Speaking Engagements
2025 Technology & Entrepreneurship Summit
Entrepreneurship Keynote
The Technology & Entrepreneurship Summit brings together entrepreneurs, industry professionals, students, and community members to explore the evolving landscape of technology and business. The summit is hosted by the Northern Innovation and Startup Center, in collaboration with the Aberdeen Development Corporation.
Join Kevin Kelley (Wednesday, September 24 at 9:00AM) for his keynote speech on entrepreneurship and his insights on how to design spaces that encourage innovation, relevance, and long-term success.
Learn more and join here!
NRF 2026: Retail's Big Show
Revitalizing Customer Experience with Community-Centric Strategies
Retail success stories are written by companies that are simultaneously crushing it in the now and primed for what's next. NRF 2026 calls it The Next Now.
Join Kevin Kelley and Shannon DeVito, senior director of book strategy and customer experience with Barnes & Noble, for a fireside chat exploring the impact of retail on community and creating store environments that tap into discover, delight, escape, and social bliss.
Learn more and join us here!
Past Speaking Engagements
Gravisite Site Selection Research Conference
The Bonfire Effect: How to Create Stores That Can Survive and Thrive in a Digitally-Dominant Era
We live in a time of digital replacements, where everything we used to do physically in place—shopping for groceries, getting dinner at a restaurant, and going to the movies— can now be achieved virtually online.
So how can place-based entities survive, much less thrive, in an era of digital dominance? By creating Irreplaceable places that have the power to convene people around a quality that Kevin Ervin Kelley calls, The Bonfire Effect.
Through engaging storytelling, human behavior insights, and real-world case studies, Kevin Ervin Kelley—an attention architect and cofounder of Shook Kelley, a strategic design firm that pioneered the field of “convening”—unfolds why physical places are essential to business, community, and civil society.
Join the conversation by registering here.
PCBC 2025
Main Stage Keynote
A convention hallmark, PCBC's keynote sessions feature legendary thinkers and doers in the fields of business, strategy, performance, entertainment, leadership, and motivation.
Join Kevin Kelley (Wednesday, June 11 at 3:00PM) for his keynote speech on behavioral design with insights on how physical environments affect the minds of consumers. He will join a panel discussion with economy expert Christopher Thornberg (Founder, Beacon Economics) and consumer sentiment expert J. Walker Smith (Chief Knowledge Officer, Kantar Consulting) for an illuminating interrelated discussion.
Learn more and join here!
ICSC Las Vegas
Where Art and Science Connect to Create Meaningful Experiences
Join Kevin Kelley on Monday, May 19 at 1:00PM for his talk on "Where Art and Science Connect to Create Meaningful Experiences". Alongside fellow experts Bryan Chandler of The Shopping Center Group and Gregg Katz of Esri, they will engage in robust conversation about why physical place matters in retail and how data is complementing its creation.
ICSC Las Vegas gathers industry experts who drive innovation and evolution in commercial real estate.
Learn more and register here!