Last month, we looked back the conferences we attended in 2018 and asked Lab Report readers to share their top events. We received more than 100 suggestions for conferences and summits across a wide range of industries and topics — from health and space to technology and design.
The healthcare industry wins for submitting the most event suggestions, and we noticed that AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans), CNS Summit, HIMSS, HLTH, J.P. Morgan Healthcare, and TEDMED popped up in many survey responses.
Beyond health, survey responses showed a broad, cross-disciplinary interest in topics like tech, business, and culture. When we asked about dream conferences — the places they’d be if time, access, or budget were no object — many respondents mentioned CES, EmTech, SXSW, TED, and World Economic Forum as conferences they aspire to attend.
What makes a conference worth considering? On LinkedIn, a reader told us she looks for “conferences where the content goes cross-sector, features new ideas and diverse talent, fosters discovery, and builds community.” Another reader offered a different litmus test: “which conference is so good that, if cancelled, you’d think about starting it up again?”
The full list, loosely categorized by topic, is below. Did we miss an important event? Email editor@luminary-labs.com to let us know where you’ll be this year.
Health & life sciences
- AIMed
- Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP)
- America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)
- American Medical Group Association (AMGA)
- American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
- Aspen Ideas: Health
- BIO
- BioData World Congress
- Boomer Venture Summit
- CNBC Healthy Returns
- CNS Summit
- Connected Health Summit
- Digital Orthopaedics Conference
- Drug Discovery Chemistry
- Drug Discovery Summit
- ELSCEO Forum
- End Well Symposium
- Exponential Medicine
- Frontiers Health
- FT Digital Health Summit
- Health 2.0
- Health Evolution Summit
- Healthspottr
- HIMSS
- HLTH
- INFORMS Healthcare Summit
- International Council on Active Aging
- J.P. Morgan Healthcare
- MedInfo Lyon
- Medtech Conference
- MM&M Transforming Healthcare
- MM&M Hall of Femme
- National Association of ACOs (NAACOS)
- Optum Forum
- Platinum Health
- Pharmaceutical Management Science Association (PMSA)
- Quality Talks
- R/Pharma
- Rock Health Summit
- Startup Health Festival
- TEDMED
- The Beryl Institute Patient Experience Conference
- Virtual Medicine
- Voice.Health Summit
- Voice in Health Summit
- World Medical Innovation Forum
- World Preclinical Congress
- World Vaccine Congress
- WSJ Health Forum
Design & digital
- Adobe 99U
- AIGA Design
- Brand New Conference
- Confab
- Design Content Conference
- DLD Munich
- Design Management Institute
- Experience Design Week
- Financial Experience Design (FXD)
- Health Experience Design (HXD)
- Social Media Week
Tech
- 4YFN
- All Tech is Human
- CES
- Founders Forum
- Fortune Brainstorm Tech
- infoShare
- EmTech
- EmTech Next
- Morgan Stanley Tech, Media & Telecom
- New Harvest
- Recode Code Conference
- Responsible Tech
- RISE
- RStudio
- Slush
- TechCrunch Disrupt
- Unbox Festival
- Voice Summit
- Web Summit
Education
- CLASS Annual Summit
- Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE)
- Faculty Summer Institute in Illinois
- InstructureCon
- International Society for Technology in Education
- SXSW EDU
- Twitter Math Camp
Space & science
- American Geophysical Union
- CubeSat Developers Workshop
- European CubeSat Symposium
- IEEE Aerospace Conference
- Innovation and Opportunity Conference (IOC)
- IUGG General Assembly for International Association of Geomagnetics and Aeronomy (IAGA)
- Living Planet Conference
- Machine Learning in Heliophysics
- National Science Teachers Association
- Small Satellite Conference
- SmallSat Symposium
- Space Symposium
Civic innovation & smart cities
New ways of working & doing
- Crowdsourcing Week
- Culturati Summit
- Innovation Leader Impact
- NewCo Shift Forum
- NYT New Work Festival
- Slack Frontiers
- Solve at MIT
Culture & futurism
- ArtPrize
- Dodge Poetry Festival
- Future of Storytelling
- HUBweek
- Maker Faire
- Northside Festival
- reThink Food
- Speculative Futures PRIMER
- SXSW
- Sydney Writers Festival
- TED
- The Atlantic Festival
- World Economic Forum
- World of Wearable Art
- WSJ Future of Everything
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
