The BIF Summit is designed to allow attendees to break free from their silos. There are storytellers and stories, not speakers and presentations. There are no pre-set theme s or topics. Within this environment, attendees can boundlessly explore new ways to make themselves, their businesses, and our world a better place.

No matter your title, no matter your line of business, everyone who attends the BIF Summit benefits. Take Wanda McClure, for example. A longtime educator, Wanda is a School Designer and Professional Development Specialist for EL Education, formerly Expeditionary Learning, in the Atlantic region. She’s been to the BIF Summit for a few years running.

I asked Wanda to tell us, through the lens of an educator, why go to the BIF Summit?

Wanda’s answer: Educational leadership can become stagnant. The BIF Summit inspires me to think differently and ask questions like, How does innovation and strategy play into K-12? What do students need to be successful? How can we engage school leaders to participate in innovation? What part does strategy and innovation play in transformative, disruptive change?

In my experience, most schools and school districts make incremental changes, rather than disruptive or transformative change. The BIF Summit expands my thinking and inspires me as I work with leaders in education to help them understand how change happens, how we must move from incremental to more disruptive and progressive changes. The BIF Summit reminds me that we need to be intentional disruptive as we work toward change in education in order to allow teachers and students to truly become changemakers who create a better world.

Every storyteller comes to the BIF Summit with a unique story. So does everyone who attends. Yet in those diverse, random collisions of people and stories, we all share a commonality of humanity.

I love being a part of the RCUS team where those collisions of thought happen. Participating in that commonality reminds me how we are humans ‘being’ on a journey through life. I’m prompted to reflect on the big questions: How am I using my voice as a force for good? How can I apply the collective wisdom of these innovators to my task as a human being?

The Summit prompts me to reflect on the big questions: How can I apply the collective wisdom of these innovators to my task as a human being?

Here at BIF, we can hardly wait for September, when the annual BIF Collaborative Summit happens — and if we, who put on the Summit every year, are excited about it, imagine how excited the Summit-goers are! We’ve asked some past participants, and a few first-time attendees, to describe this excitement.  Up now: Wanda McClure, a school designer and professional development specialist at Expeditionary Learning, K-12 education nonprofit.

We asked Wanda one question: What is it about the BIF Summit that excites you the most? Here’s her answer:

Hearing the stories of people from all walks of life. Every storyteller comes to the BIF Summit with a unique story. Yet in those diverse, random collisions of stories, there’s a commonality of humanity that relates to my journey as a human “being” and prompts me to reflect on the big questions: How am I using my voice as a force for good? How can I apply the collective wisdom of these innovators to my task as a human being?

I love the random collisions of unusual suspects, interweaved with the commonality of humanity. Where else would you have Richard Saul Wurman, Irwin Kula, Daniel Pink, and Camille Beatty? You’d never get that lineup at a regular conference.

And that’s precisely the point of the BIF Summit: there are random collisions. There are networking opportunities, and stories and conversations about topics specific to growing a business and making deals and the things that you’d do at normal conferences.

But it’s also an intensely personal experience, shared by all the unusual suspects, that celebrates the best thoughts of humanity on bettering the world.

BIF Collaborative Innovation Summit is a tremendous opportunity to blast through the innovation-impeding cognitive biases of availability bias, confirmation bias, status-quo bias, and unconscious framing

Here at BIF, we can hardly wait for September, when the annual BIF Collaborative Summit happens — and if we, who put on the Summit every year, are excited about it, imagine how excited the Summit-goers are! We’ve asked some past participants, and a few first-time attendees, to describe this excitement. Up now: Adam Hansen, who’s heard all about the Summit from colleagues who’ve attended and is “STOKED to attend The Summit”. Adam is Principal and VP of Innovation at Ideas To Go. 

We asked Adam one question: What is it about the BIF Summit that excites you the most? Here’s his answer:

Every now and then we’ll have the chance encounter, the serendipitous meeting that provokes breakthroughs in ways we hadn’t anticipated. Or we’ll hear the random off-the-cuff comment that cracks open a whole new area of thought for us. We cherish these precisely because of their infrequency and perceived stroke of luck for us. But it would be great to not to have to rely on being in the right place at precisely the right moment to get that kind of creative fuel.

The Summit is deliberate, not accidental. Planned, not random. We get the richness and diversity of perspective that we have formerly associated with luck and happenstance. The Summit is the right place, at the right moment, and we actually get to plan for it!

The distinct perspectives of the #BIF2015 Summit storytellers — poetry, mathematics, healthcare, online leaders — cannot help but jar loose our cherished assumptions, baked-in preconceptions, and limiting frames.

After all, creativity is combinatorial. Borrowing element Q from domain X and bringing it into home domain Y, then playing out the natural extension of that, is often enough to create something really interesting and valuable. We’re on the hunt for Uniqueness and Relevance, and it’s best to solve for Uniqueness first, then iterate to beef up the Relevance. Sounds complicated, but it looks like all you have to do to get this kind of transformative experience is to just listen to the storytellers and engage with the other attendees.

#BIF2015 attendee have a tremendous opportunity to blast through the innovation-impeding cognitive biases of availability bias, confirmation bias, status-quo bias, and unconscious framing. And if you want to talk about how innovation is affected by cognitive biases, please track me down at the Summit (and yes, it’s this easy to prepare for serendipity!).

“You never know what BIF storytellers are going to talk about, and you can’t foresee how someone’s story will affect you.”

Here at BIF, we can hardly wait for September, when the annual BIF Collaborative Summit happens — and if we, who put on the Summit every year, are excited about it, imagine how excited the Summit-goers are! We’ve asked some past participants, and a few first-time attendees, to describe this excitement. Up now: Doug Williams, who has attended two previous BIF Summits. Doug is Director of Research at StratCommRX and Chief Research Officer at Innovation Excellence.

We asked Doug one question: What is it about the BIF Summit that excites you the most? Here’s his answer:

“I love the sense of anticipation I feel when stepping into the Trinity Theater. At other conferences, I find myself reading through the schedule, identifying the sessions I want to attend based on who the speaker is, where they are from, or the subject. But that doesn’t apply at BIF. Don’t get me wrong: the list of BIF storytellers is often peppered with plenty of bold-face names, as well as senior people from big-name brands. What’s different is that you never know what they are going to talk about, and you can’t foresee how someone’s story will affect you. There’s an element of surprise with every storyteller who takes the stage, and that makes BIF fun and engaging in a way that is different from any other conference I’ve attended.

“My first BIF Summit was shocking. I went into it completely blind, without expectations. By the first break on Day 1, I was overwhelmed by what I had seen and heard. Four people all had done something really cool in their lives, something significant, something that made a difference. Was I inspired? To be honest, the answer was no. I felt inadequate. What had I done that was worthy of sharing with the masses? Nothing that could compare with the four stories I had just heard.

“But over the course of the day, my attitude changed. And by the end of Day 2, I realized something. The reason I didn’t have a story to tell is because my story isn’t finished yet. And two years later, it’s still not finished. And that’s okay.

“I attended my second Summit last year, as part of the #RCUS crew. (That was my first clue that I had done something right in my rookie year.) I saw lots of familiar faces, shared hugs and smiles with friends I hadn’t seen since the prior year, sat in my same seat in the theater, and was similarly blown away by the stories I heard from the stage. My familiarity with the event did not overshadow the sense of anticipation I had for what was happening on the stage.

“What was different in my second year was that I started feeling anticipation before breaks, lunch, and cocktails. At BIF, people network — but what I’ve found is that they network for YOU, not for THEM. This is not a “what’s in it for me” crowd. This is an enabling crowd full of people who think about what you tell them and find ways to help, whether by offering a kind word, a quick brainstorming session, an introduction to someone else, or a deep conversation about What Really Matters.

“My third BIF Summit is less than two months away. That sense of anticipation that I love is starting to build. I’m looking forward to all the things I know will happen, and I can’t wait to find out the unknowns that will unfold before me.”

The storytellers will make your heart sing…and make you cry. You will make friends, you will develop new contacts, and you might even embark upon a journey that takes you places you never could have imagined. – Nicole Radziwill

“We want our Collaborative Innovation Summit filled from stage to seats with people sharing transformation ideas and stories,” says BIF Creative Catalyst Saul Kaplan.

After all, it was out of the Summit that the hashtag #RCUS was coined — Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects. And from now until the Summit takes place in September, we’ll run a series of short interviews with former Summit attendees who’ll tell us in their own words why the BIF Summit is a must-go event and how #RCUS has changed their lives. Next up, Nicole Radziwill, Assistant Professor of Integrated Science & Technology at James Madison University, finishes the RCUS story series with an epic tale of serendipitous connection.

Here’s her answer to the question, Why got to the BIF Summit?

What I like most about the BIF summits is that they are magical. The storytellers will make your heart sing…and make you cry. You will make friends, you will develop new contacts, and you might even embark upon a journey that takes you places you never could have imagined. My long and meandering tale aims to share some of this magic with you — and I truly believe it’s only beginning.

A BIF RCUS story always starts with a “Patient Zero” — and the person who started the cascading ripple of an impact that’s changed the direction of my life to date is BIF8 storyteller, Valdis Krebs.

I can’t even remember how I met Valdis, but I know it was online and most likely in early 2008. I was a Ph.D. student working on my dissertation, using the methods of network analysis to develop a metric that would assess whether the quality of an academic journal was improving — or not. Valdis is an expert in network analysis, and I was honored to receive his guidance and develop a friendship. After he participated as a BIF8 storyteller he was bubbling about his experience!

“You’ve got to go!!” he told me. “You would fit right in. These people are all highly engaged, interesting, down-to-earth innovators and they’re all doing something different. You should plan to go this year. Really.”

Valdis is an expert matchmaker in his social and professional network. He’s one of those people that you really should listen to when he makes a comment like that. I didn’t make it to BIF8, but I was definitely intrigued, so I watched some of the videos online. I started to get that effervescent feeling of excitement that comes when stories spark subtle and profound insights that pervade your entire being.

Then, in November 2012, I got a message from BIF’s Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan — who wanted to chat about my views and experiences in relating quality to disruptive innovation and business model innovation. We didn’t have an agenda when we talked, but he was just such an inspirer that I knew at the end of our conversation — I needed to put BIF9 on my agenda for September of 2013. And I did.

And that’s when the real RCUS began — the magical, serendipitous chain of BIF Summit-enabled collisions that’s connected me with my tribe of free-spirit innovators.

In March 2013, my partner Morgan and I presented a workshop at the headquarters of the Burning Man Project in San Francisco. We shared insights and techniques for how to bring the spirit and principles of the annual Burning Man event in Nevada into higher education. After the talk, James Hanusa and Heather White from the Burning Man Project introduced us to Evonne Heyning, who was working on a startup in Los Angeles to help people better personalize and manage their learning paths. They also told us that we really needed to meet Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, who was experimenting with new models for education and engagement in his Downtown Project in Las Vegas. (But how would we ever meet Tony? I had no idea. It seemed completely impossible.)

In May 2013, I told Valdis this was my year. I was going to BIF9. Would he be there? If not, did he know of anyone I should meet? He told me not to worry — I’d meet exactly who I needed to meet. Later, in August, Morgan and I spent the week at Burning Man in a camp organized by Evonne Heyning.

BIF9 was just three weeks after Burning Man. I was convinced that nothing could compare to the intellectual transformation I’d experienced out on the playa — that there could never be a group of people so engaged, so stimulating, so full of the desire to reshape our world through new models for business, and education, and inter-being. But I was wrong!

That’s what I found out when Peter Hirshberg got on the BIF9 stage to share his visions for the new cities of the future, the kinds of models that were paraded proudly at World’s Fair events in the past. As a key example, he provided Black Rock City, the temporary city created by Burning Man participants every year! He had been camped close to us on the playa just a couple of weeks earlier — and so had BIF9 storyteller Ping Fu, the advisor to Marc Andreessen and leader of an inspiring 3D printing company!

As I stumbled through the Trinity Rep Theater into the next BIF9 coffee break, in a daze of excitement to be around such intriguing and passionate people, I overheard the guy next to me say to his friend, “Wait for me, I just want to say something to Tony Hsieh really quickly.” I looked to my left, where Tony stood only five feet away.

Of course, I took the opportunity to say hi. I told him that James and Heather from the Burning Man Project had encouraged me to meet up with him to find out more about the Downtown Project. “Oh, that’s great!” he said. “Talk to Amanda Slavin over here, and tell her to get you signed up for Catalyst Week in March. We’re having a lot of the Burning Man Project people visit then.” Catalyst Week was another amazing experience — and we got to spend even more time with Peter Hirshberg, the speaker we had also met at BIF9.

But the serendipitous connections didn’t stop there. At Catalyst Week, we spent time with Duleesha Kulisooriya, who is Head of Strategy and Research for the Deloitte Center for the Edge. He works with and co-authors books with John Hagel, a BIF7 and BIF10 storyteller, so we’re very excited to spend some time with John soon. Turns out, John is also friends with our Burning Man camp coordinator, Evonne Heyning — and we camped with Duleesha at Burning Man just a couple of weeks ago!

The storytellers are not the only amazing people you’ll meet at BIF — the attendees are also top-notch. One of my favorite connections from BIF9 is Matt Murrie, the guru of the “What If?” conferences. (Everyone should follow him on Twitter at @MattMurrie — his feed is fun and inspiring.)  Matt also connected me with Steve Cooperman, whose Black Mountain SOLE project seeks to create alternative educational environments. All of us who are interested in reinventing the experience of higher education is really starting to come together for beautiful discussions. I can’t wait to see what new models come out of it.

The RCUS at the BIF Summit catalyzes so many ripples of impact! Morgan and I are so excited that BIF10 is coming up in just 8 days. We can’t wait for the next batch of random collisions…or to see what they stir up throughout the rest of the year to come.

The storytellers, even luminaries, don’t disappear immediately after leaving the stage. They stay and chat with participants. They listen to the other storytellers and engage in real conversations. – Andrea Meyer

“We want our Collaborative Innovation Summit filled from stage to seats with people sharing transformation ideas and stories,” says BIF Creative Catalyst Saul Kaplan.

After all, it was out of the Summit that the hashtag #RCUS was coined — Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects. And from now until the Summit takes place in September, we’ll run a series of short interviews with former Summit attendees who’ll tell us in their own words why the BIF Summit is a must-go event and how #RCUS has changed their lives. Next up, long-time friend-of-BIF Andrea Meyer, who is president and founder of Working Knowledge, a well-known innovation tweeter at @AndreaMeyer, and co-author of Present Yourself: Using SlideShare to Grow Your Business.

Here’s her answer to the question: Why go to the BIF summit?

What I like most about BIF Summits are the interactions. At other conferences, luminaries such as BIF storytellers Dan Pink, Clay Christensen, and John Hagel appear only on stage. But at the BIF Summit, the storytellers, even luminaries, don’t disappear immediately after leaving the stage. They stay and chat with participants. They listen to the other storytellers and engage in real conversations. 

I also like the format of BIF, in which storytellers, not speakers, tell stories, not canned speeches. BIF’s founder, Saul Kaplan, encourages storytellers to tell personal stories, and he himself models the thoughtful authenticity that characterizes all of BIF.  He shares his insights, passions, frustrations, hopes — not just bullet points — and so do the storytellers. If there’s a phrase that encapsulates the BIF community, I’d say it’s “smart with heart.”

Many innovators face stiff organizational resistance when they try to offer a new way of doing things. It’s a lonely battle trying to lead change and get others on board. At the BIF Summit, however, innovators find like-minded others. Everyone “gets it” and people support each other. Such encouragement is tremendously uplifting, and it extends after the Summit ends because people remain friends, stay in touch, and indeed often return to BIF to see each other year after year. The fact that storytellers themselves also return to BIF proves that they, too, value the atmosphere.

I attended my first BIF on the recommendation of a friend, and I have returned four times now. Most of the time, I go to experience the serendipity of the “random collisions.”  One time, however, I went with a specific purpose:  To speak with some of the storytellers and attendees to get their input on a book I was coauthoring, called Present Yourself.  At BIF8, storytellers Alex Osterwalder, David Macaulay, and Felice Frankl all offered insights and quotes on visual thinking for my book, and attendee Dean Meyers became one of the case studies we used.

Whether you go with a purpose or go for the RCUS, I encourage you to go!