OODAcon 2026 is for the people who’d rather get to the future first.

John Boyd is best remembered for the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, a brilliant way to approach any competitive situation. But Boyd didn’t just want you to run the loop. He wanted you to run it at a faster tempo than your competitor, rapidly improving and changing what you do faster than competitors can adjust, until every decision they make is based on a picture that’s already out of date.

That’s what a disruptor is. There are disruptors in government today that must operate inside the decision loops of dynamic and very capable adversaries. They need access to the great builders who can enable their missions. The greatest of these builders are also disruptors, fielding differentiated mission enabling technologies at a rate their competitors cannot match. Both builders and buyers have competitors and both need to operate their OODA Loop with a tempo that leads success.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as we build OODAcon 2026. Every technology we track is accelerating at breakneck speed. AI agents can now transact on your behalf. Biology is becoming programmable. Quantum is moving out of the lab and into mission planning and budget lines. Robotics and automation are transforming manufacturing, supply chains and transportation. The space economy is heating up. Defense tech is causing a revolution in military affairs. When everything moves this fast, some organizations drop into a reactive crouch. They wait for the future to show up, then scramble.

Winners don’t. Winners see the shift early, act on it, and compound the advantage until the people chasing them can’t close the gap. We call that escape velocity, and it’s our theme this year. Those are the people we want in the room on November 4.

What OODAcon is, and isn’t

It’s one day at the Hyatt Regency Reston, capped at about 300 people. We keep it small on purpose. We craft topics that builders and enterprises both will need to master to drive success in the coming year (more on those below), and hand select people to address them we know can bring insights that will accelerate your OODA tempo.

Roughly half the seats go to government and military attendees. If you’re building something, that matters, half the room is the people who field, fund, and regulate technology, and they’re there as peers seeking insights. The conversations in the event reflect that.

Sponsors make the event possible, and we are very grateful to every one of them. These are unique sponsors. They allow us to execute this event even though they realize they cannot shape the agenda. OODA drives the agenda, with a lot of input from the OODA Network: a community of business leaders, security professionals, analysts, and founders who orient on reality all year and then debate and argue with us about what matters most.

What you’ll hear

Justin Fanelli, CTO of the Department of the Navy, opens the day. Pedro Allende, DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology, closes it.

In between, Brett Winton, Chief Futurist at ARK Invest, lays out where he’s placing bets on AI, robotics, and energy. He then joins Angela Dalton and Ajay Patel on a problem every builder working with agents is about to hit: proving there’s a real human behind a transaction when software can act on its own.

Michael Koeris of DARPA, Precigenetics CEO Parmita Mishra, and xenobots co-creator Josh Bongard dig into where AI-enabled biotech is actually heading. I’m moderating a quantum session with Lisa Porter, former DoD Assistant Secretary for Research and Engineering and former IARPA Director, and Lisa Costa, former CTO of the U.S. Space Force. We’re skipping the qubit counts and talking about what quantum means for missions and money. Johnny Sawyer, former DIA Chief of Staff, gives the threat brief over lunch. Ken Huang, Susanna Cox and I take on what it takes to defend an organization when adversaries run AI at a tempo no human team can match.

That’s about half the agenda. The rest is at oodacon.com.

None of these sessions are about what already happened. Each one is built around an issue that will drive real decisions in the coming year.

Why builders should be there

If you’re a founder, an engineer, an investor, or an operator, OODAcon gives you something hard to find. You get a day with people who will tell you what the mission actually needs, where the threats are coming from, and where policy and money are heading next year. That’s orientation. What you build with it is up to you.

Here’s how we think about it:

Most people meet the future when it arrives. We’d rather meet it early.

The OODA Network is for people who orient on reality continuously: what’s changing, what it means, and what to do about it before everyone else figures it out. Orientation without action is just commentary. We orient so we can move out.

OODAcon is where that community gets in a room with the builders, operators, and officials shaping what comes next. Not to watch disruption happen. To be part of causing it.

Getting in

Tickets are $395, and OODA Network members get half off. Registered attendees and speakers are invited to a reception the evening of November 3, hosted by Carahsoft. If you want a second day, ChinaCon runs November 5 at the same venue, and bundled tickets are available.

Register at oodacon.com

One more ask. If you know someone who’s building something that should exist, and who’d rather cause the next disruption than read about it, send them this. That’s who the room is for.