We did it!

From the end of our last meeting:

High praise from the Meeting Maven.

What elicited this comment?

Progress.

We met yesterday to finalize 2024’s Intent-to-Impact lineup: Which speaker should go where? Who should follow who? When do we take a break? How do we keep it engaging? How should we schedule Day 1 to optimize Day 2’s impact? When will we serve the tacos?

Before we could do that, we needed a guide, a map! of the themes this gathering builds on. Themes you care about, that impact your work. But we’re not stopping with themes. We need an agenda for our 3-day run of show that brings these themes to you in a way you can personalize, take back to work and put into practice. Intent to Impact will be more than just listening to speakers.

But speakers are an important part of conferences. And the best way to get superstar speakers is to already have superstar speakers: you start big and the rest of the lineup follows.

Before we began planning this gathering, Elise and I made a short list of our dream key-noters.

And we just landed our #1 pick.

After reading The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, we couldn’t stop marveling at how the book addresses every aspect of our work - and probably of yours. That’s why the Annie post-it is at an intersection; hers should touch all the intersections, but a post-it that large could cover up everything else.

Her talk will address what we, as humans, and our brains, have evolved to do best at work; what we should keep doing the human way and what we should eagerly let the bots take over.

We are proud thrilled! to announce our keynote speaker, Annie Murphy Paul.

Who is Annie Murphy Paul?

She is an acclaimed science writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and The Best American Science Writing, among many other publications. She is the author of Origins, selected by the New York Times Book Review as a “Notable Book,” and The Cult of Personality, hailed by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker as a “fascinating new book.” Her TED Talk has been viewed more than 2.6 million times. Murphy Paul is a recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship, the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship, and the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellowship at New America. A graduate of Yale University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is currently a Learning Sciences Exchange Fellow at New America.

What does her book, The Extended Mind, have to do with this moment, your work and Intent to Impact?

In The Extended Mind Murphy Paul explodes the myth that the brain is an all-powerful, all-purpose thinking machine that works best in silence and isolation. We are often told that the human brain is an awe-inspiring wonder, but its capacities are remarkably limited and specific. Humanity has achieved its most impressive feats only by thinking outside the brain: by “extending” the brain’s power with resources borrowed from the body, other people, and the material world. The Extended Mind tells the stories of scientists and artists, authors and inventors, leaders and entrepreneurs—Jackson Pollock, Charles Darwin, Jonas Salk, Friedrich Nietzsche, Watson and Crick, among others—who have mastered the art of thinking outside the brain. It also explains how every one of us can do the same, tapping the intelligence that exists beyond our heads—in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships.

Annie will be live with us in Austin for Intent to Impact. Won’t you get a ticket and join us?

-Elise & Dave