OmFest is coming together quite nicely! The new website is beautiful and highlights some of the experiences available throughout the day. I think Om would be very impressed by the attendee list. We’re doing it at the Swedish American Hall, the same venue as the first WordCamp, where Om, of course, spoke about Blogs and Journalism. (The videos have been lost to digirot, unless anyone has some recordings? I’ve been looking everywhere.)
Below is cross-posted from OmFest.co:
September 29th is when Om would have turned 60.
When I first started thinking about how to mark the day, I knew I didn’t want a traditional memorial. Om loved bringing interesting people together, and he loved a festival that taught him something he didn’t already know. His curiosity crossed so many worlds and passions: technology, journalism, photography, investing, watches, pens, coffee, design, music, India, New York, San Francisco.
So we’re bringing these worlds together. On September 29 in San Francisco, we’re throwing OmFest—twelve hours of ideas, objects, food, music, and conversation, organized and anchored around a statement Om once said:
“If you pay enough attention to the present, you can see the future.”
Present Future
Instead of tributes or keynotes, we’ll host a series of short talks with one simple challenge: teach us something you’re seeing before everyone else sees it. No pitches, no career retrospectives. You don’t even have to talk about Om. What happens to photography when anyone can generate the perfect image with AI? Why do physical objects become more meaningful as our lives become more digital? Are glasses becoming computers? What does handwriting do to the way we think? Different subjects, same goal: everyone leaves knowing something they didn’t know when they arrived.
A Festival of Om’s Curiosity
Between the talks, there will be plenty to stumble upon. Through Om’s Lens: a gallery of Om’s photography. TIME: an exhibit that uses his watch obsession to spark a discussion about craft and collecting. Field Notes: a communal writing table stocked with fine paper, fountain pens, and ink, where you can write something worth remembering—and either keep it or leave it behind to be bound in a book to commemorate the day. And Om’s Shelf: books he read, loved, and recommended. The collection will start full and slowly empty as his favorite reads pass into other hands.
People from Om’s different worlds will drop in throughout the day to share knowledge and facilitate small, hands-on moments: a photography tutorial, a notebook-binding session, a lesson on the mechanics of a watch, an experience with a coffee you’ve never tried, a tea ceremony. And, woven into this experience, will be OM/60: sixty small discoveries about Om, hidden throughout.
All Roads Lead to Om
The most important part, however, isn’t any of these objects. At check-in, instead of a badge with your company and title, you’ll choose the worlds through which you knew Om: photography, journalism, technology, GigaOm, investing, WordPress, India, coffee, pens and ink, design, music, or simply friends and family.
Then we build a physical map of it. It starts nearly empty. You add yourself, mark how you knew Om and whom he introduced you to, and those people connect to others. By the end of the night, I hope we’ll be able to see what Om spent a lifetime making.
The question I keep asking myself: who will meet because of Om that Om never had the chance to introduce? If OmFest works, his network won’t just be documented that day. It’ll grow.
From Ideas to Celebration
The day flows and builds. Morning is coffee, breakfast, books, photography, and conversation. The middle is deliberately unstructured—wander, eat, write, talk. In the evening, friends share short stories as we raise a glass to Om on his 60th. Then the bars roll in, the lights go down, the music gets louder, and OmFest becomes DesiParty: his old-school New York nights, Asian Underground, bhangra, electronica. We start with ideas and end with dancing. That feels right.
Version 1.0
What we’re building shouldn’t end on September 29. What does registration look like if it’s designed to help strangers talk to each other? How do you design a conference around curiosity instead of status? How do you make something that works for a two-hour visit or a twelve-hour one? How does a room encourage connection without forcing networking?
We’re treating OmFest as an experiment. We’ll document what works—formats, designs, code, templates, check-in, programming—and open source as much of it as we can. Other events can take the best ideas and make them better.
September 29 isn’t the end of OmFest. It’s version 1.0.
Come Build with Us
People from across Om’s life are building OmFest together. Some are contributing photographs. Someone is making a textile; another is bringing tea and guiding ceremonies. Others are helping with watches, eyewear, books, music, writing, and stories. We haven’t discovered whole parts of Om’s world yet. That’s the point.
If Om introduced you to something, or someone, we’d love to know. If there’s something you think people should experience, see, hear, taste, read, or learn that day, tell us.
And if you just want to come, come. You don’t need to have known Om. You only need to be curious.