Boyd and Beyond is an annual conference held at Quantico, Virginia, focused on the intellectual legacy of john-boyd and its applications across military, business, and software development contexts. It is the primary institutional gathering point for the extended Boyd community and serves as the main venue where the military, academic, and civilian strands of Boyd interpretation meet and cross-pollinate.
Richards is a regular speaker at Boyd and Beyond, presenting work that bridges Boyd's military strategy concepts to business and organizational practice — the certain-to-win-framework, organizational-climate-for-business, and the boyd-agile-bridge. The conference provides Richards with an audience that already speaks the Boyd vocabulary, allowing him to advance rather than introduce arguments.
Other regular Boyd and Beyond participants include don-vandergriff (military education reform), franz-osinga (strategic theory), and various military officers and analysts working in the tradition. The conference has also attracted figures from the Agile software community, reflecting the agile-engagement-period in which the boyd-agile-bridge has become a major theme.
Boyd and Beyond represents the institutionalization of what began as a loose circle around Boyd himself during the boyd-circle-period. After boyd-death-1997, the community lacked a natural center; the conference has provided one, maintaining continuity of the reform tradition and providing a venue for the agile-as-maneuver-warfare argument that connects Richards's defense and business work.