KentPresents: The birth of a Big Idea

KENT, Conn. — The first KentPresents idea forum will be held in just a few weeks,  from Aug. 13 to 15. Despite the magnitude of the undertaking, and the fast pace at which time moves, organizer Ben Rosen is oddly calm. 

In a way, he shouldn’t be. He and his wife, Donna Rosen, have convinced 60 extremely high-profile presenters to come to little old Kent to talk about the most important ideas and trends that are shaping our world. 

And the tickets to KentPresents are selling for a hefty $1,950, so the stakes are fairly high. Of the 300 tickets that are available, Rosen said 90 percent have already been sold. One proof of how well they’re selling: The tickets were originally offered at $1,750 but they were going so quickly, Rosen said, “that we felt we could raise the price.”

That’s good, since the profits from this world-class jamboree of ideas and ideals will be donated to small local charities here in town and the region (a committee led by Ken Cooper is deciding who will get what funds, after the event). 

When asked how things are going, Rosen laughs quietly, like the captain of a large ship that is making its stately way into turbulent waters. And then he kind of shrugs. One gets the sense that this is not his first rodeo. 

And in fact it isn’t. A former venture capitalist, he is chairman emeritus of Compaq Computer. He is active on many of the most upscale boards in New York City. And perhaps of greatest importance, he created the Semiconductor Industry Forum and Personal Computer Forum in the 1970s, back in the days before you could send email invitations to everyone on your guest list. So, in a sense, this is easy. 

Besides, from his point of view, in a way, nothing can go wrong. He and his wife, and a large and impressively fancy and well-credentialed board of directors, have booked the Kent School for three days of conferences. They have commitments from these 60 Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize and Tony and Emmy award winners and MacArthur Grant recipients and famous writers and famous curators and people who are finding the cure for cancer. They’ve booked 210 rooms at local hotels, bed and breakfasts and Airbnb-type places, so ticketholders and presenters all have a place to stay.

As of last week they hadn’t locked in the catering company for some of the weekend’s meals but, hey, does anyone ever have trouble finding good food in the town of Kent? Not really. 

Worst case, 60 really amazing people will show up and just talk among themselves. Maybe together they will actually figure out a way to make the world a better place, and a more attractive one to boot (the arts are an important element of KentPresents, in part because Donna Rosen is an arts person and a former gallery owner). 

Best case, the weather will be perfect, the caterer will deliver the lunches and dinners on time, everyone will show up and be able to figure out the fairly complicated schedule and an East Coast version of the prestigious Aspen Institute programs will be born — and will be repeated annually for years to come, with the proceeds benefiting worthy local charities and organizations. 

During a casual interview at the J.P. Gifford coffee shop in Kent last week, Rosen said that the Aspen Institute is the model for KentPresents, but only loosely. In fact, he and his wife were inspired to create KentPresents when a friend called last summer and told them, with great enthusiasm, about what a wonderful and inspiring time he’d had at that summer’s Aspen program.

“We were looking for something we could do for the community,”Rosen said. He and Donna had bought a home here 13 years ago, shortly after their nuptials. Rosen had just given up playing golf last year. 

“Do you play golf?” he asked rhetorically. “When you give it up, you suddenly find that you have a lot more free time.”

They began calling influential friends and inviting them to be on the board, then they persuaded those friends to call their own friends. 

“We started with the low-hanging fruit, friends we thought could not say ‘no,’” said Rosen, whose sense of humor is so dry it crackles. 

The board of advisers includes area residents such as Jasper Johns, Agnes Gund, Ann Bass and Henry Kissinger (who is also one of the presenters).

On each of the three days, there will be multiple seminars and panel discussions held in three lecture halls at the private boarding school in the center of town. It wasn’t quite clear yet how those seminars would be divided up or who would speak when, and Rosen hadn’t locked in the moderators for those sessions yet but, whatever.

“We’re making everything up as we go along,” he confided. He seemed OK with that, and he has a way about him that makes it seem like, if he says it’s OK,then it’s actually OK. 

Rosen clearly is a great persuader. After all, he’s convinced people who are very much in demand to set aside three days in August to come to Kent and talk about the future. 

“Everyone is donating their time and doing this pro bono,” he said. “They’re all coming to an event that has never happened before in a place most them have never heard of before and they’ve been invited by a person that many of them have never met.”

Part of the attraction, he believes, is the town itself. And one of his goals with KentPresents is to boost tourism, “to get people to discover Litchfield County, to come back here and spend money here.”

The website promises that, “Before and after KentPresents, you can explore galleries and museums, fishing and kayaking, covered bridges and waterfalls, golfing and tennis, antiquing and shopping, and farm-to-table restaurants.”

For Kent residents who want to participate in the weekend but can’t pay the hefty admission price, volunteers are welcome for a variety of jobs, including being the personal “minders” for the presenters. To sign up, and to find out who those presenters are, go online to www. kentpresents.org.

And for those who do not want to participate, Kent’s fire and ambulance volunteers will be on hand throughout the weekend to ensure that traffic doesn’t get too snarled up.