Where Climate and Capital Meets AI: Inside One of the Largest Sustainability Events

At The Optimist Circuit Podcast, we're building the circuit connecting AI, tech, nature, and people to spark optimism and power solutions for society. This episode is exactly that circuit in action.

Peter Gilmer spent a decade at Web Summit helping scale one of the world's most influential tech gatherings to 70,000 attendees. When a Sylvia Earle documentary moved him, he walked away and came back with a new mission: proving that the people with capital, technology, and urgency could actually find solutions to our worlds greatest environmental problem and build something. He created PlanetTech inside Web Summit, secured the UN as a partner, and won the Global Sustainable Development Award from the global events industry association. Now as CEO of the Nest Campus, part of NYC Climate Week, the largest sustainability event in the US, he's making his biggest bet yet.

That bet is NestX. Launching September 22-24, 2026 at Climate Week NYC, NestX is the first dedicated AI platform inside the world's largest resilience economy gathering, built in partnership with HumanX, the premier conference for AI decision-makers. It's a big deal because for the first time, the AI innovation community including startups, investors, enterprise buyers, and technology leaders is being brought into the climate conversation in a structured, commercially meaningful way. Not as a side conversation. As a center of gravity.

As Peter puts it: "AI allows us to identify, finance, and scale the most effective solutions with unprecedented speed and precision. This is how we move from ambition to deployment and from incremental progress to exponential impact."

We dig into what NestX actually looks like on the ground: AI startups showcasing breakthrough solutions, facilitated one-on-ones between founders and investors, and high-level programming across the six sectors driving the resilience economy including energy transition, AI and technology, cities and infrastructure, supply chains, food, water and natural capital, and risk and finance. We also get into the real-world AI tools already moving the needle: satellite-based ocean monitoring, deforestation prediction, grid optimization, emissions accountability, and why fusion energy is suddenly back in the conversation as AI drives electricity demand to new heights.

Peter is clear-eyed that AI is not a silver bullet. Its energy demands are real, and deploying it irresponsibly carries risk. But it is already reshaping what's possible for the planet. NestX exists to make sure the right people are in the room shaping how it gets used.

If you're working at the intersection of AI, climate, and capital, or you just want a grounded and optimistic look at what exponential impact actually looks like, this one's for you. Share it with someone heading to Climate Week NYC, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Connect with Peter Gilmer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petergilmerimpact/ 

The Nest Campus: https://www.thenestcampus.com 

NestX: https://www.thenestclimatecampus.com/nestx

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Peter Gilmer

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Optimus Circuit Podcast, where we are building the circuit connecting AI, tech, nature, and people to spark optimism and power solutions for society.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I'm Ellen Spooner. And I'm Francesca Fernandez, and we are genuinely extremely excited about our guest today.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

We really are because we spend a lot of time on the show talking about innovative solutions to some of our biggest environmental challenges. And our guest today has built his career sitting right at that intersection. He has spent a decade building movements, convening collaborators, and turning ambition into action.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Peter Gilmer sits at the intersection of the climate and resilience space. He brings together people with the capital and with the technology and the urgency to create a more sustainable future. He is here helping everyone find out what happens when you put them all in one room.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Yeah, my pleasure. Great to be here.

From Web Summit To PlanetTech

SPEAKER_00 0:55

So before we get into the nest, which is of course your focus, we want to know a bit more about how you got here. Your path isn't an obvious one. You started in the world of tech events, uh, the web summit being one. Sustainability was not necessarily central to it. But take us back. What's the origin story and what's the journey there?

SPEAKER_03 1:15

Yeah, thanks so much. I guess the most relevant part of the story is Web Summit. So I was part of the kind of original team. As you said, we were very much a tech conference. Even though we kind of touched all sectors and industries, the common thread through all of our stages and startups and curations and topics was technology. And that was at a time kind of probably like app boom time. So there was an element of right place, right time. But it was a really, really good event, and the trajectory was pretty um astronomical. We scaled it to about 70,000 people. But when you have 70,000 people in a room, you've got to segment them. Otherwise, you know, it's like herding cats, as we would say. And so we became quite industry agnostic, but we kind of it became almost like a festival of smaller events. So we had, you know, uh a portion of the event dedicated to marketing, a dedicated one dedicated to um fintech, one dedicated to SaaS, one dedicated to fashion, sport, blah blah blah. And until 2016, we didn't have any representation from the environmental community, or let's say more broadly speaking, the impact community. So social and environmental didn't really have uh not didn't have a place, but we certainly weren't actively targeting people that represented action in those communities. And so in 2017, um I started a component of Web Summit, which was called PlanetTech, um, which was kind of what it sounds like. It was a sort of a version of a web summit replicating what Web Summit already did, creating the kind of most sort of notable thought leaders, the most interesting startups, helping them meet investors, and you know, that sort of playbook that's quite commonplace now, but back then was less so. And so PlanetTech sat as part of Web Summit, which was our European big conference of 70,000 people. We also had um a sister conference in North America, which moved around, um, ended up um New Orleans, Toronto, and now it's in Vancouver. But Planet Tech also sat annually as a part of that. So I guess all that to say is even though it started as a very tech-first conference, um, I always had a notion, and I remember maybe this is interesting, the I remember the exact point that I decided to start that. I was watching Sylvia Earl documentary Mission Blue. Have you ever seen that? Yeah, and um I think that must have been 2016, and I kind of I was watching it and the just really like evocative music, you know, really got me. And I was just I turned it off and I said to my partner, I I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna quit a web web summit. And and I did. Uh and I went and I spent six months traveling around Central America using um, I don't know, the network that I built to reach out to people like Oceana and much other much smaller NGOs, but also sitting on laptops and doing kind of uh one-on-ones with people on the business side of kind of impact and the NGO and policy, and people were very kind with their time. And so I spent six months doing that. And then I came back to Web Summit, and our CEO Patty um had me back, which is great. And but I said I'd love to come back and I'd love to do, I'd love to build out this new kind of program, uh, which ended up being Planet Tech. So yeah, it was that exact moment watching um that Sylvia Earl documentary that led me down that path. And then Planet Tech became successful and uh it grew year on year, and then in 2023, I've been in there kind of a decade, and I kind of wanted to go and double down on uh climate um in other ways. So I kind of was lucky enough to have that Rolodex of people like CEOs of interesting organizations that I'd got to know really well, that I kind of it was a bit of a trade. I helped them with some stuff and they helped me understand the landscape a little bit better by getting in with some really interesting NGOs and really interesting projects, and was very lucky to be invited to sit on some advisory boards and just all the while gathering information about the kind of the macro impact ecosystem. And then with no real um intention of getting back into giant conferences, um, I was contacted by uh a friend of mine uh from the kind of um Web Summit Broader Ecosystem Days, and he said, I've got this friend who's thinking of acquiring the Nest campus, and would you like to talk to him? And I said, Sure. That's kind of how I got to the starting point of Nest.

Partnerships And Building An ESG Roadmap

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Wow, that's such a cool story. Isn't it crazy how like films like the Sylvia Earl one, or like for me growing up, just watching National Geographic really, really impact people and like shape how you think about things. And it's it sounds like from that experience, you really moved full steam ahead in the impact sustainability world, so much so that you were recognized by the Earth Shop Prize.

SPEAKER_03 5:53

Yeah. Well, I was I was uh I was a nominator for the Earth Shop Prize for a couple of years. So if you're familiar with how they store, they're a brilliant competition and and should sort of shine a light on some really interesting and diverse innovators across the world. Um, and so because of the web, when I was at Web Summit, obviously we had a touch point on like really the global innovation community and and planet tech, we ingested a lot of people, not just in the startup side, but also NGOs and you know, just like people innovating regardless of where and how. And so because we had um yeah, we had that we had a really significant cohort of those kinds of individuals and organizations coming to the event. I guess I they thought I was quite well placed to make some suggestions to them. So uh I was really happy to do that. And what the other one was UFI, that is kind of the global association of the events industry. You know, they're they're they're a huge association and they have a lot of the biggest event organizers and biggest venues and biggest operators in in the industry, and every year they they have a sustainability award, but every year it kind of has a little bit of a different focus, and the year that we won it, it was focused on partnerships for the goals and how organizations kind of leverage different relationships in order to expedite progress towards um progressing the SDGs. And so because we were so multifaceted and had sponsors and partners across you know all major industries, but also on the nonprofit side and the government side, we were an intergovernmental organizations and various divisions of the UN, we were really well placed to lean on those organizations you know better together, kind of thing. Like, why would we start and try and do something from scratch when we know organization X is doing it really, really well, but we feel like they're doing that, but we could actually maybe um you know be quite compatible because we're doing something different that when those two things might be put together, the whole is is greater than the sum of the parts. So UFI recognized us for those partnerships. And and I was leading, even though I started Planetech, I was also chief impact officer, which means you know, we weren't kind of we didn't we had never formally structured, we were doing a lot, but we would never formally structured our our ESG, our sustainability strategy. We didn't have a sustainability strategy, we didn't have a roadmap to 2030, we didn't have a plan to decarbonize or design out waste. And when you're in a vent, it you know, you've I don't know, a thousand plus kind of suppliers and you know, all these kind of moving parts, it's really complex. And so, but you're really at the top, you're at the top of it, and so you can drive uh inordinate influence across the kind of the the uh the spectrum of contributors, and so I kind of took that on. I I I drew up a 2030 sustainability strategy, pretty much copied the Olympics. I think I can say that now. Um because they did it really well, you know. There are this other huge kind of convening, albeit every four years, and there's a lot of kind of similar issues that they have, and so I really like the way they structured it, and um, I thought I use it as a template, let's say that it's obviously not exactly the same, and uh and yes, so I guess that partnerships was a big part of that because I thought it was a big lever that we could pull that we were lucky enough to be able to pull that could actually drive real change. Um, and of course, all the other stuff like you know, designing art waste and designing plastic out of the event and trying to decarbonize the event as best you can, where all of the other to-dos on the list, but the partnerships is what we got recognized for by the Global Association of the Events Industry.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

It sounds um, well, first of all, kudos. Uh and it sounds like you had an incredible platform, a lot of momentum already with what you were doing with Planet Tech.

Why The Nest Campus Pulled Him Back

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Uh, you mentioned that you had stepped away and weren't expecting to find yourself back in the large convening space. What was it that drew you back? What was it perhaps about the Nest Campus that spoke to you?

SPEAKER_03 9:41

A few things actually. I was introduced to a guy called Jonathan Weiner, and he is um an events entrepreneur that started industry-leading conferences like Money 2020, which is a big fintech conference, one called Shop Tech, a Shop Talk for e-commerce, uh Health for Health, and Human X, which is a pre-exit sort of the pre-eminent AI conference in San Francisco right now. I think that maybe that's where we're where we've met. And so he was the one who was spearheading this, so my ears pricked up on that. Uh, and I was introduced to him one Sunday and we got chatting. He was like, I'm thinking of sort of taking on this uh event called the Nest Campus during climate week. I've been to Climate Week, I've you know I've been to UN, I've been to UNGA, I've sat in a plenary session in UN headquarters. I really enjoy climate week. I love the energy, uh, and you know, everybody is in town. But I the first thing I thought was like, another event during climate week. Is that really, you know, is that really what climate week needs? But it it had already existed for five years, and then when I looked at the event and the numbers that they were getting in, and like the the cross-section of leaders and senior people from a really broad spectrum of um public and private sector, I was like, okay, this is really interesting. How do they get that sort of eight to ten thousand people in the door? And then so I thought it was really interesting, and one of the one of the things about Climate Week is it's you know a sea of 900 events, so people are constantly jumping from one event to the other, walking, cycling, getting in taxis. It's you know, it's quite hard to hold down an audience for a long time, but it's a brilliant event and it's full of all the people you could ever want to speak to if you work in in the climate space, and so the I the prospect of having sort of a critical mass of 10,000 people all under one roof, and what you could do with that if it if it was managed really kind of uh pragmatically, you know, and the way that we would have managed events all with our other backgrounds. I thought that there was enormous room in Climate Week for that. Um, and so yeah, I was super interested, and uh, we had one more phone call after that, and then that was it. He he decided uh with his uh co-founder Stefan Weiss, who's the CEO uh and co-founder of HumaneX, to move forward with the acquisition of the Nest Campus, who had done a really good job over the five years of building a community and a brand, and and then we took it on shortly thereafter. So it's been three and a half months since we made, I think, the the official uh you know acquisition, and it's been a pretty steep trajectory since then, but a very fun one.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

I love the get to it attitude. I guess the you know what, it there's uh there's something cooking here. Let's uh let's get involved. I do think that that is one of the most important um mindsets uh for this particular age, but with sustainability and climate change still looming really uh dangerously ever closer, and then um also a lot of conversation about AI and a lot of people wanting to kind of divest or dissociate from it. But really, you you can't have an impact, you can't help shape unless you're diving right in. Um, and so I appreciated that as part of I think the the invitation that I see the Nest Campus extends. Uh I also saw that you're taking a much more inclusive lens on these and other issues uh in under the banner of the resilience economy.

What The Resilience Economy Means

SPEAKER_00 13:06

I wanted to ask about your your decision to adopt that language, what it means to you, how you define it, and why the shift to that language.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Yeah, that's a really important question. So the NES Campus, formerly known as the NES Climate Campus, before we acquired it, we we just we thought it was much needer of the Nest Campus. And it's important to say that we weren't moving away from climate, but we felt resilience allows you to capture a lot more and cast a much wider net. And so we would call resilience in kind of layman's terms as the uh the business of future-proofing our planet. So future-proofing our businesses, our economies, our supply chains, our natural systems, our societies, okay, the business end of that. And that means both the business of mitigating the worst of climate and adapting to because we're in it, right? You know, just pick up the today's paper and you'll see some kind of enormous fallout, unprecedented heat wave, unprecedented floods, uh, whatever. So, you know, we're we're coming at this. One, we want to get people excited about the economic opportunity. You know, I think that like activism is super important and policy is super important, and business is super important as well. And I think that one of the biggest levers that we can pull because of the resources and the capital represented by the private sector, if we can pull that lever and get people excited about the resilience economy and restructure the economy in a way that's inclusive, but also pulls in the people with the capital and gets them excited about the roadmap. You know, we we constantly reference Larry Fink uh saying, you know, he's referencing the green economy, but you know, the green economy fits into the resilience economy as the uh you know the biggest economic or investment opportunity of our time. And so, you know, we think he's right, and we want to convene all of the major stakeholders that represent the resilience economy, and we can get to how we kind of subdivide that in a minute. People that represent capital, people that represent solutions, not just at an enterprise level, but we're we're going back to our past as well and convening startups of varying degrees of funding, and we're creating this kind of ecosystem and this kind of seamless process, underpinned by technology,

AI Matchmaking To Reduce Missed Meetings

SPEAKER_03 15:13

by the way. And you guys were at HumanX and you know how the app can facilitate people. So, really just creating a fertile ground for money to meet solutions, sort of solutions to meet customers, and and and making sure that they can all find each other and connect with each other and to add another layer on it using AI to make sure that they're being recommended, people that are in the room, that we almost we being you know AI empowered or AI-powered uh Nest Campus, making sure that um people know who's in the room that they almost certainly should be speaking to and why. So when you guys were at Human X, you know, you would have got an email that said, Here are 15 people that you should meet, and then there's a little AI-generated synopsis for each one as to why you should meet them, and then you know, there's a little button to to to to help you meet them physically on site. So when I go back to my first point about climate week and 900 events, and even in UN General Assembly, and I was in the plenary session, and like you kind of look around the room, it's like, oh, there they are. That's uh probably should have, you know, probably should have been able to connect with that person because that would have been a really good meeting, but like too late now. And I would just wonder how much how much how many connections are left on the table because so much of it is left to chance, and how much of that can we engineer with really simple tools that we and Steph, uh you know, myself and Stefan and and John all used in in our previous uh lives uh to to just remove as much of that chance as possible and try and engineer it into okay, this is this is the person you should meet, or these are the people they should meet, and and here's why, and here's a way to do it. And so just to be able to carve out 10,000 people in climate week of senior leaders, solution providers, funders, you know, and to to house them all in one tool, that for me that's really exciting because there hasn't been anything at that skill yet. Um and it's quite an easy win. That's a low-hanging fruit as far as we're concerned.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yeah, I just want to double down on your mentioning of the human X like platform that they built and how it that's how we got connected because I initially full circle. Exactly. Because I initially was looking at the Human X website and I was like, wow, this is an incredible event, and I'm focused on sustainability. I was like trying to just like research on the website, and then when I became an attendee and got access to the back end, the connector, I was like, oh my God, this is the best event connector I've ever experienced out of any conference I've ever been to. And I love going to conferences. Um, so it's truly incredible that you guys are also going to leverage that for the Nest Campus because yeah, I mean, the United Nations General Assembly Climate Week is arguably one of the biggest events in the world. And so to have that level of hyperscale connectivity of different people on the same topics is I think really important. And how we help shape and move conversations in a way that's more impactful. And you you touched on this a bit, but I also want to elevate uh I think oftentimes people in the sustainability and environmental world talk about let's stop doing this and stop doing that. But I think what's interesting to me that you guys are doing is instead of stop doing things to protect the environment, let's innovate, let's build new ideas. And it seems that you guys have six topics, content pillars for the Nest campus that you're focusing on.

Six Pillars And A Startup Flywheel

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Energy transition, tech and AI, of course, in this era, you can you can't ignore that. Uh, supply chains, cities in the built environment, food, water, and nature, and risk and finance. Could you talk a little bit more about how you chose those topics, why you think that grouping is important?

SPEAKER_03 19:08

You have to draw boundaries around your topics. But like, you know, like you mentioned AI and technology then. I mean, that's a through line for everything, you know. So arguably that could have just been not a focus, and it could have just, you know, it's part of everything anyway, and it's so it's becoming so ubiquitous that you could just leave it. And and you know, the same could be said for some of those others, but I think that it's important to have those kind of really six clear headings that you can fit most stuff under, right? That's um that's climate uh related, you know, even in energy and industrial transformation, you can fit almost all corporate sustainability under there, you can fit all electrification under there, you can fit kind of net zero and decarbonization under there. Like that's a big, big heading. But I think that you you when you're kind of trying to appeal to different audiences and solution providers and people who are procuring solutions for their organization and whatnot, you need to just make it super clear, you know, so that they don't have to sift through, like, where do I fit into this? They're like, Oh, okay, yeah, I get it. And so for each of those topics, we also target so the sort of the foremost people at kind of a sort of macro enterprise level that are building and already you know executing solutions, uh, decision makers and leaders. So that's that kind of top-down approach, and obviously we want that, but also for each of those six um kind of sector focuses that you mentioned, we're going after actively targeting startups that I mentioned before, kind of from seed up to kind of unicorns that are innovating in the space that maybe people, unlike the the kind of the bigger private sector multinational business end, have never had a touch point with. And to your first point, uh Francesca, with the um if you fill the room with people with a can-do attitude, and startups have that, they've just got this like unapologetic appetite to solve problems, that's really contagious. And so during my time at Web Summit, I always, you know, the feedback that we had from big corporates that are kind of like, you know, they're in their lane and it's there's a lot of red tape and whatnot, it's quite hard to deviate from your your kind of your focus. And then when you you put them in a room, I won't mention any names, but like when when some some sponsors, some giant kind of corporate sponsors show up, and like on day one, they're all like wearing suits, and then they're like, no, not the not the vibe. And then the day after, they're all like wearing their casual gear and they're getting into it. But but I think it's really important that they're just they were so um moved by the the appetite and the smarts and the can-do attitude around the the startup entrepreneurs and ecosystem that it became quite um contagious. And so I think for each of those six sector focuses, it's really important. And I don't nobody else is doing this in Climate Week at scale because nobody has the venue size that we have, but to have that kind of that bit in the middle where top down meets bottom up and to To create, you know, and people who represent capital and to create those moments where they can all kind of uh rub shoulders with each other, and better yet, we use our kind of AI matchmaking to put them in rooms and roundtables and and meetings together. So I'm really excited about that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Can I ask a bit more about um you know how how that translates for the founder, for the startup, for the innovator? Like A, how are you going out there and identifying and um bringing in these these parties? And then B, how are you helping them show up uh at the conference? Certainly the the connector is is part of that, but is there anything else that you're doing to help put them in the same rooms as, for example, the CEOs?

SPEAKER_03 22:42

Yeah, for the startups?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

Yeah. So yeah, we have a a team that are kind of our starty, our startup outreach team, and uh so they will kind of do a cast a big net. Uh it's almost like an application process, and then ascertain which ones are you know at an appropriate level and sitting on a sort of interesting solutions, and then you know, bring them in through through that kind of vetting process. So there are a few ways that startups can touch the event. There's like a pitch competition, much like any other, where it's an application process, and you know, they get time in front of a sort of a panel of four judges, and you know, the the finalists go on main stage, and then you know there's a big prize giving and so forth. So that, but again, during climate week, I don't think that happens in a kind of in front of a big audience, you know, anywhere. Um, I could be wrong. We also do a startup showcase, so that's where outside of the pitches that happen as part of the pitch competition, we just have a kind of a stage where people on the show floor, you know, sitting and standing room can come and learn about a vetted group of startups that are sitting on really interesting stuff. And uh so you know that's happening. Uh, and then you know we have investor startup kind of meetups that we facilitate. So if you're a startup and you have uh a startup ticket or or other kinds of startup engagement packages that we have, we include one-on-one meetings with a certain number of investors as part of our Venture Connect program. So, again, it's just quite pragmatic in things we all did in the past, but I think it's a really easy win again. Um, so there are multiple ways that that we can do that. Uh, we also kind of for our higher level sort of corporate C levels and whatnot, we give them the chance to kind of cherry-pick startups that they want to engage with because they have full visibility on who's in attendance prior to the event. And so you just to have that kind of singular database and be able to select or search people by certain criteria is you know, it's just it just makes things super

NestX And AI For Climate Action

SPEAKER_03 24:40

easy. And the other thing to mention, you know, the we met at HumaneX or through HumaneX, and um we uh have done a partnership with this is that as the path of least resistance to engage a meaningful sort of cross-section of the AI community, including startups. So we have a portion of the NES campus that's dedicated to bringing in AI and technology. Um, again, I know that it happens at Climate Week a little bit here, a little bit there, and in these smaller events, which is great, and and uh there's certainly that's necessary, but we're kind of casting a wider net and we're bringing in um through our relationship with Human X and their ecosystem, we're we're bringing in thought leaders to speak on stage and also uh startups and innovators to kind of share their solutions and meet investors. So that is a great partnership for us because we don't have to start from scratch building a database of like AI-led startups that are kind of making waves, helping expedite progress across the climate resilience communities. We we have this um this amazing touch point through HumanX. And so we'll be leveraging that and have been leveraging that over the over the coming weeks.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Yeah, we saw at HumanX that you guys made that announcement of that collaboration, I believe, named Nestx. And I was wondering if you could share what are some of the more exciting AI startups that you've seen that you think have the potential to really shape creating a more sustainable future that are coming to your event.

SPEAKER_03 26:10

Well, we've just started the curation process for Nestex, so we'll have more to announce on that in a couple of weeks. Uh we've just, you know, we have to build a team from the ground up three months ago, so now we have 11 people and we're like, I think we're good. But um that's uh that's starting next week. But I mean, there are so many AI-driven startups that are kind of very exciting and have me excited about and even at a corporate level, like you know, or and at an NGO level, like I love climate trace and that kind of you know, making pollution and accountable and having that like a transparency, like the days of hiding behind kind of dodgy numbers is are kind of over. Wow, you know, that's a it's an absolute game changer. Uh I I love anything that's in the space of kind of grid orchestration and optimization. I you know, I just I think that that's a game changer as well. Um there are so many, and even kind of because we spoke about the Sylvie Earl documentary, and you know, I'm an ocean person, surfboards and a diver and everything, that's kind of what got me into it initially. And I I love so Oceana had uh a spin-out that was called Global Fishing Net. You guys ever heard of that? And they use kind of satellite technology to map sort of uh commercial fishing vessels or fishing vessels that are that shouldn't be in certain marine protected areas, and they can almost get ahead of it. So there's this kind of now there's this predictive rather than reactive capacity where we have this these enormous data sets that would take people forever to analyze, let alone to react to. So you're getting these kind of real-world, uh, real-time, enormous kind of cross-sectionate data sets, reaction points. And you know, that's exciting, you know, and that that's not to replace all the great work that conservation bodies do, it's just to make it better, you know, so they can keep doing what they're doing and do what they do well. Uh, and you know, there's there's similar AI tools for um monitoring deforestation that I love um because it's just so tangible and evident, and you know, there are uh the AI and the satellite technology will will pick up signals that deforestation is about to happen. Like if there was a road there or that there's some kind of road there today, but it wasn't there yesterday, then you know let's let's get in there, assuming you have the resources, which is another question, to kind of to stop that from happening. So I think we're at the relative infancy of those kinds of tools and that kind of mass adoption for those kinds of projects. But again, like bringing people from foundations and NGOs and maybe big private sector, sort of big enterprise organizations and government that maybe don't have the opportunity to touch those innovators uh uh on a kind of regular basis or in a meaningful way. We want to bring that all into one so that you know you're you've got people kind of uh fleshing out the problems and and really need needing some outside in or outside help for innovation. And we're just making sure that we have people that represent those uh those solutions.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Yeah, as you probably know, we are both also ocean people at heart. That's like my background and the experience I've had for the past decade. And I've always told people when talking about AI and sustainability and ocean management, we've had for the last decade a wealth of data. And now I feel like finally with AI, we have the tool to analyze that data at the same scale that we weren't able to before. So, like some of those like AI uses that you mentioned, tracking illegal fishing vessels. I know Global Fishing Watch is at the forefront of that. Those are really exciting areas for

Fusion Energy And The AI Power Problem

SPEAKER_02 29:56

me. I'm also really excited about renewable energy. I saw you mentioned um fusion as one of the topics that I think people are going to talk about at Nest Campus. I'm just curious if there's any expansion you could add on like people working in that area, people you're excited to bring together, advances you see in that space.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

Yeah, well, we have the CEO of Marvel Fusion uh who's coming, and uh Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, uh former CEO and founder of Twilio, that now has a fusion project called Inertia. And uh, you know, their billion-dollar companies are close to, and so you know, supposedly we're like three years out from Fusion being commercially viable kind of clean energy source. If that's true, that's really exciting, you know. And of course, now, you know, the elephants in the room around AI is the massive energy requirement that the data centers are generating, and so now you're getting big tech and all the resources and all their money, putting a lot of money in behind startups like this and into nuclear fusion and and big, scalable, clean uh energy sources. So, you know, I I'm excited to see where that goes. You know, I I I know both of those guys well, and and there's a there's other others out there as well. So it's it's quite encouraging that it's a competitive space and that everyone's kind of talking about it. So yeah, I'm super excited about that. And it's great to have people like that, especially as we're trying to address the energy issue, which is great, uh, that AI is generating. You know, we're celebrating the wins and all the solutions that are coming out of AI, and we should be making those work for us as kind of the climate and resilience community. You know, we can't wait till they solve the problems, like the social and environmental problems, till we start kind of using it to make it work for us. But those things need to happen at the same time. And so we want to make sure, just as conveners, we just want to make sure that we have the right people in the room to address those big issues and to have those difficult conversations and to answer questions. And so we're not coming at this from like an AI silver bullet, um, you know, it's gonna fix everything standpoint, you know, far from it. We we definitely see the wins and we want to share them and celebrate them and make sure that it's working for the climate community, but we also want to talk about how are we going to solve these big social and environmental issues that are, you know, they're they're certainly top of mind.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

The focus on solutioning is of course front and center for all the people and all you're bringing together and all the topics that you are putting forward to them.

Making Big Events More Sustainable

SPEAKER_00 32:32

That being said, uh, even the the act of running a conference in itself is is not the easiest, particularly if you're trying to do so sustainably. You mentioned that you used the Olympics as a blueprint for greening part of what you were doing at Web Summit. So I was wondering how some of that gets factored into uh the the uh nest coming coming up.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Yeah, we're really lucky. The Javit Center in New York is really sustainable uh as far as giant conference venues go. You know, they have just one example, which is kind of anecdotal, but it kind of tells the story. They have uh a huge roof garden, they do like a roof-to-table uh restaurant, so they grow it all organically on the roof, and and so like that's just one that's kind of like the poster child of everything they do. But if you draw through everything that they do in terms of waste and energy, they're one of the best. So that makes our job a lot easier. Um, you know, where we take that stuff very seriously. And having been through the transition from an event that didn't really think about the sustainability much, you know, to one that you know won a kind of a an award, which became that like external validation point, we're like, oh wow, I think we actually did a good job here. But it wasn't it wasn't easy. Like, like I was saying before, there's so many so many organizations involved at a an event of that scale, and trying to communicate the importance and best practice to them all, and to the point where they actually follow through with it is um is hard. You know, I remember I remember uh we had obviously a no single-use plastic policy on site and one of our events, and I remember overnight under the cover of darkness, uh uh one of the catering companies brought in 70,000 plastic water bottles. And I showed up super early the next morning and I saw them at like where and I kind of like followed the trail, you know, followed the crumbs, and I had to go around, like manually go around, and yeah, that was uh very stressful. But you know, just to just to make the point that as the the organizer you you do your best and you know you you assume that people will act uh in good faith, and for the most part they do, and that was several years ago and things are different now. Uh but the Jabit Center make it much easier for us. They're they have their own suppliers, their North Star is sustainability above all else. So we're very lucky with that.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

That's really great to hear that there that's kind of becoming the standard practice because you know, in the bit science of behavior change, if you really want to see a change, you need to make it the easiest decision possible for people. So I'm glad to see like places that host some of the largest events are making sustainability. I mean, it would be hypocritical to not. Um but looking forward, our podcast is called The Optimus Circuit. We always like to ask our guests what makes you optimistic about the future? You're putting on this incredible event, we're in this crazy AI era while also having to innovate in sustainability.

Optimism Signals And Defining Success

SPEAKER_02 35:42

So, what are some stories or reasons why you're optimistic about the future?

SPEAKER_03 35:47

I am optimistic about the future. I mean, what's happening in the Middle East, it sounds strange that that would be a source of optimism and it's not. You have to be careful on the framing. But the the indirect consequence of what's happening there has shone a light on the vulnerability of our energy system as is, and these bottlenecks that we have around the world and these dependencies that we have on on kind of foreign sources of energy. And so you're seeing, I mean, it won't happen straight away because everyone's freaking out, and you know, they have to pump money into the system to stabilize things because whether we like it or not, we're in this kind of um fossil fuel infrastructure system for to a large part. But the long, you know, it it really the writing is in the wall that fossil fuel subsidies are a bad use of capital, right? They're gonna be stranded assets, and so I think that you know, you saw kind of when there was that impressive kind of um movie style extraction from Venezuela, and then uh there was like the okay, come on, uh sort of giant American uh oil and gas companies, come on in, you know, spend billions and putting on infrastructure into Venezuela to extract our oil, and there are even like ones like Exxon are like uh yeah, I'm okay, I'm I'm good, because they're like, no thanks, that's like that, and that was very telling, you know. And then earlier this year, there was there was big oil executives were shedding their shares, you know, wow, that's a signal from coming inside the house that all is not well, and so there couldn't be a stronger signal that it's only a matter of time, it's not a sort of if but a when that fossil fuels are being phased out, and the fact that the people on in the inside the house are recognizing that themselves, so you have access to all the data and have all of the means to generate enormous wealth from it if they're going well or shedding their stock. That's I think that once that starts to snowball, we're going to see uh like a hockey stick trajectory towards renewable investment, domestic secure um energy. And so I'm I'm sad that it's taken the war in Ukraine and to a larger degree the the war in the Middle East for us to get to that realization point. But nevertheless, you know, we've I think it's uh it's a strong indicator that we're going to go the right way. And I would assume that the speed is just going to keep ratcheting up.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Those are two of the most disheartening um developments right now. A lot of people are talking about how they're drawing, they're they're pulling focus from sustainability, they're pulling focus from a decade of action. Um but absolutely right, uh never waste a good crisis, so to speak. And so we mustn't shy away from um from really uh making the most of these circumstances at the moment. I also want to bring it home and think about what makes you optimistic um with regard to the event coming up in September. And so looking at the Nest uh campus, the Nest X, what are some of the outcomes that you look forward to that you would hope to be the impact thereof? Like what would be something that happens coming out of that that you makes you think we did our, we we did the job right, we did the job well, this is success.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

We're in a pretty short runway to the event for in like in in event terms, we're like, we're just let's do it and let's do it well, and you know, and then we'll sow the seeds of what we hope to scale up for 2027, and then we have a full year's runway for that. So for this year, those seeds that we're sowing are really bringing a meaningful cross-section of AI thinkers, leaders, and solution providers in and innovators on the non-AI side, you know, uh into Climate Week at scale and creating uh an engagement point for uh with the resilience and kind of climate economy where they can explore real-world implementation of their solutions. And so really just to become the the kind of the known place at Climate Week New York, which as you said is the biggest climate gathering in the calendar year, to for us to be the kind of innovation center and known for that of um of Climate Week and the place where people can come and find each other and not just get kind of lost in the sea of everything else going on. I think if we come out of that with a reputation for a kind of a cohesive group that and a seamless place to find and connect with people that are relevant to kind of progress your business, your your solutions, your resilience and climate solutions, that would be uh a real win for us. And there are lots of ways that we'll do that, but in kind of like in high-level terms, um, if we come out with that tag and to be known for that this year, and then to double down on and really kind of put some teeth on it for the years going forward, that would be um that will be the best part.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Well, thank you so much for this incredible conversation. I really liked your perspective on you know what makes you optimistic about the future. A lot of people that I ask about that just talk about the future generation. And I feel like that just puts so much pressure on younger people when we are the decision makers in the room right now, and we are the ones who can make change right now. So I I really appreciate your answer for that. Um, and I know I'm excited about the Nest Campus and Nestx events. Just from my experience at Human X, I feel I will certainly make relevant connections that will benefit long into the

Where To Follow Nest Campus

SPEAKER_02 41:38

future. Um, so if people want to learn more about what you're doing, where can they find more information?

SPEAKER_03 41:44

Sure, yeah, our website, uh nestcampus.com. Uh you can go on there, you can follow us on LinkedIn, uh the Nest Campus. And uh yeah, we're our announcements are coming thick and fast now for kind of speakers and sponsors and uh different programs that we have. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Awesome. Thank you for this really energizing conversation. We look forward to the many uh conversations that that uh you end up bringing to fruition in September. And uh thank you for joining us on the Optimist Circuit.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

Thank you very much. Yeah, super fun. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe to the Optimist Circuit on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

And let's keep the conversation going. Follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram at the Optimist Circuit for more insights and inspiration.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Until next time, stay optimistic, stay curious, and stay inspired.