★ Aspen Ideas Festival

01Why it matters

Aspen occupies the American middle ground between a policy conference and a cultural festival: less transactional than Davos or Beverly Hills, more substantive than a corporate summit. Its influence is on the terms of public argument rather than on deals.

02The week around it

Late June is Aspen's summer opening, and the festival shares it with the start of the music festival's season and, a week earlier, the Food & Wine Classic. The campus closes to parking and free shuttles run from the downtown hotels.

03When to arrive

Arrive the day before whichever half you have bought; the opening morning starts early and altitude adjustment is real at 2,400 metres.

04Where to stay

Downtown Aspen, in the grid around Mill and Galena Streets, is where the shuttles run from and where most attendees stay, with the Hotel Jerome and the Little Nell as landmarks.

05Access and hospitality

Passes are sold by the Aspen Institute through its own site, one per festival half, with a patron tier for both. The Institute publishes no pass price and none is quoted here.

06Where the social activity happens

The campus itself, and specifically the lawns and coffee stations between sessions, is where the week's conversation happens.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

The Aspen Institute grew out of the 1949 Goethe Bicentennial Convocation, an event conceived by the Chicago industrialist Walter Paepcke that also gave the town its music festival and much of its postwar identity.

10Who is there

Foundation and non-profit leaders, university faculty, journalists and editors, public officials, physicians and public-health figures, technology and finance executives attending personally, Institute fellows and donors, and the festival's scholar cohorts.