Contact: Cultures of the Imagniation Conference

CONTACT 2018 is our 30th conference! Come celebrate with a full line-up of speakers on a broad range of topics.

CONTACT has evolved into a premier forum on the future. After 29 years of our multi-disciplinary conferences, CONTACT includes some of the brightest of the new generation at NASA and SETI, scientists hard and soft, and as well as such exotics as anthropologists, philosophers, poets, filmmakers, historians, mathematicians and space lawyers. And the science fiction community (Kim Stanley Robinson plans to join us again this year) always adds a brand of innovative and responsible speculation that has made our conference and organization unique.

Keynote speaker: Nathalie Cabrol, SETI, From Habitability to Life: The Changing Nature of Planetary and Space Exploration

Other speakers include:

• Nora Bateson: The Bateson Legacy: Identity in Complexity
• Penelope Boston: Chasing the Elusive, a Lifetime on the Hunt
• Harry Butowsky: Santa Susana Field Laboratory Apollo History Site
• William Clancey: The Okeanos Explorer: How Robotically Mediated Field Science Beneath the Sea Compares to Roving on Mars
• Jay Cole: Is it Time for a National Historic Park for Radio Astronomy?
• Bruce Damer: The Hot Spring Origin of Life Hypothesis
• Chris Ford: A Future Vision for the Public Astronomical Experience
• Gus Grederick: Hungry Dragons: Waiting for the Moon Shadow
• Jim Funaro: CONTACT, The Big Two-Hearted Conference: The Arts and The Sciences
• Thomas Gangale: The Outer Limits of Space Law
• Joel Hagen: Art and Science, Ghosts Nudging the Mind and Hand
• Howard Heard: The Engineering of Art: Contact with Ourselves and the Things We Make
• Jeroen Lapre: Arthur C. Clarke's Maelstrom II: A Work in Progress & The Coral Reef Dome at the Academy of Science
• Steve McDaniel: CHEAP DEEP WIDE & FAST: Thoroughly Canvasing The Solar System for Earth-Like Microbial Life Within a Human Generation
• Christopher P. McKay: Earth as our Training Ground for the Search for Life Elsewhere
• David Miller: Driving Around The Moon Using Very Poor Video
• David Morrison: A Real Interstellar Visitor
• Gerald Nordley: Are Dyson Spheres Legal?
• Jim Pass: The Astrosociology Research Institute (ARI) Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary
• Douglas Raybeck: The Ubiquity of Reciprocity
• Kim Stanley Robinson: How Science Fiction Works as an Art Form
• Seth Shostak: Great Filters: Why We Don't Have Any Cosmic Company
• Michael Sims: Ceres Robotics, and How Our Effort to Make Cheap Robots for Space Could Change the Nature of Exploration
• Kelly Smith: Exploring 'Extra-Scientific' Issues Surrounding Astrobiology and Space Exploration
• Robert Tyzzer: Metalaw 2018: Current Status in Anthropology and Cultureal Futures
• Michael Waltemathe: Extrapolating Historical Data of Societal and Religious Change toward Space Exploration
• Zac Zimmer: Alien Remediation

See website for full conference schedule and speaker list