I have sat through too many conferences. You probably have too.
You know the format. A keynote speaker who wrote a book three years ago delivers insights you could have absorbed in a forty-five-minute podcast on your walk. A panel of four people who mostly agree with each other politely debate the margins. Heads tucked into screens. Networking happens in a lobby, between people who are already connected on LinkedIn, exchanging business cards that neither will look at again.
You fly home knowing roughly what you knew when you left. Maybe you have a notebook with three bullet points. Maybe you don't even have that.
I stopped going to those conferences in my late thirties. Not because I stopped being curious — but because I started valuing my curiosity more.
What I wanted was something different: a room where people actually disagree, where expertise comes from living something rather than studying it, where the format doesn't protect anyone from having to think in real time.
I built that room. I called it Brigadoon.
Since 2013, Brigadoon has gathered at Sundance Mountain Resort for three days each February — forty or so founders, investors, journalists, architects, doctors, civic leaders, and thinkers from across disciplines and geographies. No PowerPoint slides. No panels. No name tags. Chatham House Rule throughout.
The format is simple: a speaker takes the stage with an idea, a question, or a problem. Not a polished presentation — often something they're working through in real time. The room responds. Actual conversation happens. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. It's almost always useful.
What defines the quality of a Brigadoon gathering isn't the speakers' credentials. It's the willingness of everyone in the room to think out loud — to say the thing they actually think rather than the thing they're supposed to think.
That's rare. And it turns out it's replicable, if you're deliberate about who you invite and how you design the experience.
Thirteen years in, I wanted to see if the same philosophy could work year-round — not just for a weekend in the Utah mountains, but across twelve months, for a broader community of people who believe that conversation is still the most underrated tool in professional life.
Brigadoon Professional is the answer to that question.
It's a membership program that keeps the conversation going between gatherings — through biweekly analysis and essays, live expert calls on topics shaping commerce and culture, curated books, and guaranteed access to the gatherings themselves.
The four tiers range from $500 to $7,500 per year, with capacity limits at the upper levels that mirror the gathering's own design logic: the room only works if it stays small enough that everyone is accountable to each other.
Conferences have been broken for a long time. Most people keep going anyway, out of habit or obligation.
You don't have to.
— Marc A. Ross
Founder, Brigadoon
