By Emma Walker

The mountains and meadows here in Colorado’s Front Range are home to hundreds of outdoor organizations and brands. They’re also teeming with talented outdoor storytellers of all varieties—writers, photographers, designers, artists, videographers, brand strategists, and beyond. You might not guess the unfortunate reality: outdoor freelancers + marketers at outdoor brands don’t tend to know about each other.

We started Off the Grid in order to bring together amazing people who are driven by a need to be outside and by a creative impulse to share incredible stories. The idea is to get big thinkers into a small mountain town, light the fuse with a 10-minute presentation, and then let the magic happen.

What’s up with the name? To a certain extent, it’s literal. Each event showcases an “Off the Grid” corner of our planet, a place so remote that you may have never heard of it. And since we’re all industry peers, we also explore an “Off the Grid” business theme—some unusual strategy or concept that helps expand how we think about the world.

If you’re interested in learning more about why Bonfire Collective hosts these quarterly gatherings, please watch founder Erik Lambert’s introduction to our inaugural Off the Grid event, hosted in March of 2018. That evening Phil Huffeldt of Wool Hat Creative gave a short presentation on an exciting—but, in nearly every way, unexpected—ski trip to Svalbard, Norway.

Special thanks to Phil for also providing the introduction video you see here. And to Golden, Colorado-based Connects Workspace, which hosted the event and is Bonfire Collective’s headquarters.