The Feast gathers the world’s greatest innovators from across industries and society to empower, inspire and engage each other in creating world-shaking change.

The Feast was started to inspire action and create world-shaking change.  Over the years, it began as a conference but now has the opportunity to extend itself into so many new opportunities and be more than just an “event.”  I spent the afternoon strategizing the future of The Feast, and thinking about where to take it the next couple of years.

This is where you come in to help. We’ll be submitting a final idea to the Pepsi Refresh Everything campaign this week.  We’d love for you, our community of all-star social innovators, entrepreneurs and doers to let us know what you want.  Leave ideas in the comment section below.

“I’ve been thinking a lot, actually, about Clay Shirky’s TED@State talk from the summer. In it he talks about how media is no longer just a broadcast to be consumed but a site of organizing. His point is that as people consume media, they then organize groups around that to take the ideas, inspiration, or dissent generated by that media and turn it into action.” — Nathaniel Whittemore, Change.org

In order to talk about about how to improve The Feast, we should probably start with the end point.  We’d love for The Feast to be the SXSW/TED for our community in 5 years.  Our secret sauce lies in a healthy combination of passion, creativity, and entrepreneurship to shift the way things are done – thereby changing individuals, industries, and ultimately the world. How can we make The Feast more than just an event?  How can we organize groups to take ideas and turn them into actionable ideas?

Nathaniel Whittemore from change.org wrote about how the conference model is dead, and I have to agree on a lot of his points.  But rather than talking about why it’s dead, I’d like to focus on new and better solutions to make it valuable for you.  I’ve listed some ideas and concepts below to help kickstart the discussion and brainstorm…

1. Accessible Ticket Prices:  ”Starting with #140conf NYC ‘10, the ticket prices will be more reflective of the cost to attend the theater and/or a music concert in New York City than a typical tech event.” I read this blog post by Jeff Pulver that goes into the new pricing model for the 140 Conference, which I think is genius.  Traditionally, conferences have high ticket prices because companies (not individuals) usually pay for the tickets, but that’s doesn’t hold true today.  Why have ticket prices that reflect the old model?  Our audience for The Feast consists of people that are on the ground making the world a better place.  Most of them pay for The Feast out of their own pockets.  Should we implement “social pricing” for The Feast?

2. Act of Creation: “TED is an act of recitation: smart people stand on stage and explain the amazing things they’ve been up to. Phoot Camp was an act of creation: things came into the world that would not have otherwise.” Another great article from snarkmarket.com ties the future of media to physical events.  They created a great list of a “media product” below:

• Live. It’s an event that happens at a specific time and place in the real world. It’s something you can buy a ticket for—or follow on Twitter.
• Generative. Something new gets created. The event doesn’t have to produce a series of luminous photo essays; the point is simply that con­tributors aren’t operating in play back mode. They’re thinking on their feet, collaborating on their feet, creating on their feet. There’s risk involved! And that’s one of the most compelling reasons to follow along.
• Publishable. The result of all that generation ought, ideally, to be something you can publish on the web, some thing that people can hap­pily discover two weeks or two years after the event is over.
• Performative. The event has an audience—either live or online, and ideally both. The event’s structure and products are carefully considered and well-crafted. I love the Bar Camp model; this is not a BarCamp.
• Serial. It doesn’t just happen once, and it doesn’t just happen once a year. Ideally it happens… what? Once a month? It’s a pattern: you focus sharply on the event, but then the media that you produce flares out onto the web to grow your audience and pull them in—to focus on the next event. Focus, flare.

3.  Actionable Ideas:  The Clinton Global Foundation and Initiative transforms ideas into action. All members of CGI have to “devise practical solutions to global issues through the development of specific and measurable Commitments to Action.”  TED does something similar with the TED Prize and Pop!Tech implements action through the Accelerator.  How can we galvanize The Feast community to create real world-shaking change versus inspiring them to do the same?

4.  GOOD Ideas: I love the project that GOOD recently did with IBM titled “Rethinking Cities” and “Ideas for Cities” which is a brainstorm on the future of cities.  I’m in love with almost all of the ideas listed out which range from a “Slow City” to “Media Reform.”  Can The Feast network list out innovative ideas to share with the world?

5.  School of Life: “The School of Life is a new social enterprise offering good ideas for everyday living.” What attracts me to the School of Life is the discussion and focus on personal improvement.  It’s kind of like a school for all the things you never learned in school.  Should we focus on individual improvement throughout the year?

6.  The Long Now:  Last year, the theme of The Feast was on the Long Now, which was inspired by the Long Now Foundation.   “The Long Now Foundation was established in *01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”  Very, very powerful.  How can we start a discussion about improving our future?

7.  Random: Some other ideas I thought of include making it a week long event like Internet Week NYC, allowing participants to host their own events like TEDx, and keeping it open like SXSW.

Based on the ideas listed above, I’ve been thinking long and hard of how to make The Feast more than just a “conference” held in New York every year.  How can we collaboratively work together to create social change that impacts millions? Inspiring our community to make the world a better place is one thing.  Actually making it happen is something completely different. Here’s where I’m thinking of taking The Feast for 2010 and beyond.

1.  Reinventing Industries: Throw out canned speeches and inspirational presentations about what people have done. Instead, each presentation should focus on hacking and reinventing different industries for the future.  Each speaker would answer one question in 18-minutes: “If you could re-invent [education, healthcare, food, cities, etc], what would you do differently?” We’ll ask thought-leaders to present their take which will inspire our audience to…

2.  Innovative Ideas: Submit ideas on The Feast website (similar to GOOD Ideas).  This creates a two-way conversation and engagement between our speakers and our audience.  Our website will have an endless list of innovative ideas that list out new and better solutions to create world-shaking change.  This will happen every year.  I’m a true believer that ideas are 1% creativity and 99% perspiration (thanks to Behance!).  We would encourage people to steal these ideas and implement it themselves.

3.  Make Good Ideas Happen: Much like the CGI, we’ll ask our attendees to make commitments to making these innovative ideas happen.  We’ll create a short list of commitments we’ll achieve every year.  Similar to the TED Prize.

4.  Rinse and Repeat: An endless cycle of awesome goodness.

5.  Personal Improvement: Sprinkled throughout the year, we’ll hold seminars, salons, and thinkweeks that focus on individual improvement for our community.

With all these different concepts and ideas, what would you like to see happen with The Feast? How can we make it more than just an event?  How can we impact millions of people around the world? Please list your ideas below and start the discussion.

This article was written by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Co-Founder of All Day Buffet and Feast Curator. You can follow his updates on twitter.