softwareshouldactually.work presents
THE ISLAND OF MISFIT TOYS
the AI Burning Man
for the contrarian, first-principles transplants of the Bay
A three-day festival for the misfits who came here from somewhere else — the contrarian, first-principles thinkers who got told their idea was hair-brained back home — proving how they use AI to change the world.
Want to come talk, or come listen? One list either way — we sort speakers and seats once the date is locked.
No spam. One email when we lock a date. Then one more when the doors open.
Every misfit toy was rejected for being wrong early.
The train with square wheels. The cowboy who rides an ostrich. The squirt gun that shoots grape jelly. They got shipped to an island because they did not fit the mold — and it turned out the mold was the problem.
This is a festival for the misfit toys of software — and specifically for the ones who transplanted to get here. The contrarians who got gatekept out of the room back home, packed up, and moved to the one place that would water them. For three days, they get the microphone, the 60-inch screen, and a whole forest full of people who also came from somewhere else and lean in instead of laughing. Not one of them was born on third base. Every single one made the trip. Now they're using AI to change the world — and to build the thing nobody back home would let them build.
Software should actually work.
First principles, in case nobody ever taught you the phrase
Most people reason by analogy: they look at how a thing has always been done, copy the shape of it, and tweak the edges. It's fast, it's safe, and it's why most software is just a slightly-worse copy of the last software. Convention all the way down.
First-principles thinking is the opposite move. You throw out how it's "supposed" to work, break the problem down to the handful of things that are actually, fundamentally true — the parts you cannot argue with — and reason back up from there, building only what the truth requires. Aristotle named it. The Bay just calls it Tuesday.
- Take it apart until you hit facts you can't reduce any further — physics, math, human nature, the actual constraint.
- Separate what's true from what's just habit — convention, regulation, "best practice," vibes, the way your boss did it.
- Throw the rest out. All of it. Especially the parts everyone already agrees on.
- Rebuild from the truth up, and follow the logic even when it lands somewhere everyone around you thinks is insane.
Here's the catch, and it's the reason this festival exists: doing that out loud — asking "wait, is that actually true, or is it just what everyone does?" in a room that already agreed on the answer — gets you gatekept almost everywhere on earth. It made you the difficult one, the pain, the kid who wouldn't let it go. Out here, that exact habit is the whole job. It's what the checks get written for. It's why the software finally works.
The misfit manifesto
- Wrong and early look identical until they don't. We book the ones who look wrong.
- The best idea in the room sounds like a bad idea to everyone who isn't paying attention.
- AI is the great equalizer. One misfit with a model can now out-build a department. We're here to prove it, on stage, live.
- Gatekeepers are a bug, not a feature. There is no committee. If your thing is real, you're in.
- Most software does not work. It nags, it spins, it forgets, it lies. The people fixing that never fit in anywhere either. Funny how that goes.
- Leave it weirder than you found it — and leave no trace but the weird.
Who's on the island
Nobody here is a local. Every one of them made the trip from somewhere that had no use for them — and thinks from first principles about what to build now that they're finally somewhere that does.
Solo builders
One person, a laptop, a model, and a thing that shouldn't be possible for a team of one. Now it is.
Manic founders
The last-minute, hair-brained, up-at-4am CEOs whose whole company runs on an idea nobody approved.
The gatekept
Everyone shown the door somewhere else — a hometown, a lab, a boardroom — for being too much. Doors open here.
The uncategorizable
Not quite research, not quite startup, not quite art. The thing that has no box. Bring it.
The details, such as they are
The grounds
There's exactly one rule here, and it is not negotiable.
No business is conducted on these grounds. No pitching, no term sheets, no raising, no quietly sizing up the person across the fire. For three days this is neutral ground — the one place in the Bay where nobody is angling for a piece of you.
You are here for exactly one conversation: how AI is actually going to change the world, and how we build something with it that lasts — long-term, sustainable value for the people who come after us, not a quick extraction wearing a vision's clothes. Come to create. Come to build for humanity, not to take from it.
Anyone who works the room for a deal will be walked, with great courtesy, to the river.
Did you build something so big using AI that people don't believe you?
Come get the mic.
If that's you — and you made the trip to get here — this is your island. Get on the list and we'll come find you.