Dreams & Obstacles NYC · No. 1
Dreams & Obstacles: An Evening Of Collective Intelligence
Dreams & Obstacles is a collective problem-solving practice created by Fedor Sokolov and powered by The Juicy Times in New York City.
Monday, August 10 · 7:00pm · Farm.One · Brooklyn, NY
Sold out · 0/100 spots left→Hosted by: Çiğdem Öztabak · Fedor Sokolov · HUMANARIUM · The Juicy Times NYC
The poster
An evening of collective intelligence
Say your dream out loud. Then name the obstacles. Watch a room of strangers go to work on them. Leave with introductions, practical next steps, and new allies.
Mon Aug 10 · Doors 7 pm
Farm.One, Brooklyn
$15 · Spots are limited
The invitation
Humanarium & The Juicy Times presents:
Dreams & Obstacles: a collective problem-solving practice.
Dreamers say a dream out loud, and name what stands in its way. Then the whole room takes the obstacles apart: introductions, practical solutions, and breakthrough ideas. Let's see what happens when we dare to share our dreams.
🍊 Your ticket includes $10 at the bar.
Human connection does the one thing no AI model can: it surprises you. Your AI can hand you the wisdom of everything ever written about your problem. A stranger gives you her brother's phone number in Australia. That one needs a room of people. We are bringing NYC dreamers together.
Barbara Sher, the career counselor whose TEDx talk on wishes and obstacles has been watched by millions, discovered why dreams die.
Her formula was almost embarrassingly simple. Get together in a room with strangers. Stand up. Say what you want. Say why you can't have it yet. And the room starts solving your problem, because our collective human intelligence holds what no single mind does: someone who has done it, someone who knows the shortcut, someone who knows a guy.
As humans, we evolved to solve problems together. The warmth, the feeling of being backed, the oxytocin: they all show up when the room comes alive.
Today, we share our dreams mostly with AI assistants. We brainstorm alone at midnight, with an AI that agrees with everything we say and then tells us to go to sleep. (Thanks, Claude :)
The ideas may get sharper. But a project discussed only with your AI is still a fantasy. So many dreams die without being tested against reality.
So for one evening, we're closing the tabs: a room of strangers, sparking each other the way ideas have always moved. Dreams & Obstacles is the new collective problem-solving format we built, inspired by Barbara's formula. Let's make dreams come true together.
✨ Grab your spot, the room is small and intimate by design.
How it works
The room has two roles.
Dreamers raise a hand and say their dream and obstacles out loud: a project, a career leap, a wild idea. No slides, no prep, just your voice. This is not a pitch night. Nobody is evaluating you, nobody is investing, and nobody asks you about your TAM. The golden rule comes straight from Barbara Sher herself: state both your wish and your obstacle. “I want to open a listening bar” does nothing. “I want to open a listening bar but I don't know anything about liquor licenses” sets the whole room in motion.
Guides come with superpowers: you've gotten a film into a festival. You've opened a café and survived the first year. You can read a lease, mix a proper negroni, explain octopus consciousness, or get a landlord to call you back. Maybe you just have an uncle with a warehouse in Queens. Every one of us is the center of an enormous web of information and connections we never think about until someone in the room asks for it.
After each presentation, the room gets to work on your dream. Guides give what they have: a new point of view, a shortcut, a correction, a name, a number. We call it idea charity: generosity is the currency of the evening. Come uncool. Share what you have.
What the evening looks like
An opening speech from the dream moderators, Çiğdem Öztabak from Humanarium and Fedor Sokolov from Juicy Times.
Then the floor opens: hands go up, and whoever's ready shares a dream and its obstacle.
Then we mingle: dreams, obstacles, and ideas trading hands.
No pitching without sharing obstacles. And an idea charity for all of us!!
Who is in the room
We are researchers, scientists, journalists, artists, jugglers, media people, food and cocktail artists - people whose work rarely fits in a deck.
The Rules
- 01
Leave your ego at the door. Sincerity is our dress code.
- 02
No mocking dreams. Every dream in this room is serious, including the strange ones. Especially the strange ones.
- 03
State the obstacle. A dream without an obstacle is just a pitch.
- 04
If you know something, say something. Your throwaway knowledge is someone else's breakthrough.
- 05
Ask people what they need, not what they do.
- 06
We photograph and film the evening for our channels and the press. Rather stay off camera? Tell us.
- 07
Phones down, tabs closed. For one night, we are each other's intelligence.
Live drawing
Dig Ferreira drew the dreamers and their dreams as they spoke, with a Japanese sumi brush held in his mouth.
Read his story →Why this is a Humanarium and Juicy Times event
Humanarium is a New York club for human connection in the machine age, founded and curated by technology and culture journalist Çiğdem Öztabak: honest conversations, research, screening, experiential events about AI - the good, the bad, and the ugly - held in human connection. humanarium.co
Juicy Times helps New Yorkers find what to do in the city faster, so they spend less time scrolling and more time connecting with people and creating memories in the real world. The curators are the city's artists themselves - the people who make the nights worth leaving the house for. Founded by Fedor Sokolov. juicy-times.com
Connection is the through line, and Dreams & Obstacles is where the two meet. We depend on each other's dreams coming true.
Next room
Hear when it opens.
Rooms are small and they fill fast. Write your dream in the portal and you hear before it goes anywhere public.
Join the movement→Dreams & Obstacles is presented by Humanarium and The Juicy Times, in media partnership with Afterism.