About Us


ORD Camp is a two day, invitation-only, gathering of – 350 hand picked attendees. It’s a time to collect together the best minds in the midwest and beyond, to spark new ideas and spread old ideas. People from many different fields, many different walks of life, get together and share, teach, and learn about uniquely interesting topics.


Thirsty For More?

Here’s the Meat.

ORD Camp is an invitation-only unconference in Chicago. The one thing that all invitees have in common is that they are exceptionally passionate about what they do. We hand picked ~350 people that will make the event interactive, provocative, and thought provoking. If you think you should get an invitation, check out our call for attendance.

The purpose of ORD Camp is to bring together a group of interesting people in the Midwest and beyond to create new connections and collaborations. We’ve invited people doing interesting work in fields such as art, education, data visualization, software engineering, mechanical engineering, customer service, usability, cooking, computer security, hardware hacking, juggling, and other emerging fields. In the past attendees have been from companies and organizations including Google, Twitter, Apple, IBM, Rackspace, Threadless, Feedburner, Medium, Groupon, Kraft, Wrigley, Motorola, IDEO, McArthur Foundation, EveryBlock, Modest, GrubHub, Inkling Markets, Sitter City, U of C, UIUC, Northwestern, Inventables, and many more. Our hope is everyone will share their work in progress, show off projects and research, and start new collaborations.

Be Prepared

Get ready to demo or speak.

The attendees at this conference are also the presenters. If you’re invited, you’ve been selected because we think you have something interesting to say or show the other folks at the conference.

The majority of the agenda will be determined by you, the attendees. If you have a talk you’d like to give, just sign up. Talks are meant to be more of a dialogue than a traditional conference–if you’re attending a talk, you’re encouraged to participate–think of it as more of a collaborative brainstorming effort than a one-way presentation.

We’ll Provide The Environment For It All

Space, electricity, wireless network, food, and a wiki.

ORD Camp is about participation. We’ve invited each of you because you do interesting work. At this event, the people are the content. Bring cool demos, cool toys, fun giveaways, musical instruments, interesting talks, and be an active participant by asking questions and challenging other’s ideas.