On Wednesday, July 8 we gathered with 18 people for the first Long Table dinner. The topic was AI and Education. Big topic! You’ll be relieved to hear that we hammered out all the answers and solved everything 🙂 Just kidding. I don’t know what that would even mean.

We did not solve all the world’s problems, but for a few hours we created the kind of space that feels increasingly rare: real people in deep conversation about things that matter, sharing and listening with care and respect, open to disagreement, with no expectation that anyone would convince, enlist, or change the mind of anyone else.

The goal wasn’t consensus. It was curiosity. Over a delicious meal and drinks.

LightWorks isn't my home, but hosting the evening feels personal. It's the work my colleagues, our board, and I have spent more than a decade building. Inviting people to gather around our shared table felt a little like inviting people into my living room. There is always a bit of vulnerability in that- are these the right napkins?! Is the water cold enough?! Are they noticing that scratch in the paint?

There is also a great deal of joy in sharing a space we've spent years building for exactly this purpose: to gather, to connect, to learn from one another, and to imagine together what a better future might look like.

If I had to summarize our overall vision in one sentence, it would be this: create places where people learn with each other, from each other, and for each other.

The Long Table is an embodiment of this vision. 

One of the things we’re most proud of at LightWorks is our commitment and ability to bring together diverse people. This was again true at this event. Around the table sat people from different professions, generations, nationalities, ethnicities, backgrounds, political viewpoints, and life experiences. The youngest person was 24. The oldest was 90. We had educators, parents, technologists, artists, and community members. Our local diversity—among our greatest strengths—was proudly present in the room.

And despite all those differences, there was remarkable convergence about what matters most.

The evening wasn't a panel or a lecture. Instead, we centered the conversation around two carefully chosen questions and used a two-minute sand timer as a talking piece.

The first question invited people to look inward:

Describe a time when learning felt truly alive. 

Unsurprisingly, not a single person spoke about grades or assignments. Many talked about curiosity. About pursuing something because they cared about it.

They talked about the satisfaction of working through struggle. Many described learning as something that became meaningful in part because it was difficult. 

Several people shared about someone who believed in them: a teacher, a coach, a mentor, a parent. Someone who helped them keep going when they might otherwise have given up.

A few people spoke about beauty, which seemed to really resonate with the group—the experience of being drawn toward something simply because it felt beautiful or meaningful enough to pursue.

Listening to those stories, the contrast with so much of our current conversation about AI was significant.

Much of the current public conversation about artificial intelligence is driven by fear. Some of that fear is manufactured by algorithms that reward outrage. Some of it is entirely justified. AI represents an extraordinary disruption.

But disruptions also create opportunities to ask better questions.

As machines become increasingly capable of memorization, compliance, information retrieval, and routine production, perhaps school no longer needs to organize itself around those abilities. Perhaps this disruption requires us to spend more time cultivating the capacities that make us human.

Our second conversation turned toward that future.

As AI changes what is easy to look up, generate, or outsource, what could education become if we used this moment well? What would you most want to see protected, strengthened, or reclaimed?

The answers echoed what had already emerged around the table: empathy, communication, collaboration, leadership, creativity, judgment, confidence, and the ability to imagine something that doesn't yet exist—and then bring it into being.

People spoke about their fears, but also the importance of AI fluency: helping young people understand these tools, think critically about them, use them wisely, and remain their authors rather than becoming their products.

One of my favorite moments came near the end of the evening when someone observed that meaningful social change has rarely begun with sweeping declarations. More often, it begins around tables like this one—in homes, cafés, community centers, and gathering places where ordinary people wrestle with difficult questions together.

The feedback we've received since the dinner has reinforced that feeling.

Again and again, people wrote about how refreshing it felt simply to have a thoughtful conversation with people they might not otherwise meet. They appreciated the diversity of perspectives. They appreciated the structure that gave everyone a voice. And many commented on how isolating our algorithm-shaped lives have become—and how different it feels to think together with actual human beings.

We don't need to agree about everything.

We do need places where we can practice curiosity  and deepen our understanding through unfamiliar perspectives. 

For one evening, the room became a small reflection of the world we hope to build: curious, generous, diverse, thoughtful, willing to consider difficult questions together. That feels like something worth building.

The Long Table continues every other Wednesday this summer before moving to a monthly gathering this fall. If you have a question you'd love to explore—or someone you think should be around the table—we would love to hear from you.