Ieva is flying in. Milo is flying in from Hive. Chris and Santiago are coming from ITA Global. Joshua, Rachel and Jamie are coming from KETRICS. Everyone else is already here. For once we are all in the same city at the same time, so let's use it.
These days are for the real conversations. The ITA real estate side. What we can actually do for the events in Belize and Panama. Milo's studios in both places, the destination events launching the week after this one, and the four KETRICS workstreams that need owners and dates on them before anyone flies home. The things that never quite land on a video call are the things we are here to finish.
Sunday is different. Sunday we go west. Our guests are in from out of town and I want them to see that side of the world before we put them in a room. Anyone who wants to come along is welcome. Say so in the channel.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the working days. I am taking the lead on the schedule and it will land in the Slack channel as it firms up. This page will follow it.
Joshua, Rachel and Jamie are flying in from KETRICS, an AI native connected wellness platform. Four workstreams sit underneath the memorandum. Workstream One starts on signature, and Two, Three and Four run in parallel with Two gating the physical build. Each one needs a named steward from both sides, a deliverable, and a date. That is the work this week.
KETRICS gets onto the shared communication and documentation platforms, into the ecosystem register, and introduced across the operating companies it should be talking to.
It runs first for a plain reason. Neither side can act on a connection it cannot see, so visibility is the constraint, not the paperwork.
Two steps, and the first has to come before the second. Mycelium defines and models the Phase One requirement and the structures available, the parties agree a structure, and only then does it go to market.
The structuring problem is honest about itself. Investors decide on familiarity as often as on analysis, so the intent is to anchor the raise inside something already understood, the location and hospitality and real estate, and carry the platform and data build inside that cost structure rather than pitching it as a separate technology raise.
Austin is the target, using the Model Kitchen intellectual property already held in the ecosystem and the three entrepreneur launch format in development there, so the first venue can run as a KETRICS kitchen.
TreeBox container and modular formats get assessed against the flagship, the central production kitchen and the pod. Kitchen design work starts immediately using design capability already in house.
The one that can show something soonest, because the capability and the distribution both already exist. Brand strategy, tone of voice and content pillars, then activation through the ecosystem's own media.
Quiet Revolt runs production, studio, social and distribution and holds a fast channel position through GEN TV with Samsung TV Plus, including a twenty four hour food block. There is an upfront in early November, so branded blocks intended for it have to be identified before that date.
There is a longer list of initiatives at Schedule C that both sides support in principle. None of it is live. An initiative moves into active work when the Stewardship Group agrees to activate it and both sides sign an Activation Schedule, and the stated intention is to activate deliberately and in sequence rather than opening more in parallel than either side can deliver.
Everyone in the Calgary channel, plus the three coming in from KETRICS. Gold means you are flying in, which also means you get first pick of the window seat on Sunday. Surnames for the KETRICS three are still to come, so first names stand until Christan sends them.
Hover any pin to see the place. Click for a Google Maps link you can send straight to your phone.
Flights come into YYC through the day. The airport sits on the north edge of the city, roughly twenty five minutes from downtown when the Deerfoot behaves itself.
Home base for the visiting crew is the Residence Inn in the Beltline, a block off the downtown core and walking distance to most of what you would want on a Saturday night.
Stephen Avenue is four blocks north of the hotel and closes to traffic, so it is the easy first walk. Seventeenth Avenue SW is the other direction and is where Calgary actually eats and drinks on a Saturday. Both are covered further down this page.
Arrivals into YYC. Ieva in. Milo in from Hive. Chris De Pew and Santiago Aguilar in from ITA Global. Joshua, Rachel and Jamie in from KETRICS. Post your times in the channel.
Check in at the Residence Inn, Beltline. 610 10 Ave SW. Ten minutes on foot to the core, five to Seventeenth Ave.
Open. Nothing formal on the books. If a group dinner comes together it will come together in the channel.
Christan is taking the out of town guests to Banff so they can see this side of the world before anyone sits down in a boardroom. Open invitation. If you want in, say so in the channel.
He called it this on September 2: "starting with our nice party that we're doing on Sunday, bringing people up to Banff." Whether the party is the mountain day itself or an evening on top of it is the one thing still to pin down.
It is 128 km from downtown Calgary to the Banff townsite, about an hour and a half on the Trans Canada. The prairie runs flat for forty minutes and then the front ranges come up out of nowhere all at once. That moment is worth the drive on its own.
Nothing here is fixed, it is just what works. Leave Calgary early, do the far thing first while the light is good, work your way back toward town, and eat in Banff before you drive home in the dark.
Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, or the Banff townsite loop? Doing both properly in one day is a stretch. Louise and Moraine are another 57 km past Banff and Moraine can only be reached by shuttle. The townsite loop, Minnewanka, the gondola, Bow Falls and the hoodoos is a slower, easier day with more time to actually talk.
Gondola or no gondola? Sulphur Mountain puts you at 2281 m with a boardwalk along the ridge and the whole Bow Valley underneath you. It is the single best hour for a first time visitor. Book online ahead, it uses dynamic pricing and the walk up counters cost more.
Roll out of Calgary. Coffee in the vehicle, cameras charged. The mountains start showing up around Cochrane and do not stop.
The main event. Whichever way the group votes, lakes or townsite loop. Both are laid out in the Banff guide below.
Banff Avenue. Elk in the churchyard, mountains at the end of every street, and the best souvenir shopping anyone is going to get this trip.
Dinner in Banff, then the drive home. Or push a little further and watch the alpenglow off Rundle from Vermilion Lakes first. It costs ten minutes and it is the photo everyone actually keeps.
The first of three working days. Christan is assembling the schedule by focus area and posting it in the Slack channel. Nobody is expected in every room, only the ones that are yours.
Christan confirmed on the morning of September 3 that he is building the schedule now, in his words because "we need one bad." The moment it lands, this page gets it, day by day, with the room and the people. Until then Monday stays deliberately empty rather than guessed at.
Working sessions through the day. In the evening, the APA and ITAG dinner event covering Panama and Belize, six until nine.
Tuesday, September 8, 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. On the calendar as APA and ITAG. Venue to be confirmed by Christan.
Note for anyone at both: the Syntac weekly standup sits at 3:30 pm the same afternoon, so there is a little over two hours between the two.
Still the only thing locked on Tuesday is the six to nine window. Once the venue lands it goes on the map above with a Maps link, same as everything else, and dress code goes here so nobody has to ask twice.
The last working day. Sessions in the morning, and by the afternoon people start heading for the airport. Whatever does not get finished by Wednesday afternoon does not get finished this trip, so the sharp conversations belong earlier in the week.
The week after this one, CROSSFADE launches in New Jersey during New York Fashion Week on September 12. Most of what gets decided here feeds that.
Post your departure in the channel so the airport runs can be shared rather than repeated four times. Ieva, Milo, Chris, Santiago, Joshua, Rachel and Jamie are the ones with planes to catch.
An evening at Christan's house on 11th Street. The part of the week where the laptops close and everyone actually gets to know each other.
The invitation is out but the details have not reached this page yet, and there is now a second question underneath the first. On September 2 Christan described "our nice party that we're doing on Sunday" in the same breath as the Banff run, so either the mountain day is the party or there is an evening at his place on top of it. Both readings are live.
Six things, and every one of them sits with Christan. Nothing on this list has been guessed at anywhere else on the page. The moment an answer comes in it moves out of here and into the day it belongs to.
Sessions by focus area, with times, rooms and who is expected in which one. The single biggest gap on this page. Christan said on the morning of September 3 that he was building it that day.
Christan · promised September 3Tuesday, six to nine, Panama and Belize, on the calendar as APA and ITAG. The window is fixed, the room is not. A dress code line would save six separate messages.
Christan · needed before TuesdayWhich night, what time, the door number, partners or not, and parking. And whether it is a separate evening at all or simply the Sunday in Banff described another way.
Christan · the ambiguity is newJoshua, Rachel and Jamie are on the page as first names because that is all that has been given. Flight times matter too, since Saturday pickups are being shared.
Christan · sent the names September 3Four workstreams arrived on September 3 with named roles but no dates. Schedule B is meant to carry a target date for each, and the memorandum leaves those as blanks. If they get filled in this week, that happens in one of these rooms.
Christan and MyceliumNot Christan's alone, this one is on all of us. Post a flight time in the channel and the airport runs get shared instead of repeated.
Everyone flying outFourteen places worth the drive, roughly nearest to furthest. Nobody does all of them in a day. Pick four and do them properly.
Calgary is already higher than Denver's suburbs. By the time you are on Sulphur Mountain you are more than twice as high as the highest point in most of the countries anyone here flew in from.
Hover a bar for the number. Drink more water than you think you need, go easy on the first night's drinks, and the altitude will leave you alone.
A city of one and a half million that still gets called a cow town, sitting where the prairie stops and the Rockies start. Everything below is within twenty minutes of the hotel.
Nine things that will save someone an awkward moment, a cold morning, or forty dollars.
Calgary runs about 20°C in the afternoon and drops to 6°C overnight. Banff is colder and higher: roughly 17°C by day, 2°C at dawn, and September is the first month it can snow up there. Layers, not a coat.
The Canada Strong Pass ends September 7, so Sunday the sixth costs nothing to enter. From September 8 it is $12.25 per adult per day, so anyone driving out later in the week buys a pass at the highway gate or online.
The road has been closed to private vehicles since 2023. Shuttle from the Lake Louise Park and Ride, roughly twenty five minutes each way. Book ahead or do not go.
Elk wander through the Banff townsite like they own it, and in September the bulls are in rut and genuinely dangerous. Stay 30 m from elk and deer, 100 m from bears. Never get between an animal and its young.
Five percent GST and that is the whole story, the only province in Canada that can say so. Tipping runs 15 to 20 percent in restaurants and bars, and card machines will suggest more than that. You are allowed to press the lower button.
A warm wind comes over the mountains and Calgary can climb 15°C in a few hours in the middle of winter. There is an arch of cloud on the western horizon when it happens. Half the city gets a headache. Less likely in September, but you will hear about it.
Solid in Calgary, solid in Banff and Lake Louise, patchy to nothing on the highway between and gone entirely on the Bow Valley Parkway. Download offline maps before you leave the city.
Airport to downtown 17 km. Downtown to Banff 128 km. Banff to Lake Louise another 57 km. Everything takes longer than the map says once the September traffic is on the Trans Canada.
Sunrise near 7:00 am, sunset near 8:20 pm. The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset are when the mountains turn gold and every photo suddenly works. Plan one of them deliberately.
The three that come up most often in these sessions. Passwords are in the HCE thread, not on this page.
Click a card. There will not be a test, but there will be a moment where someone says one of these and watches your face.
It ticks off and remembers, on this device. Built for a September week that has a boardroom and a mountain in it.