The anti-conference: Why stepping outside beats a conference hall

There's a particular kind of business event that most of us have sat through at some point. The kind where everyone's wearing their best professional face, armed with elevator pitches and LinkedIn-ready smiles.

You've got the panel on scaling, the fireside chat that's not really a chat, the networking drinks with the same polite questions asked on loop. It's not that these spaces are useless. They're just...limited.

I started Ideas Fest because I wanted more than that and I suspected I wasn't the only one.

A space where people can be people

I'm an entrepreneur through and through. I love building things. I love a business breakthrough. But I also love festivals. Music. Unfiltered conversations that don't start with "So, what do you do?"

I was tired of the performance, the posturing, the sense that you had to present some hyper-polished version of your business in order to be taken seriously.

I wanted to create a space where people could show up as people – gritty, ambitious, occasionally overwhelmed, but always real.

Not everything needs to be wrapped in metrics and metaphors. Founders carry so much. The pressure, the wins, the wild ideas that wake you up at 3am.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing isn't a strategy talk. It's someone saying, "That sounds hard. I've been there too."

We're told to celebrate the highlights. But the most defining parts of the journey often happen in the in-between. The honest bits. The messy pivots. The failures you don't share on stage. I wanted to build a space where those stories weren't hidden, they were welcomed.

So I thought: what if we brought business people together, not in suits but in trainers? Not in conference halls but under the sky? What if the setting matched the spirit of the people in it?

That's where it began.

The power of environment

Something changes when you take business conversations outside. People breathe deeper. They speak more freely.

No-one's boxed into a timeslot or forced to pitch themselves between coffees. There's room to talk like a human being again. And that's where the good stuff starts.

The first time I saw it, properly saw it, was when a CEO sat down cross-legged in the grass next to a scrappy start-up founder and started talking about their biggest team mistake that year.

No ego. No stage. Just two people swapping stories about where they'd messed up and what they'd learned. Ten minutes later they were exchanging WhatsApps and planning a partnership. You couldn't have choreographed it if you tried.

When the environment softens, the armour comes off. You don't need to over-perform or pre-prepare your conversation. You get to show up with curiosity instead of credentials.

It doesn't matter how big your business is or how many followers you've got. Everyone's in the same field, probably a bit sunburnt, maybe slightly hungover, but fully present.

And let's be honest, when you take away the slides and the name-tags and the grey-carpeted exhibition stands, what's left?

You, your story and how you connect with the person next to you. That's the work. That's where so many founders find their next step.

You can't fake presence. And when people feel safe enough to speak plainly, new ideas start to crack open. Not just about the business you're building, but the kind of founder you want to be while building it.

Unplanned moments, unexpected catalysts

Some of the best business moves I've seen didn't come from a keynote or a carefully curated panel.

They started in a glittery cowboy hat at 11pm. Or in a slightly too-honest conversation over loaded fries. Or because someone finally said the thing they'd been too afraid to admit in front of their team.

The real gold often shows up when you're not looking for it. When you've let your shoulders drop. When you've stopped performing the part of "founder" and just started talking like yourself.

I've seen someone completely rewrite their brand story after a one-hour chat in a deckchair. I've watched two people meet in a silent disco and launch a product three months later.

I've overheard the kind of raw, business-defining questions you'd never get in a formal session, whispered during a sunrise yoga class.

These aren't one-offs. They're the byproduct of a space that doesn't force the outcome. A space that trusts that when smart, ambitious, slightly knackered humans are given room to talk and time to think, good things happen.

Too often, we chase structured value. We want the slide deck, the bullet points, the five takeaways. But the real value? It's in the stuff that's hard to capture.

The sentence that sticks in your head for weeks. The offhand comment that reframes your whole hiring plan. The stranger who introduces you to your future co-founder.

We don't need more content. We need more space for conversations that can't be predicted, but stay with you long after the festival glitter washes off.

What happens after

Stepping away from the noise is often the thing that brings you back to what matters most. The real measure of any event or gathering isn't how shiny it looks in photos, it's what stays with you when it's over.

That's what I think about the most. Not the tents or the tacos or the glitter (though yes, those things add to the magic). It's the shift that happens quietly, afterwards. When someone opens their laptop on Monday morning and, instead of diving into their inbox, they pause.

They ask themselves a better question. They follow up with someone they weren't sure they'd hear from again and something surprising comes of it.

Or maybe they finally let go of the idea they thought they should be building, and give real attention to the one that keeps tugging at them from the sidelines.

Not every conversation has to lead to a pitch deck or a partnership. Sometimes it's enough to sit with someone who gets it, someone who's also navigating the mess and the magic of building something from scratch.

That kind of connection isn't always loud, but it sticks. It reminds you you're not doing this alone and maybe that reminder is the most valuable thing of all.

We don't need more neat answers or overly curated takeaways. What we do need are spaces that hold the whole spectrum – the grit, the chaos, the wins, the wobble, the honesty, the silliness, the real stuff.

Places where founders can drop the mask for a bit and speak freely, whether they're celebrating a big milestone or rethinking everything from scratch.

The Ideas Fest field doesn't promise transformation and it doesn't pretend to have the map. But it does something quieter and possibly more important – it helps you change the questions you're asking. And more often than not, that's where the real progress begins.

If you'd like to attend an event like this, come and join us at Ideas Fest. Find out more at https://ideasfest.uk/