[3] Formerly Senior Editor of Internet and Technology at Fortune magazine, Kirkpatrick was until the end of 2022 the editor-in-chief of Techonomy Media Inc., a tech-focused conference company which he founded in 2011.

Brainstorm attendees during the conference's 5 years included President Bill Clinton (who attended and spoke at the conference three times), Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, Senator John McCain, FBI Director Robert Mueller, ecologists Paul Ehrlich and Amory Lovins, Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and venture capitalist John Doerr.

[7] Kirkpatrick has written profiles of Jack Dorsey and Sean Parker in Vanity Fair, and writes articles about technology and society for Forbes magazine.

[16] Participants at the conferences have included Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Marissa Mayer, Sean Parker, Marc Benioff, and Dan Hesse.

Since 2012 the company has separately held an annual conference in Detroit to address competitiveness, jobs, and the urban future in an age of technology.