two years ago, additional one was in February 2021. Time is vague, but that math works out. It stemmed from this idea that in the US at that moment in time, people felt powerless. People felt like they couldn’t have the impact.

Yeah. My name is Jack De Caluwe. Pronouns he/him. Work at Instrument. Creative Director on the team. Been a part of the foundation origins of The Festival Urgent Reinventions. Your name Audrey was from day one. We thought about the event. It was part of our wish lists of people ...

Hi, Audrey.