Pictured: The audience gets into the act at PINC 2019. Photo courtesy of DreamLarge.

The annual conference known as PINC returns to the Sarasota Opera House this December 7, following a three-year hiatus. And in those three years, the minds behind the PINC experience, in conjunction with All Star Children’s Foundation, have taken the opportunity to tweak the formula a bit, still offering a day of varied and inspiring speakers and presentations, but under a slightly different name—and one that speaks to the conference’s renewed sense of purpose. “PINC was built around community,” says Anand Pallegar, founder of DreamLarge, the organization behind the yearly conference. “And we need to use PINC as a platform for advancing unity in our community.”

Since its arrival in Sarasota in 2014, the annual PINC conference (People, Ideas, Nature, Creativity) has dubbed itself the “most creative day in Sarasota,” bringing an eclectic collection of accomplished artists, athletes, innovators and oddballs to the Opera House stage for a day of education and entertainment. The last conference was held in 2019.

Under its new banner—People, Ideas, Nature, Community—the conference will still be that “creative bubble bath for your brain,” Pallegar assures, and still feature that wide variety of speakers from different disciplines and walks of life, but now he hopes some of that energy and creativity can be more actively harnessed, in at least some small way, towards a common cause that can have local impact. “This year has allowed us to really imagine what a more unified, more connected Sarasota could look like,” he says. “And we saw PINC as an opportunity to bring people back together.”

To that end, PINC 2023 will be the first year that the famously horizontal and unpredictable event has a single unifying theme—overcoming trauma. And so this year’s roster of 12 speakers, while ranging from wheelchair racers and muralists to NASA researchers and philanthropists, will all converge, in their own way, on the central question occupying Pallegar’s mind: “How do we, as a community, move forward together in unity and become more informed about how to identify trauma, react to it, and advance as a community?”

The structure of the day will remain the same as previous conferences with presentations in the morning and afternoon, each followed by opportunities for the audience to engage with the speakers. To encourage this engagement, attendance is capped at 450 seats, maintaining a workable speaker-to-audience ratio. And with the return of auxiliary events such as the accompanying Long Table Dinner, a separate ticketed affair held the day after the conference and attended by the speakers, attendees will have ample chance to meet the speakers in casual conversation.

Tickets are currently on sale for the December 7 event and, in the spirit of community, Pallegar says that any who want to attend but cannot due to financial reasons should reach out to DreamLarge about accommodation. “We want the people who want to be there,” he explains. “That’s what PINC is about, and our community wins when these stories are shared and imbued into the fabric of Sarasota."

Pictured: The audience gets into the act at PINC 2019. Photo courtesy of DreamLarge.

To purchase tickets and to view the speaker list for PINC 2023, click here.