★ Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference

01Why it matters

It is the least visible and most concentrated gathering on this calendar: a few hundred people from American media, technology and finance, five days in a resort valley with no stage, no livestream and no record.

02The week around it

Ketchum and Sun Valley, adjoining towns of a few thousand, absorb the conference without closing. The resort is unavailable and the airfield at Hailey handles a sharp spike in traffic, but the trails, the river and Ketchum's Main Street carry on as a normal Idaho summer.

03When to arrive

Not applicable: the conference cannot be attended.

04Where to stay

The Sun Valley Lodge and Inn are the conference's own accommodation for the week. Visitors otherwise stay in Ketchum, walkable to Main Street, or in Hailey and Bellevue further south, cheaper and closer to the airport.

05Access and hospitality

There is no access. Attendance is by written invitation from Allen & Company, which hosts and pays for the whole conference; there are no passes, sponsors, observer places or press credentials. Journalists cover it from outside the resort, and nothing is published afterwards.

06Where the social activity happens

Everything happens inside the resort. The only publicly visible social geography is Ketchum's Main Street restaurants and the trailheads and river accesses of the Wood River Valley, open to anyone.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

Allen & Company was founded in New York in 1922 and built its practice around media and entertainment. Herbert Allen Jr. convened the first Sun Valley conference in 1983 for the industry the bank served.

10Who is there

Media and entertainment principals, technology founders and chief executives, investment bankers and institutional investors, sports-league and telecommunications executives, and a smaller number of political and philanthropic figures, attending with family.