By Sonya Quick, CalMatters
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More than 500 people gathered during the CalMatters Ideas Festival for a day of meaningful conversations and interactivity about the future of California. Elected leaders, engaged community members, students, educators and more came together to talk about topics that matter the most: the relationship between our state and federal governments, the financial challenges and political hurdles our next governor will face, California’s role in shaping the national and global conversation on artificial intelligence, and more.
Highlights
Changemakers: In 14 sessions, 33 speakers shared their ideas and vision for the future of California on the main stage and in breakout sessions. And the audience joined in, using interactive tools and asking their questions along the way.
Nonprofit Leaders: We brought in nonprofit organization directors from around the state in partnership with the California Association of Nonprofits. That made the crowd not only more geographically diverse but more directly relevant to, and impacted by, the topics of our sessions.
High School Journalists: The adviser and student journalists from a high school newspaper in Roseville spent the entire day at the festival, with a highlight being the generous amount of time they were given by Attorney General Rob Bonta and former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for in-depth interviews.
Latino Media: We hosted a convening of California’s Latino Media Collaborative, whose members met to discuss their own editorial and revenue issues and also attended and covered the festival.
Creators: We convened the first gathering to inform how we build our CalMatters Creators Circle. We gathered creators who engage audiences with the issues we cover, and held a half-day workshop with them after the festival. They had a lighted camera position in our green room and got 1:1 interviews with many of our speakers.
Video recordings
Introduction & California in Poetry
Speakers:
- Neil Chase, CalMatters Chief Executive Officer
- Kristen Go, CalMatters Editor-in-Chief
- Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate
Moderated by Hema Sareen Mohan, CalMatters Board of Directors Chair
Bridging the Gap Between Government and Community
Speaker: Amy E. Lerman, Executive Director & Principal Investigator, Possibility Lab, UC Berkeley
Moderated by Neil Chase, CalMatters CEO
AI: Can California Lead in Both Development and Policy? (Keynote)
Speaker: Cesar Fernandez, Head of US State & Local Government Relations, Anthropic
Moderated by Sisi Wei, CalMatters Chief Impact Officer
AI: Can California Lead in Both Development and Policy? (Panel)
Speakers:
- Deirdre K. Mulligan, Professor, School of Information and Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology
- Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Member, California State Assembly
Moderated by Sisi Wei, CalMatters Chief Impact Officer
The Effects of Immigration Enforcement
Speakers:
- Julián Castro, CEO, Latino Community Foundation
- Kristen Hwang, Health Reporter, CalMatters
Moderated by Neil Chase, CalMatters CEO
Sacramento vs. Washington
Speakers:
- Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California
- Janet Napolitano, Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
Moderated by Kristen Go, CalMatters Editor-in-Chief
The Lincoln Project: What Have We Learned?
Speakers:
- Mike Madrid, Co-Founder, Lincoln Project
- Rick Wilson, Co-Founder, Lincoln Project
California’s Changing Workforce Needs: How Must We Adapt?
Speakers:
- Alysia Bell, President, UNITE-LA
- Don Howard, President and CEO, The James Irvine Foundation
- Eloy Ortiz Oakley, President and CEO, College Futures Foundation
Moderated by Neil Chase, CalMatters CEO
The Challenges Facing the Next Governor
Speakers:
- Lanhee Chen, Fellow in American Public Policy Studies, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University
- Lorena Gonzalez, President, California Federation of Labor Unions
- Dan Walters, Columnist, CalMatters
Moderated by Kristen Go, CalMatters Editor-in-Chief
Housing: We’ve Come So Far, But There’s A Long Way To Go
Speakers:
- Buffy Wicks, Member of the California State Assembly
- Kevin McCarty, Mayor of Sacramento
- Gustavo Velasquez, Director, California Department of Housing and Community Development
Moderated by Ben Christopher, CalMatters Housing Reporter
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
