How Does Cecily Sommers Know What You'll Be Doing Next?

Push, the Brand

Sommers calls Push an “unconference.” To explain, she opens the April issue of Fast Company, one of the event’s sponsors. On page 15, a full-page ad for Push: an illustration of a futuristic cityscape; a hunky superhero-executive poised for action, laser gun at his hip; the imperative to “Be here. Or disappear.” On page 33, a full-page ad for a product-innovation conference: a tidy row of head shots of the suited execs who will speak and a description of what they’ll cover.

There will be no executives speaking at Push, with the possible exception of Richard Branson. (He’s invited and in late March, she was waiting to see if he’d commit). He qualifies because “he’s a maverick,” helping to create a whole new industry with the billions he’s put up for green-energy technologies. “So, you know, the audacity, the risk taking, the vision. I love this guy,” Sommers says. “He’s all things Push, really.” Otherwise, no business speakers because business is an interpreter of change, not a raw source of it, she says: “That’s who’s in the audience, but we want to take people outside of what they already know.”

So in the energy session, Branson might be joined by a researcher from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory or the chief economist from the International Energy Agency. In the media session, Mark Seddon, United Nations correspondent for Al Jazeera English, will be a presenter, possibly joined by Jessica Mayberry, founder of Video Volunteers, a nonprofit that has trained and equipped people in marginalized populations worldwide to produce their own video news magazines. Sommers wants to get someone from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, to talk about putting cultural cues into “serious games” like the Tactical Iraqi digital simulation that the military uses for teaching how to communicate with Iraqi citizens. (Technologies developed for the military often trickle down to the private sector, she notes.) Other confirmed speakers include Grzegorz Kolodko, a former minister of finance for Poland, and Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and president of the nonprofit National Institute for Play, which promotes the mental-health and social and work benefits of play.

That kind of mix made last year’s Push conference “one of the most important experiences I’ve had intellectually in a long time,” says K. C. Foley, executive vice president of human resources for ad agency Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis. Sommers is “just able to nail the convergence that’s going on in terms of big ideas,” critical knowledge for Campbell Mithun as it builds its work force.

But Push is Sommers’s brand, and she’s crafted an experience of it that appeals to the senses—physical and emotional—not just the intellect. Part of it is that “there are no walls between the presenters and the attendees” at Push, Ecolab’s Wallace says. “I’ll never forget the time that at our lobster boil [held in a park for the 2005 conference], I found myself across the table from the former prime minister of Estonia,” one of that year’s speakers, Mart Lahr. He had a plastic lobster bib on like everyone else, and they were all eating lobster with their hands and “laughing about world economics,” she recalls.

And then there’s art. Sommers wants Push to be a “visceral experience,” and intersperses performers with the speakers: the local James Sewell Ballet; Desdamona, a “spoken-word warrior” and performance artist.

“I just heard someone say . . . and I love this, that every time that happens, they are able to listen deeper to the next speaker,” Sommers says. “And then we have impact, and then we have people who leave saying, ‘I own this inspiration, this motivation, this vision, this connection, this partnership, this thing that I’ve got to do.’”

The Futurist’s Future

What better affirmation could there be for anyone creating a brand experience than people who want to keep having it? Since last summer, there’s been a monthly Push breakfast—10 or 15 past attendees at the French Meadow restaurant in south Minneapolis—hosted not by Sommers but by Bart Gottschalk, a Web software developer for Minneapolis technology consulting firm ArcStone. The flow of ideas at Push was “different than I’ve ever experienced,” he says. “I didn’t want to have to wait a whole ’nother 12 months to tap back into it.”

Sommers believes Push has “hit the mark,” breaking even financially for the first time last year and starting to achieve national recognition. So it’s time to grow the enterprise, not by expanding the conference beyond the Walker’s capacity of 340 registrants, but by creating new ways for people to have the Push experience.

The Consumer Insights division of General Mills, which has sent a growing number of its people to Push, is considering a one-year curriculum that Sommers would develop for its employees. She’d like to create a five-weekend-a-year, two-year version with global field trips that she could offer to other clients. Meanwhile, Fast Company has asked her to become a part of its own executive education offerings.

Sommers also hopes to present Push on DVDs, in Webcasts, on radio and television, and in “Push Games”—virtual simulations based on conference themes, “so you could go back and play with some of those scenarios.” Her most ambitious idea is a multimedia Web-enabled Global Dinner Party that would put Push themes on the table for discussion everywhere.

The ideas are there and now “its all about the money,” she says. Sommers held her first Push Institute fundraiser in April; she’s also talking with prospective underwriters. If she can sell the Push brand to them, she’ll keep framing big questions for discussion, and bring a lot more people into the conversation.