Camp Navarro, Mendocino County CA // Oct 15–18, 2026
This is
your people.
The old systems are coming apart — you can feel it. You've been hunting for the door into something that actually works. It's a week in the Mendocino redwoods with the people who walk the walk, and the funders looking for them.
What I saw out there
A whole world is quietly solving the unsolvable.
The polycrisis looks airtight from inside the old systems. It isn't. Last year, in Austin, I walked in as an attendee and stood shoulder to shoulder with people carrying real, working pieces of the answer:
Tap a card for the fix ↓
I can't promise you'll meet those exact people this October — that's my experience, the caliber of what's out there. A lot of it was in the room last year. That's exactly why I'm betting this year's fire is a catalyst.
And here's why you've never heard of any of it: the system was built to solve these problems at the policy layer — up at the table where the language is politics. The people actually doing the work live at the operations layer. They don't speak politics, or they never got invited to the table. It's not a fight and it's not a conspiracy. The table just doesn't have a chair for them. Yet.
What connects all of it
It's not a movement you join. It's a way of seeing.
Living systems. Story of place. You quit asking what's the product and start asking what this place, this flow, this nested whole actually needs. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
And you don't have to have ever called yourself part of this. Some of the most regenerative work on the planet is done by people who'd never use the word — urban public works crews, wildfire managers, insurance underwriters. Seen through workforce development, or a community-scale food hub, it's the same living-systems move. You're probably already doing it. You're just missing the room. Camp Synthesis is our piece of that room — the operations layer, finally given a signal.
Why it has to be together
None of us wins alone.
So let me be specific about what this is: a week in Mendocino County with the people who walk the walk, and the funders looking for exactly those people. The solutions are too scattered to win one at a time — none of them wins alone. Together is how we do this. Put the doers and the funders around one fire for a week, and that's not a metaphor. That's the move, lit.
What we're showing up with
We're not spectating. We're building a camp.
Last year, in Austin, I came as an attendee, and four days rearranged how I see everything. This year is a completely different animal — Austin was a venue; this is a week of actual camping in the Mendocino redwoods. And I'm not just showing up: I'm standing a complete camp up, along with my partner Melissa — owner of Blossoming Lotus Sound — and inviting others to join us.
I'm coming to raise an endowment — to build a makerspace and headquarters in Fort Lupton. And I'm coming to give: the Regenerative Gem, a working understanding of how anyone can stand up their own server for a few bucks a month, and a live deconstruction of Camp Navarro itself as a nested living whole.
Melissa brings her whole practice to the fire — sound baths and yoga, the heart of Blossoming Lotus Sound.
And there's room for you to showcase your own brand — inside Camp Synthesis, or by standing up your own camp. Good people already are: a studio forty-five minutes from my own door is building a camp of their own. Different theories on the money. Same fire.
The fuller story
This is the door. Here are the two rooms behind it.
Everything on this page opens into two deeper reads — the how and the why. Camp Synthesis is where they meet around the fire.
Now it's our turn
Brad Nye already built it.
Now we show up.
Story of place, for real: the vision for the Gathering of the Tribes was Victor Vorski’s — he lit the first one in a forest near Porto, Portugal, in 2024. Five hundred people, fifty organizations, a festival re-invented from the ground up for the regenerative age. Brad Nye, with an extensive background hosting collaborative events, is the one taking the leap of faith — carrying that fire across the ocean to bring the Gathering to the U.S. We’re not bringing it; we’re showing up. Camp Synthesis is one of many camps here to back Brad’s leap of faith in Victor’s vision — a fire we get to help carry, not one we lit.
The deeper cut )’(
Regen World has been at this a while. Brad’s whole practice is connection over conference — “the world doesn’t need another conference; it needs more connection” — the temporary village done right. The Gathering itself grew from the lineage of Burning Man, and Brad’s stood up a Burning Man camp in his own time )’( IYKYK. This is not a first rodeo. It’s a proven host bringing a proven format to new ground — and we get to help carry it.
I'm all in on this one — pledged the camp and the space, bought the tickets, and Melissa and I are flying into San Francisco and driving north to build it. I've put everything I've got into making this camp real. The full week happens if enough of us show up and chip in — so here's how, and it all lives in one place: regenworld.net.
One more thing — and it's the main thing
This isn't a conference. It's a gathering.
Everything real about this is the part that won't fit on a page. It doesn't live in a slide deck or a website — it comes alive in front of a fire, in the long evening talks, when the walk-the-walk people and the funders and the person who never thought they belonged all end up around the same coals after dark. That's the whole difference. You can read about regeneration anywhere. You can only feel the room by being in it. So here's the honest truth: this page can only get you to the door. The fire does the rest.
The invitation
Austin was my leap of faith — a friend called, said five words, and I got on a plane. This is me passing that message on down the line.
Come.