Welcome to Edge Esmeralda 2025!
Applications are now open, & early bird discounts end on Dec 31st
We’re so excited to have you join us. You can apply here!
If you know anyone who might love Edge Esmeralda, please forward this post or reshare this tweet. We would love to see them at EE’25, too!
Earlier this year, 1,300 of you helped us create something extraordinary at Edge Esmeralda 2024. We created a temporary village where we prototyped new ways of living, working, and collaborating to build a brighter future. Next year, we're excited to do it again—and make it even better.
Edge Esmeralda 2025 will happen from May 24 - June 21 in beautiful Healdsburg, CA. This popup village is a prototype for Esmeralda, a permanent new village being built just 15 minutes away.
Imagine living in a small town within walking distance of friends, family, and people you admire.
On your way to the coworking space, you run into your favorite author in the town square. After a productive morning, a friend a few desks over invites you on a walk to brainstorm a hackathon project.
Then, at dinner, everyone gathers for a healthy meal grown just over the hill. The mayor pops in to share an update on the upcoming art festival, alongside a jam-packed weekend on the latest in AI and Biotech.
If that sounds like your ideal day, join us!
What is Edge Esmeralda?
Edge Esmeralda is a month-long temporary village designed to be the healthiest, most productive, and most inspiring month of your year. It’s a place to focus deeply on your work, connect with thoughtful and ambitious peers, and experiment with new ideas, tools, and ways of living.
You can think of it as a combination of a multigenerational community and a college campus. Here’s how the experience will look concretely:
During the week: After a healthy breakfast, you’ll spend the daytime in deep work. We provide infrastructure for you to be productive, whether you need a day of focus or want to run a retreat for your team or in a specific topic area.
In the evenings: There will be activities and opportunities to meet people, such as salons corresponding to that week’s theme and group bike rides in the surrounding wine country. At EE’24, we hosted regular evening salons on topics like “Governance Games” and the Future of Cities.
Each weekend: We'll host unconferences on a variety of topics organized by relevant experts. For example, at EE’24, Eli Dourado and Ben Reinhardt led the Hard Tech weekend, which brought together attendees to discuss breakthroughs in technologies like aerospace, robotics, and renewable energy.
The village will be filled with people who are building towards this type of future. We look for people who are curious, kind, and creating something impactful — whether it’s a startup, a family, a book, an invention, a nonprofit, novel research, or a bold new idea waiting to take shape.
“Edge was the perfect environment for people to come together, think outside the box and entertain unconventional ideas.
It was where I first heard about acousto-optic imaging (something we're continuing work on) and met people like Max and Andy (who did research with us on the acousto-electric project). Plus, it was a joy to work with you guys!”— Marley Xiong, Harvard Research Fellow (FPGAs, ultrafast electronics, fluorescent microscopes)
We will have four overarching themes of interest:
We have four key design goals:
Focus on creation: Everyone will be an active participant in creation rather than simply consuming existing knowledge. We focus on real-life applications and experiments, and we hope to see new technologies, cultures, ideas, and organizations emerge from this month we spend together. 93% of sessions during EE’24 were organized by attendees!
Default healthy living: Our popup village will be a testing ground for health and longevity, an environment where health is the rule, not the exception. This will include healthy meals made with local organic ingredients; weekly farmers markets; working with local restaurants to reduce the use of seed oils; access to sunlight, nature, cold and hot exposure, daily workouts, and opt-in health testing (blood work, Dexascans, CGMs). We intend for every resident to leave Edge Esmeralda healthier than when they arrived.
Multigenerational: One major difference to most gatherings or campuses is that Edge Esmeralda will be multi-generational. So many contexts in life are age-segregated, and we believe in learning from people in different life stages than ourselves. The age distribution at EE’24 ranged from 6 weeks to 86 years old, with over 80 kids.
Multidisciplinary: We believe that there is huge potential for breakthroughs at the intersections of disciplines. Edge Esmeralda is designed to foster collaboration between people with diverse expertise—scientists, artists, engineers, urban planners, philosophers, mechanics, and beyond. By blending perspectives, we aim to create new possibilities for innovation, culture, and community. A great example of this was the LabWeek Field Building program at EE’24, which combined Neurotech, AI, VR/XR, and Biotech/Longevity.
"The Hard Tech Weekend at Edge Esmeralda was perhaps the single best hard tech conference I have ever attended. The event drew a mix of world-class thinkers and entrepreneurs working on novel battery chemistries, new supersonic engine paradigms, cargo airships, radioastronomy breakthroughs, robotic construction, and much more.
The event was not just inspiring, it was generative. I continue to hear of people leveraging connections they made there."
— Eli Dourado, Abundance Institute
What’s new in 2025?
Introducing Residencies: This year, we’ll create residencies, which are sub-villages with 20-30 participants who live together and focus on a particular theme. They are led by experts, creating an immersive, collaborative environment. They will have their own programming but will still integrate with the broader popup village. For example, we may run an artist residency or a hacker house focused specifically on AI x NeuroTech.
More family-friendly programming: We’re expanding our offerings for kids and families with hands-on workshops, science experiments, and opportunities for intergenerational learning.
More focused tracks: This year, our tracks will be more focused to make sure we have a manageable amount of programming while allowing attendees to go deep into their topics of choice. Subject-matter experts will bring real-world experience and deep knowledge to every session. Tracks will be designed to foster meaningful conversations and collaborations, ensuring the programming feels valuable and impactful. At the same time, we’ll maintain space for exploration, serendipity, and spontaneous connections.
Even more applied experiments: EE emphasizes hands-on, real-world experimentation—whether it’s prototyping new tools, testing ideas, or creating projects that live beyond Edge Esmeralda.
Why Healdsburg?
A key reason we chose Healdsburg for this popup village is that we are building a permanent village called Esmeralda just 15 minutes up the road in charming Cloverdale. Edge Esmeralda gives us an opportunity to bring people together, contribute to the local community, and experiment with design decisions before literally carving them into the stone of the permanent neighborhood we are building 15 minutes.
Healdsburg was an incredible home for Edge Esmeralda in 2024. The town’s walkable design created the perfect environment for both attendees and locals to connect, and so many locals went out of their way to welcome us and contribute to EE — some locals were the most active attendees at EE’24, in fact!
Some of our favorite collaborations with locals last year included:
A collaborative party at Jendala’s art studio,
Jeff Kay and David Kelley joined us to discuss what it’s like to be the City Managers of Healdsburg and Cloverdale,
A walking history tour led by local historian Eric Drew, and
Collaborating with locals named Fred & David Baeli to build solar A-frames in the formerly-burned redwood forest that they care for.
“Edge Esmeralda was one of the weirdest, wildest, most ambitious, most unexpected — and most fun — things I’ve ever watched unfold in Healdsburg.”
— Simone Wilson, Healdsburg Tribune
A call to build together
Edge Esmeralda thrives based on what the community brings. We will share more details about how to get involved, but here are some prompts to get your creative juices flowing:
What’s a project you’ve always wanted to start but never had the time or collaborators for?
What are the questions your field is ignoring? Who should be in the room to tackle them?
What could you build in a month that would leave a lasting impact?
Whether you’re leading a track, joining a team, or just exploring, Edge Esmeralda is the perfect place to get involved in accelerating your vision.
If you want to join us, apply here!
See you soon ☀️
— Edge Esmeralda team
So exciting!
Can't wait! :)))