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Attendees danced the night away at the Fast Company Innovation Festival’s opening night party.
When Kristin Mooney, senior vice president of events for Inc. and Fast Company, was asked to describe Fast Tracks, part of the Fast Company Innovation Festival program, she likened them to the well-loved children’s book series, “Choose Your Own Adventure.”
Kristin Mooney
“At any given time,” she recently told Convene, a number of tracks, or “spins on field trips” happen simultaneously. “An attendee might be in the West Village doing the bike tour on the Hudson River while another attendee is at the Met, doing a tour of their children’s experiential museum,” she said. The event’s speakers are “really bringing their company’s experience to life.”
Fast Tracks — the more than 60 educational sessions, workshops, and experiences offered at the annual four-day festival in New York City — are a primary draw of the festival. For attendees, it’s the opposite experience of the traditional session hosted in a basic breakout room, where speakers talk at attendees and leave little invitation for conversation or engagement.
Frequently hosted at the offices of innovators, Fast Tracks typically have between 25 and 125 attendees, who typically tour the offices and, more often than not, can engage directly with speakers or in some kind of activity — everything from yoga to hosted dinners and beyond.
Although an impressive lineup of celebrities lead the festival’s main stage keynotes — like Ryan Reynolds, Issa Rae, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and José Andrés at the 10th annual event in September 2024 — some attendees get more out of participating in Fast Tracks.
Longtime festival attendee Laura Kate Whitney, chief experience officer and founder of Charleston, South Carolina–based GOODco, is among them. Whitney recalled past festival experiences where she “got to meet thought leaders from some of the most aspirational brands in my field … on their turf,” she said, listing off Squarespace, Spotify, Le Truc, Van’s, and Milk Makeup.
During a Fast Track hosted by Hedley & Bennett — a culinary lifestyle brand known for making aprons beloved by top chefs — James Beard Award-winning chef Nancy Silverton served them ice cream and an encounter with the founder and CEO Ellen Bennett eventually led to the Charleston Wine + Food Festival, Whitney’s then-employer, forming a near-decade-long partnership with the brand as the official supplier of aprons for the festival’s participating chefs.
Fast Tracks helps bring Fast Company magazine “to life,” Whitney said. They’re “really not an offering you’ll find at other business conferences.”
Pulling It All Together
Chef and humanitarian José Andrés gets comfortable.
The festival relies on the Fast Company editorial team to identify potential brands for its Fast Tracks. If a company fits the bill — those chosen often have an innovative origin story or approach to their business — the editorial team reaches out to gauge their interest in hosting a session.
They are — as Mooney describes — “the experts” at culling through stories and coming up with a wish list of experiences that they think will resonate most with their audience. Often, editors themselves will participate in the sessions as moderators. Companies don’t pay to participate, and the festival doesn’t pay them either, but Mooney said that they see it as “a triple win.”
“It’s a win for Fast Company to be able to pull these events together. It’s a win for the hosts to get the audience and tell their story. And then it’s [a win] for the attendees to get this behind-the-scenes, special … experience.” Some brands have chosen to host successful Fast Track sessions a second or even a third time.
The success of Fast Tracks also relies on a highly functional event app and a team of brand ambassadors, Mooney said. The app is designed to make wayfinding easy for attendees unfamiliar with the city, giving them turn-by-turn directions and estimated commute times via public transit. And the around 30-member brand ambassador team, spread out at various Fast Track locations, serves as on-site support for everything from troubleshooting the app to working with security to corralling name badges. Mooney said organizers have depended on a staffing agency to source and hire ambassadors and then train them “to ensure that they know the brand” and “know what the experience is.”
Main Character Energy
For Whitney, the energy of the city and the buzz from jumping between locations is another main character in the event’s narrative. “[The festival is] not putting you in a room where you’re going to sit for the entire day, like a typical corporate conference,” she said. “It’s on you to get up and get on the subway or catch an Uber or just walk, to really immerse yourself in the city.”
As an event strategist herself, Whitney has been inspired by the festival’s citywide-on-steroids approach to rethink how she designs events for other clients — like Sloss Tech, a tech conference in Birmingham, Alabama, she helps produce every summer. “We’ve started to figure out how to create assets that take people out of the [main stage room] and into the streets,” she said. “That’s where the connections and collisions and culture happen.”
“I really truly feel that the Fast Tracks are what make the Innovation Festival so unique from every other event in New York, in the country, in the world,” Mooney said. “Allowing our attendees to step inside and behind the scenes of some of the most innovative companies in New York is just so special.”
Fashion to Fitness
At the 2024 festival, Fast Tracks took participants all over Manhattan and Brooklyn to such diverse businesses as:
Tony’s Chocolonely — Known for its chocolate bars, this company is working to end exploitation in the chocolate industry. Besides a food truck offering sweet treats, this Fast Track took attendees into the brand’s Canal Street offices for a conversation with the chocolatier’s chief branding officer and members of the design and marketing teams.
Brompton Bikes — City dwellers are used to spotting these high-design foldable bikes whizzing around town. Festival attendees had a chance to do the same during a bike tour of Manhattan followed by a conversation and coffee at the brand’s West Village store.
DVF — Held in the Meatpacking District, this session included a Q&A with designer Diane von Fürstenberg, who shared the history of her iconic fashion designs while partner Archive presented a session on the new DVF ReWrap resale program, an example of how the fashion industry is seeking a higher level of sustainability by making secondhand shopping feel fresh and new.
Pvolve — The company’s chief training officer led attendees through the brand’s signature low-impact, strength-focused workout, followed by a conversation with the CEO, who shared how the startup grew to become the fastest-growing functional fitness brand in North America.
Banking on Events
According to Fast Company’s Kristin Mooney, the Innovation Festival is an important part of its business model — it serves as an effective marketing tool and “strengthens” its overall media brand, she said.
That’s a strategy increasingly being employed by other media brands as well, and it’s paying off. At news website Semafor, live events along with sponsorships account for a half of its revenue, and even legacy brands like TIME are making them a key part of their marketing toolbox. According to Digiday, TIME doubled the number of events it hosted in 2023, and its revenue from events surpassed the $10-million mark the year prior.
“Coming out of the pandemic, each year we’ve seen an increase in interest, demand, ticket, sales, sponsorship,” Mooney said. “Our events,” she added, are “just growing in every direction.”
Jennifer N. Dienst is senior editor at Convene.
On the Web
For more info on the Fast Company Innovation Festival, taking place Sept. 15-18, 2025 in New York City, visit Events.FastCompany.com/InnovationFestival25.