“If you pay enough attention to the present, you can see the future.” — Om Malik
Om’s blog carried the tagline Field Notes From The Present Future, and that philosophy became the foundation for our programming at OmFest. The premise was simple: Teach us something you’re seeing before everyone else sees it.
In his writing about conference speaking, Om emphasized the importance of bringing real value to an audience. He went to conferences to learn, hoping to leave a little smarter than when he arrived. I loved that idea and made it one of our core principles: Every guest should leave knowing something they didn’t know before. That became our guide for choosing speakers.
As Om put it, “The more famous the speakers, the less I’m likely to learn.” So it wasn’t about finding the biggest names or most recognizable faces, or asking people to share memories of Om. It was about learning. We wanted people who were paying attention to something interesting and could help the rest of us see the world a little differently.
The range of subjects reflected that curiosity. Peter Luong explored tea, aging, and the pressures of climate change. Stephen Pulvirent connected watches, photography, and collecting. Hanna McPhee considered what it means to make time tangible. Vincent Laforet reflected on photography and creativity through a walk he once took with Om. Philip Rosedale looked toward a future where humans and AI might share digital worlds.
And then there was music. DJ Rekha brought a perspective on community and the dance floor, while sitarist Arjun Verma brought something entirely different to the morning. Rather than moving straight from one speaker to the next, we had Arjun’s sitar weave the morning talks together. It was beautiful, and he eventually closed the session with a talk about his own craft.
We also made a deliberate decision not to fill the entire day with talks. As I wrote in Four Movements, One Day, we wanted guests to move through the day at their own pace. A packed conference agenda would have worked against that. So we limited Present Future to two one-hour blocks: one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Each speaker had roughly 10–15 minutes and one idea to share. Curiosity over celebrity. Learning over promotion. We weren’t trying to predict the future. We were inviting people to pay closer attention to the present.
Post 17 of 60 · Making OmFest
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