By Billy Dolan
"All the right people, all in one place." That's been eSummit's tagline since year one, but seeing my coworkers in person on Monday morning at the Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel, I felt the weight of that tagline differently. After months of work by the entire SERI team to bring this vision to life for a second year in a row, our internal version of 'all the right people' was about to multiply across the entire electronics sustainability community.
That first morning, the hotel was already buzzing. Hallways filled with impromptu meetings over coffee, attendees comparing notes on which sessions to hit, and exhibitors wheeling in displays. A couple of groups departed for facility tours to see real-world operations, while other conference goers mapped out their week or caught up with colleagues.
I was personally looking forward to being on-call support for The Repair Meetup that day, led by Scott Shackelford from Google and Corey Dehmey from SERI, which was a fun, informal, and open dialogue about what's working and what isn't in the electronics industry. Over coffee and snacks, roundtable discussions worked through focused prompts like the hardest components to source, essential tools OEMs could provide, business improvements that would boost efficiency, criteria for repair decisions, and opportunities for the near future. At the end of the session, everyone was eager to continue the conversations and even suggested setting up a Repair Pro Discord server to stay connected after the conference. Send me an invite!
As I left the Repair Meetup, tour groups were returning and excited to share what they'd seen. The industrial scale, the systems these facilities rely on to protect their employees and the planet, and how much more tangible the challenges of "e-waste" become after witnessing operations firsthand.
At the Monday evening reception, sponsored by IRT, the day's momentum continued in a truly one-of-a-kind setting. The brick and stone walls and floor of the old train depot, doors you could literally fit a train through, and chandeliers across high ceilings cast a dim glow throughout the room. It made for an unforgettable atmosphere as people chatted with friends, formed new connections, and enjoyed some extremely good, Minneapolis-sourced-and-inspired food.
TUESDAY: EXPO+ DAY
Tuesday's Expo+ format put the Expo Hall at the center, with exhibitors demonstrating solutions across the electronics lifecycle.
The Innovation Stage ran throughout the day, and I caught most of the sessions, which covered everything from AI-powered diagnostic tools and device unlocking to supply chain traceability and automated component recovery. The stage itself felt perfectly placed in the expo hall, keeping people circulating without leaving the room, and creating connections between those talks and the solutions at the booths. It really felt like an interconnected experience, and something that made eSummit especially unique for me. The robotics and component recovery session was particularly eye-opening, with MOLG and Retronix demonstrating how automated systems can harvest components at scale while maintaining quality that makes them viable for reuse, not just material recovery.
Between Innovation Stage sessions, I had the opportunity to attend one of the invite-only meetings happening throughout the venue. These are the types of strategic sessions that only happen when everyone's gathered in one place. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Enabling Circular Electronics meeting brought together stakeholders from across the electronics lifecycle who rarely share a room otherwise. The group mapped where current systems work and where they fail, and the complexity quickly became clear. Participants discussed how regulations, incentives, and standards all interconnect, with fixes in one area often creating challenges in another.
That afternoon's Repair-Off was one of my week's absolute highlights. Thanks to Google, uBreakiFix, and iFixit for making it all possible, we got to witness what happens when repair becomes performance art. Scott Shackelford from Google and Tripp Grant from uBreakiFix turned the competition into must-see entertainment, keeping the packed audience engaged as technicians raced to disassemble and reassemble devices against the clock. Every competitor brought their A-game, with the crowd completely absorbed in the drama of every dropped screw and successful reassembly. This wasn't just a competition; it was a statement that repair deserves a spotlight, and it gave me a bunch of ideas for future events.
Tuesday evening's Industry Awards celebrated excellence across the electronics lifecycle. The Jim Lynch Hall of Fame Award went to Cassie Gruber from Jabil, recognized for over 11 years of connecting people across the industry and mentoring professionals at every career stage. Dylan Zajac from Computers 4 People received the Rising Star Award, having transformed his teenage passion for bridging the digital divide into systematic change through his organization. These awards highlighted how impact in our industry comes from both seasoned veterans and fresh perspectives willing to challenge conventional approaches.
WEDNESDAY: FAST FORWARD
Wednesday shifted to the main stage in Great Northern. The day explored big-picture thinking, from a look at the next 5-10 years of technology to panels on design trade-offs and supply chain evolution. Corey Dehmey opened by setting a challenge for the industry with SERI's 10/35 vision: all electronics should have a minimum 10-year lifecycle by 2035, and at the end of that lifecycle, all materials get reused. The vision sparked conversations throughout the day, with speakers and attendees talking about what infrastructure, design changes, and business models would need to evolve to make this a reality.
Each session brought a lot of new information for me, but one that really struck me was the UN research presentation by Nabil Nasr, who shared data about how extending product life delivers greater environmental benefits than recycling alone. We've been saying this for years, but having the data to prove it changes conversations with stakeholders.
The "What if Carbon Were a Depreciating Asset?" session in Zephyr was another standout, exploring how carbon avoidance could become actual revenue rather than just a sustainability metric. This aligned perfectly with the impact data Corey had shared from the R2 network and Ecotone's calculations, and having multiple independent sources reach the same conclusions strengthens every conversation about lifecycle extension.
Throughout the day, Jeff Seibert punctuated the sessions with ReThink Awards presentations, celebrating organizations creating real, systems-level impact in electronics sustainability. The nominees ranged from modular design pioneers to social impact champions, digital solutions to global initiatives, and more. Major congratulations to the winners: Framework for their fully repairable modular laptops, HP Renew Solutions for proving certified refurbished can deliver enterprise-grade quality at scale, and In2tec for their ReUSE® and ReCYCLE™ technologies that allow circuit boards to be fully "unzipped" for repair or recycling, enabling all components to be harvested and reused.
Oh, and I can't forget to mention that eSummit 2026 was announced! September 22-25 in Baltimore. As a big baseball fan, I'm really looking forward to the view of Camden Yards from our hotel.
THURSDAY: FORWARD TOGETHER
Thursday morning was all about collaboration. Industry leaders kicked off each lifecycle stage with context, then cross-functional teams at roundtables tackled real challenges, from materials sourcing through recovery.
My role was to roam between tables, taking photos and making sure groups had what they needed. Tori Gonzalez from EPA kicked off the sourcing materials discussion, then Dan Reid from CEP set up the design/manufacturing stage, Jean Cox-Kearns from Lenovo framed the use phase, and Ted Briggs from Google introduced materials recovery. Each presenter gave context for their lifecycle stage before passing it to the tables for discussion.
The format brought together people who rarely get to work side by side at the same table and problem-solve together. When it wrapped up with report-outs and next steps, the outputs weren't just ideas but actionable plans with real commitments behind them. What struck me most was how quickly groups moved from identifying problems to proposing solutions when you put the right mix of expertise at each table. If this is the kind of progress a banquet hall full of industry professionals can make in a few hours once a year, imagine what we could do with sustained collaboration and commitment.
ON TO 2026
As I flew home from Minneapolis, I kept thinking about how different this year felt from last year. eSummit 2025 proved that "all the right people, all in one place" isn't just a tagline. It's a methodology that works.
From Monday's Repair Meetup through Thursday's collaborative workshops, every format reinforced the same truth: the solutions exist, the technology exists, the will exists. What's been missing is the connection between all these pieces.
Things like the behind-the-scenes facility tours, the Repair Discord server, the frameworks from Thursday's roundtables, and the connections I watched form throughout the exhibit hall aren't just conference outcomes. They're all interconnected parts of the infrastructure for actual change. When ITAD providers share processing techniques, when OEMs encourage new perspectives on design trade-offs, and when regulators can communicate directly with people working in the industry, all in one room, the circular economy stops being theoretical and starts becoming an achievable goal.
Minneapolis showed us what's possible when the electronics lifecycle stops being a chain of separate links and becomes an actual circle of connected stakeholders. Baltimore 2026 won't be about proving we can work together anymore. It'll be about scaling what works, fixing what doesn't, and pushing even further toward electronics sustainability that benefits everyone.
The work continues, but after this week, it continues with a lot more people on the same page about what needs to be done and how we can do it together.
Stay tuned for updates on eSummit26 in Baltimore, MD, at https://www.electronicssummit.org/
