Event Program.

Wired

NextFest (for Multi-Year Event Program)

Here Comes the Future

It was perhaps the only place in the world where you could see a bionic dolphin and a robotic marriage of East meets West, with a horde of scientists, inventors, techies, geeks and families in between - otherwise known as Wired Nextfest.

With a World's Fair feel, the annual event (now going into its third year) features innovations from top scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and companies throughout the world, but more so showcases advertisers in innovative ways.

"How do we bring our magazine to life?" asked Drew Schutte, VP/Publisher of Wired, during the original brainstorm session to launch the show as a 10th anniversary event for the magazine a few years ago. "It's not something publishers talk about a lot. We purposely set out to do an event that felt nothing like the traditional conventions we went to."

Since last year's Chicago event, which attracted 37,000 attendees and dwarfed the first year's San Francisco Wired Nextfest in scope, advertisers were practically banging down the door, according to Schutte. "The people who had been there were happy and wanted to come back and the people who heard about it wanted to be part of it," he says.