Explore how the traditional career path (maybe even yours soon) can be replaced by multi-stream careers that combine financial independence with impact. Join us to learn how you can build a career that offers true flexibility - of place, time, and choice - by thinking like a remote entrepreneur, even if you aren’t one yet. Designing a lean, sustainable portfolio with minimal overhead can help you turn your true passions and causes into scalable income streams, one venture at a time.

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What if your breathing patterns could warn you that you are getting sick days before you have noticeable respiratory illness symptoms? The answer lies in sleep audio analysis powered by AI. This session explores how new advances can help us detect patterns far before our bodies notice. Sound is passive, honest, and scalable, and with AI trained on 3B nights of data, it can turn every bedroom into a node in an early-warning health network. AI has the power to turn sleep audio into a new public health infrastructure: one that listens, learns, and helps us act before symptoms even appear.

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Gaming is one of the largest forms of entertainment in the world & the creator economy within it is rapidly expanding. A process that once prioritized creators with the largest audiences & revenue streams has since evolved to working with a range of creators, targeting those with the most engaged audiences. As the industries continue to grow & scale each year, recruiting, managing, measuring & tracking hundreds of creators can feel impossible, but it doesn’t have to. This panel explores how brands & developers are building smart systems that fuel high-performing evergreen creator programs.

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Fandom has become one of the last true engines of belonging, meaning, and participation as shared institutions fade and identity moves online. This report, from SOON Future Studies and SoHo Experiential, explores how fandom evolved from subculture to cultural infrastructure and why it now carries the emotional weight of legacy systems. We outline what this shift means for brands and how fandom has become not just what people love but where they choose to live.

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Nurses are the canary in the coal mine of our healthcare system, witnessing firsthand how AI, predictive analytics, and corporate data systems reshape patient care. As powerful tech firms like Palantir move into healthcare, access to sensitive patient data is expanding rapidly—often without meaningful oversight from the people responsible for patient safety. Nurses see the real-world consequences of these tools long before the public does. Across the country, nurses are organizing unions to ensure these technologies are used ethically and responsibly. In Austin, nurses formed the city’s first private-sector union hospital to challenge unsafe conditions and demand accountability. This panel explores why collective nurse organizing is essential to protecting patients—and how frontline workers are fighting to ensure healthcare’s AI future remains human-centered.

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In the wake of a steep rise in anti-trans legislation and hostile rhetoric, how can we protect our communities and fight for a better future? Join leading trans advocates as they report from the frontlines—a teacher navigating classroom censorship, a lawyer challenging discriminatory laws, and an organizer educating the public while building community. Moderated by a long-time legislative staffer, this panel will explore what it takes to fight from the inside and survey the political realities in Texas. How is anti-trans legislation reshaping the lives of trans folks and the broader community? What does the path to equality look like, and what can we do to move in that direction? Get the facts and leave with actionable steps.

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High-growth companies are increasingly choosing mid-sized tech hubs for talent, R&D strength, collaboration, and capital efficiency. This panel explores the rise of “opportunity-driven ecosystems,” using Ann Arbor as a case study in how cities punch above their weight in mobility, life sciences, AI, and advanced manufacturing. Hear why founders, innovators, and global R&D leaders choose regions like Ann Arbor—and what these ecosystems get right for building, scaling, and investing.

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Leaders face a perfect storm: AI evolving faster than organizational capability while economic volatility and talent burnout intensify. Decision windows are shortening, and strategy alone no longer suffices—organizations must be intentionally built for change. Project Management Institute (PMI) convenes senior leaders across talent, technology, and transformation to examine the human operating system—leadership mindset, organizational structure, and governance strategies—that empower enterprises to detect disruptions promptly, make decisive decisions, and deliver consistent value.

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Traditional corporate innovation keeps ideas locked away until launch, but GE Appliances innovation arm, FirstBuild, has flipped the script—inviting passionate enthusiasts to co-create products from day one. The result is a 93% failure rate that just so happens to drive million-dollar successes like the Opal Nugget Ice Maker, which raised $2.7 million in crowdfunding after the community helped shape its development. This session will explore how major corporations can harness the power of co-creation, where rough transparency builds more trust than polished presentations, and where your best product ideas might come from a Reddit user with a 3D printer. Learn how FirstBuild proves that building in public, failing fast, and letting communities vote with their wallets creates better products than closed-door development—and why the future of innovation looks less like a pipeline and more like a playground.

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The weaponization of NDAs is a core structural feature of the economy that shapes corporate culture. Using cases from My NDA (World Premiering at SXSW 2026), panelists will expose how NDAs are used to protect brands; enable discrimination, harassment, and corruption to go unchecked; and destroy the careers of whistleblowers who risk everything to speak out. Panelists will also discuss what an ethical NDA looks like and the simple legislative fixes that can solve this problem.

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