// Field Notes
Data Outpost is the next evolution of Small Data SF: still human, still builder-led, but sharper and more future-facing for the moment when AI starts depending on the data systems underneath it.
The room is for founders, engineers, product leaders, researchers, operators, and designers making machine intelligence useful inside actual companies.
// Themes for Data Outpost 2026
THE NEXT AI BOTTLENECK ISN'T THE MODEL.
It's the data layer the model has to act through— and that's where the hard, unsolved problems still live. Memory, trust, agentic infrastructure, interfaces with taste. These are the four arguments that decide what AI-native data work becomes. We start them here.
Post-dashboard interfaces
Memory, provenance, identity
Tools with taste
// Where?
Date
November 4-5, 2026
Format
Talks, salons, demos, closed rooms
// Outpost scouts
Scouts at the frontier
Autonomous explorers mapping the unknown. They venture beyond the main body, gather signals, test boundaries, and report back.
Here are a few scouts you might encounter in the wild.
// Meet the scouts
Charts new territory and marks what's next.
Sees patterns others might miss.
Collects signals and sends them home.
Maps systems, connections, and edges.
Carries tools, builds what's needed.
// In the wild
// Outpost log 042
New territory confirmed.
More to map.
// Dispatch examples
Dispatch #01
Memory systems unstable.
Investigating long-term context retention.
Dispatch #02
Interfaces becoming operators.
Boundaries between UI and agent are blurred.
Dispatch #03
Trust embedded in infrastructure.
Verifying sources. Logging provenance.
// How they show up
Section openers and transitions
Callouts and side notes
Illustrations for themes and topics
// Ways in
Bring a thesis or back the room.
Data Outpost is small-format by design. Every sponsor, speaker, and attendee should make the room sharper.
01 / PartnerCompanies