About 500 people, ranging from teachers, aerospace designers, environmentalists, Web designers, artists and inventors, are here to attend Pop!Tech, an annual gathering on technology and social change at the Camden Opera House.
Now in its 11th year, the conference initially focused on emerging technologies and their impact on society, Pop!Tech now has a larger scope that examines how science, culture and technology can improve human life.
The theme of this year's three-day conference, "The Human Impact," looks at how humans affect economies, creativity, education, technology and the physical world.
Attendees packed the opera house, digital cameras and laptops ready, to hear diverse presenters, including cognitive scientists and Internet entrepreneurs such as Caleb Chung, the toy designer behind Furby, and Grammy-winning R&B singer John Legend.
The conference goes beyond Camden because all its events are streamed live through PopTech.org to people online.
Josh Spear, who writes about trends in technology, fashion and culture on JoshSpear.com, said he came to Pop!Tech on a friend's recommendation as a way to meet other creative people.
Spear said what makes Pop!Tech exciting is the spreading and exchanging of ideas.
"Equally as good as the speakers are the people who attend the conference," he said. "You can feel confident that anybody you bump shoulders with waiting for something will have something interesting to say."
Philip Lewis, who lives in Rockport in the summer and Houston in the winter, was attending the conference for the first time.
A confessed "old geek," the retired engineer said he was interested in the conversations and emerging technology.
Lewis said he thinks the conference is great for the area and is making a name for Camden.
Unveiled at this year's conference was the Pop!Tech Carbon Initiative, a collaboration with eBay on an e-commerce site that allows people to calculate their carbon footprints and buy offsets, or credits, with environmental agencies that work to reduce carbon emissions.
Andrew Zolli, the curator of Pop!Tech, said its mission is to cultivate thought about changing some of the world's most consequential problems, such as poverty, the environment, health-care disparity and gaps in education.
Zolli said there are many conferences specifically on urban issues, economic issues or the environment, but Pop!Tech brings them all together.
"The way I like to describe Pop!Tech is that it's like if you took the World Economic Forum and a social change conference and Wired magazine and you put them in a blender and you poured them out in the form of a New England town hall meeting," Zolli said.
Tom LeVine, chief executive officer and president of the Pop! Tech Institute, said what makes Pop!Tech unique are the collaborations, new ventures and organizations that spin off of the conference.
LeVine, who is from Rockport, said Camden has proved to be an inspiring place for the conference.
"It's certainly the setting in Maine, you come here and I think people tend to turn off their Blackberrys and turn off their (Palm) Treos, and I think they actually get sucked into it," he said.
Kerry Hadley, manager of the opera house, said it can be logistically challenging to have so many people coming into the 100-year-old venue, especially a group that has significant equipment and technology needs.
Hadley said the conference represents a yearly financial boon to the town, with most of the local inns full and the restaurants brimming with people.
Dave Morrison, the technical director of the opera house, said more than the economic benefit, the conference opens Maine to the rest of the world.
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