The core values with which I’d like to work are really centered around creating an atmosphere for creativity that’s grounded in logical, reasoned thinking. The issues I talked about in my previous post (Gerrymandering, Net Neutrality, and Mass Shootings) are difficult problems that require thinking outside the box if we’re going to solve them. However, there’s also been a cloud of misinformation about the topics in today’s political climate, and therefore ensuring that any solution is grounded in data and facts as much as possible is critical.

Values

1. Data Driven – solutions should be based in some background data that indicates why this may be a potential answer to the problem (in the space of all other answers, why did you choose this one?)
2. Brainstorm in bulk – the first ideas we come up with are always the most generic, and the further we push the boundary the more original we become. Don’t just choose the first idea, but push until you can’t come up with any more.
3. Create with a world view – understand that what you’re doing is rarely concentrated to one country or type of person. If you’re creating something that’s only accessible or applicable to a small population, ensure that it’s a conscious choice not an accidental one.
4. Understand the ripple effects – think about how your actions affect people or areas 2 and 3 levels away from your immediate audience. For example, think about the environmental effects, or how it may affect your user’s family and friends, etc.
5. Implementable – ideas should be grounded in the idea that the end goal is to implement them and create meaningful change. Ideas that are impactful but impossible to bring to fruition are not particularly useful.

Gathering

Gerrymandering is a problem that still doesn’t have a clear solution as the Supreme Court has decided that they will not rule on the issue until a clear metric is established that can judge whether a state is unfairly gerrymandered or not. My ideal gathering to try to solve this issue would be a kickoff hackathon, but one that has a continuing component to it (to really hit on the implementable point). While hackathons are great, the vast majority of ideas coming out do not actually move forward in any meaningful way. Therefore, my ideal order of operations would be:

Day 1: Conference like structure where experts from the area (statisticians, politicians, political scientists) come together to lay a factbase on the attendees. The point is to get everyone in the room, no matter the background, to work off an even ground of facts and data before they start brainstorming solutions.

Day 2: Teams are formed from across disciplines. Hopefully this would have been taken care of in the signup phase where there are a limited number of spots for each role, but teams would have a mix of people from politics, business, statistics, and engineering to come up with a solution. Then, they would have the full day to converge on an idea but spend a minimum of 5 hours brainstorming solutions first with no discussion on viability or feasibility. After that, they would start prioritizing and converging on a solution by the end of the day (no deadline though, they can have as much time as they need).

Day 3: The teams workshop their idea with experts from the field. There are stations set up (sort of like a fair) for different types of experts and the teams can go around and consult them to workshop their idea. By the end of the day, they need to come up with an implementation plan to test out their idea at a small scale, including what metrics they want to capture to understand how well the solution worked. At the end of the day, the teams all present to get funding to implement their idea, but the prizes have a stipulation that the team must actually implement the idea and work with the organizing team to be accountable for the implementation.