In 2024, we leaned into the overlap with the US Election, splitting the conference into several days: One online-only day that brought in bestselling authors and global speakers; two hybrid days, and one in-person day devoted to workshops and debates. We also launched new activations developed exclusively for the event such as Change My Mind and Place Your Bets.

We also brought back the Executive Cohort. They learnt about:

• Accountability: The author Dan Davies warns that many of the systems we've created to scale society become so complex and impersonal that nobody's responsible for them. As a result, they turn into accountability sinks. Any system must begin with rules for how to update it, but giving everyone recourse to appeal an automated decision will undermine the system. How do we make systems accountable to those they serve in effective, but fair, ways?
• Resiliency: Digital systems must withstand three kinds of disaster: External accidents, such as a forest fire or Internet outage; intentional harm, including cyberattacks from foreign adversaries; and internal mistakes, from bad processes to clumsy employees. Since there's no such thing as a perfect system, how do we build reliable digital systems efficiently?
• Generative AI: There's no doubt that AI advances will upend the nature of work in a few short years. But before those wholesale shifts, there are plenty of immediate consequences to consider. For example, the ease with which non-coders can build software will give rise to a Shadow IT unseen since the dawn of SaaS. Since AI makes some hard things (like content creation) easy and some easy things (like knowing what to trust) hard, any process that relies on those things needs to be adjusted for this new world.

For each of these topics, we brought in experts, letting them share their ideas and answer questions in a candid setting. 

Building on our Regional Access Pass program that has welcomed hundreds of regional public servants to the conference in past years, we launched The Third Sector Pass to include nonprofits, NGOs, and civic tech organizations around the world.