Register for Dent Collaboration Weekend: Maui 2025

December 5-7, 2025           Maui, HI

$299 for Dent Passport Holders/Dent 2026 Registrants

Our 2025 Maui Collaboration Weekend offers immersive experiences focused on bringing together members of the Dent community in a beautiful, inspiring setting for productive work, meaningful connections, and creative activities. This 2025 event will serve as a change of pace/venue and for this next year will replace our traditional annual January San Diego Collaboration Weekend.

Our sleeping room block is limited; this event is currently reserved for paid Passport Members and those who have registered (or have a credit) for Dent Santa Fe 2026. Hotel registration details will be included in your registration confirmation email.

Location: Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa

The Sheraton is an oceanfront oasis situated on the most prime expanse of Ka'anapali Beach, where Pu’u Keka’a (Black Rock) meets the Pacific. It offers an unparalleled oceanfront location that has consistently provided Dent groups with both the inspiring natural backdrop and premium amenities that enable collaboration and connection. The resort’s unique position at Black Rock Beach provides direct access to world-class snorkeling and marine life experiences right from the hotel grounds, while offering the kind of elevated hospitality and meeting facilities.

What to Expect:

Collaborative Work Sessions: Attendees can advance personal or professional projects in a supportive environment.

Talks & Workshops: Denter-led sessions and informational presentations (specifics below).
Curated Dinners: Thoughtfully orchestrated social activities and meals.
Aquatic Activities: Taking advantage of Maui's incredible waters and marine life.
Small Group Dynamics: Intimate atmosphere for deep connections and collaboration.

General Schedule (as of Nov 17):

Subject to modification and enhancement!

Talks and Workshops:

Various Denters are offering up talks and workshops, here is what we have confirmed so far:

The Next Competitive Advantage Is How You Facilitate - With Morgan Johnson

This talk will explore the concept of super-facilitators: team members who have abilities to elevate collective performance through integrating team strengths, trust, and collaboration. Drawing on new research in collective intelligence, it shows that group success depends less on individual brilliance and more on the ability to orchestrate the environment for great outcomes. With intentional practice, anyone can develop the skills to turn interactions into trust and teams into superorganisms of problem-solving.

Whether you’re leading a startup, managing creative teams, or simply want to make your collaborations more effective, you’ll leave with practical frameworks for becoming or creating the kind of facilitator who makes everyone better.

Morgan Johnson is Partner and Chief Experience Officer at Experiences For Mankind, a San Diego-based creative agency where she’s spent 17 years rising from intern to agency owner. Her expertise is “bringing simplicity to the complex,” helping clients and teams navigate marketing’s toughest challenges through solid processes, specialized tools, and complete transparency. As a Dent board member since 2019, she’s passionate about the community’s values of authentic connection and caring for your fellow person.

Claude Code And The Era Of Collaborative Ai

After three years of users interacting with AI through chat windows, Claude Code is a breakthrough application that asks a different question: what if you could interact with multiple AI instances at once? And what if there was a way to coordinate their work towards a bigger goal? And what if those instances could specialize in different technical and non-technical roles: research, coding, legal review, and more? This session will introduce you to the new era of how we’ll use AI.

Stewart Ugelow is an entrepreneur and management consultant with over 25 years of startup experience. He's founded multiple ventures including Student.Net Publishing (which raised $9M in equity financing), ShipCycle, and Teach Fishing. As an independent strategy consultant since 2007, he's worked with venture-backed startups across consumer products, ecommerce, health & beauty, and nonprofits, focusing on strategy, business development, and product development.

Dr. Sonia J. Rowley: Exploring the Ocean's Twilight Zone

Dr. Sonia J. Rowley is an evolutionary marine biologist and one of the world's leading experts on deep-sea coral ecosystems. Based at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Dr. Rowley has pioneered research into gorgonian octocorals (sea fans) that thrive in the mesophotic "Twilight Zone"—mysterious reefs between 30 and 180 meters underwater where sunlight barely penetrates. Her presentation will feature exclusive deep-rebreather footage from her expeditions, offering attendees a rare glimpse into one of Earth's least explored frontiers.

Dr. Rowley's work has earned her the prestigious Sir David Attenborough Award for Fieldwork, and she holds fellowships with the Explorers Club, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Society of Biology. With over 38 years of diving experience and technical expertise in closed-circuit rebreather technology, she has led research expeditions in over 25 countries and discovered numerous new species to science. Currently advising UNESCO's Global Ocean Observing System and NOAA's Pacific Island Deep-Sea Coral Science Planning initiative, Dr. Rowley recently received an Ocean Census award to accelerate marine species discovery. Her research not only advances our understanding of coral resilience and climate adaptation but also reveals the ingenious survival strategies of organisms in Earth's most extreme underwater environments.

Planned Activities:

Maui Photowalk with Asa Mathat

A camera is the save button for the mind's eye." Join award-winning photographer Asa Mathat, and bring your smartphone- as we walk through the beautiful Sheraton grounds and area. As we soak in our surroundings, we will stop to take a closer look at the world beneath our feet as we offer the opportunity to get some fantastic snapshots of the breathtaking Maui landscape and as a bonus, learn portrait mode on the iPhone with yours or your photo buddy’s phone.

Morning Snorkel with Steve

For those comfortable with snorkeling, Steve Broback will facilitate a guided snorkeling and orientation session at the famous Black Rock Beach, providing a first-hand look at Maui’s marine ecosystem in an easily accessible location right at Kaanapali.

Magic and Cocktails

Magic and Cocktails is a relaxed evening gathering where attendees can enjoy drinks while Steve, Jason and Gary Ware perform a few professional-level close-up pieces and teach a couple of simple effects anyone can learn quickly. It will be a mix of light performance and a zone where others are encouraged to jump in with tricks of their own if they feel so inclined.

Freediving for First-Timers: A Gentle Introduction to Breath-Hold Skills

This informal, beginner-level session with Steve Broback shares a few core skills drawn from Performance Freediving International (PFI)'s methodical, science-based approach to breath-hold training. We’ll focus on three fundamentals: a proper pre-dive breathe-up, facial immersion to invoke the mammalian dive reflex, and basic recovery breathing. 

This is a no-pressure/non-competitive activity with an emphasis on safety, comfort, and physiological awareness rather than pushing limits. 

Participants will take a relaxed baseline breath-hold at the start and another at the end, simply to observe how much improvement can come from applying technique rather than effort.

PFI was founded by Kirk Krack, a friend of Dent and one of the most respected figures in the field. His work training actors and stunt teams for Avatar and the Mission: Impossible films helped introduce modern freediving methods to a wider audience, and the principles we’ll cover are the same foundational skills used in those environments—scaled appropriately for the shallow end of the hotel pool. 

The hour is designed to be safe, accessible, and useful to anyone interested in understanding how breath, relaxation, and physiology interact in the water.

Other Costs:

The event ticket price includes the Denter-favorite meeting space at the Sheraton – the spacious Kihei Room, which has been reserved for two days and will feature some group catering amenities. All other expenses including dinners, tours, and activities where fees are charged directly by service providers will be the responsibility of individual attendees.