Food industry professionals, tech entrepreneurs, doctors, designers, and academics all converged November 4-6 in St. Helena for the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone’s re Think Food Annual Leadership Conference, now in its third year. 
The three-day program offered over 20 sessions designed to explore the intersection of food, tech, behavior and design. An impressive roster of speakers made up of professors, tech entrepreneurs, doctors, scientists and innovators tackled such questions as: How do we help consumers and businesses keep up with the pace of innovation in food? Are high tech fixes the best option for current food systems challenges? How do the tensions of fast versus slow affect our food values and experiences, and can we build a new “culinary literacy?
The first day offered a fascinating peek into the future of tech-assisted cooking and robots in the kitchen. Chef Philip Tessier, Silver Bocuse winner at the Bocuse d’Or has created an app with 100 Thomas Keller recipes that is part of his Hestan Cue Guided Cooking System. A sensor-enabled induction burner, sauté pan and chef’s pot connects to any smart device via Bluetooth and allows the user to prepare meals with instruction, videos, and step by step assistance via the app. “We want to walk people through the process—we think this is a way to get people cooking at home again,” says the enthusiastic chef.
Even more futuristic, was the Robotics and Food: Who’s Cooking Now session in which Kevin Brown, co-founder and CEO of Innit says his company’s mission is to “empower people to eat and live better by giving food a voice.”  By connecting ingredients to appliances via Wi-Fi, his team is creating entirely new processes for cooking—including an operating system for the connected kitchen. Three years in the works, and 43 million dollars later, Brown says his program is all about solving consumer questions. “Even cooks might need to revisit their titles—perhaps Chef/Hacker/Scientist will be the cook of the future,” he notes.
Doctor David Katz, Founding Director, Yale Prevention Research Center gave a rousing presentation on day two with his Loving Food that Loves us Back: of Choices, Voices and Elephants in the Room session. With his entertaining and lyrical style, he tackled serious health questions, but offered them up in bite sized phrases and suggested we could master our destinies with our “feet, forks and fingers” referring to smoking, exercising and eating. 
Psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Paul Rozin reminded us that enjoying food is a fundamental pleasure and cautioned us not to forget this universal truth. He went on to recite a cheeky poem he claims to have written with the help of Shakespeare that illustrated his beliefs that context, memory and knowledge or pre-adaptation strongly affects the way we experience food.
A reThink Retail program included a compelling talk by Mike Lee, founder of Studio Industries, a food design and innovation agency. “We need to rethink the grocery store—it needs to be so much more than a box,” says Lee who contends the retail experience of the future needs to allow for an open platform for an exchange of data—so all can synch together.”
Not surprisingly there was plenty of food throughout the weekend. Culinary students prepared items with ingredients provided by sponsors and included such creations as a Whey Brined Salmon, Smoked Labne with Roasted Beets, Chipotle Pork with Avocado and Queso Fresco, Almond Canela Horchata and Miso Butterscotch Twinkies.
Gopi Kishore Byluppala traveled from India to St. Helena for the gathering. The entrepreneur was promoting his start up Feazt, a concept that brings world travellers together to enjoy the region’s cuisine in local’s homes. “Food is the universal social lubricant,” said Bylupa who already has 3500 people connected through his new venture.
Attendees were encouraged to download the conference app and live Q&A’s enabled real time participation. Networking was also facilitated and even the final day of presentations included an interactive session offered by IDEO. Take a Stand: Exploring Tensions in Food provided a forum for debate where participants stood up and joined the conversation.
Finally, the closing keynote titled Engineering Environments: Harnessing Technology to Transform and Impact Food Systems featured speakers from MIT Media Lab and the Weather Company explored multiple environments and how they impact food systems on a macro and micro scale.