Contact is an annual interdisciplinary conference that brings togethe

to exchange ideas, stimulate new perspectives, and encourage serious, creative speculation about humanity's future. The intent of Contact is to promote the integration of human factors into space research and policy, to explore the intersection of science and art, and to develop ethical approaches to cross-cultural contact. Since its beginnings, the Contact conference has fostered interdisciplinary inquiries into art, literature, exploration and scientific investigation. Contact was conceived by anthropologist Jim Funaro in 1979, and the first formal conference was held in 1983 in

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz ( Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a po ...

. Twenty-six annual events have followed and several held at

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labora ...

. In many previous years, the COTI HI project involved teams of high school students in the creation of scientifically accurate extraterrestrial beings, and in simulated encounters between two such races. Many spin-off organizations have formed, on line, and as far away as Japan. One such organization is the Contact consortium, which is focused on the medium of contact in multi-user

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

s on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Contact has been closely allied with the

SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...

, and its early participants created the hypothetical planet Epona as covered in the Discovery Channel documentary Natural History of an Alien. The 27th Contact conference was held on March 31 - April 2, 2012 at the

and the Domain Hotel, in Sunnyvale, California. Beginning with the 28th conference, held in Mountain View, the organization adopted a biennial schedule. The 29th conference was held on April 1st-3rd, 2016, at the Domain Hotel, California.

External links

Contact Conference homepage

The Epona Project
Conferences in the United States Astrobiology {{astrobiology-stub