TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

Fortune Magazine returns to Aspen with leaders of the digital world.

There are plenty of reasons to hold Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference (July 22-24) in Aspen: the proximity to Silicon Valley, the invigorating mountain air, and the history (the conference began here in 2001). But chief among these is a simple piece of logic, says Fortune senior editor at large Adam Lashinsky. “We love a location like Aspen, not only because it’s gorgeous in the summertime but because people are much less likely to drop in and drop out,” says Lashinsky, who co-chairs the forum with executive editor Stephanie Mehta. “They’re not going to schedule an afternoon meeting in downtown L.A. or midtown Manhattan.”
In other words, they’re pretty much stranded, which is the whole point. Fortune wants its speakers — who this year include Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller and AOL chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong — in a state of pure, desert-island concentration. (This should come easy to speakers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, executive producers of Lost.) “We’re asking them to come here and think deep thoughts about a number of topics: wireless Internet, hardware, enterprise,” says Lashinsky. “Aspen is very conducive to the type of conference we do, which is people talking to each other instead of being lectured at.”
They’ll have a lot to talk about; on the agenda are topics ranging from “The Dismantling (and Rebirth) of the Web” to “Building Trust and Projecting Authenticity in the Post-Madoff World.” One speaker who’s glad to see this brainstorming return to Aspen: Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, where the event will be held. “Fortune's Brainstorm was one of the first conferences we did in Aspen when I came to the Institute, and now they’re coming back with a much more focused conference on tech,” says Isaacson. “It’s incredibly exciting, because the people running it are the best in the business.” And Isaacson has plenty of questions for them. One example: “What happens to journalism and music in a digital age?” It’s a subject he’d like to see addressed at the conference because, he notes, “the intersection of technology and intellectual property is the most important issue of our time.”