B. I would push “plural awareness” a bit further and suggest a bottom-up design process, along the lines of “nothing about us without us”, to ensure that diversity of experiences is also reflected in the project design.

C. The proposed convening has promising outputs. I would ensure that patients’ experience is taken into account throughout the whole hackaton, and would suggest having patients distributed across the tech teams, to ensure that the end-user perspective is not lost along the process. I would also suggest invite scholars / sociologists that have studied the medical system in the US, and could make explicit a macro perspective on incentives/interests.

B. I would suggest thinking through how people with different abilities can participate in a dance party.

C. As someone who identifies as male with 6 years of formal dance training (in another life), some deejaying and a lifetime of partying under my belt, I’d be happy to help think about approaches to making the dance party fantastic. There are some timing questions I have about the experience portion of the retreat (does it happen during or before, what do the people who do not identify as males do?) and I have about 10 years of convening planning experience to offer to think that through!

B. For the action-driven one, I would also recommend thinking about building in ways to also be “reflective”. Move fast and break things doesn’t always work and sometimes leads to big things getting broken. Sometimes the best action is no action!

c. I actually really like your convening, and wish this could happen! Its hard to find easy ways to apply institutional knowledge to real world problems because it often stays isolated in the institutions it was created in

B/ What value would I suggest as an addition: I’ll do something I did for myself when crafting these values – try and find a way to “break them” – i.e. follow the values while breaking from the spirit. I would add something about either (a) working to address/delve into underlying issues (e.g. the structural issues that shape inequity and that underlie racist, etc. views) or (b) Something about actually shifting power in the space (e.g. one can believe in equity and amplify marginal voices, but still retain power)

C/ Convening – A couple questions:
Problem definition: is it worth focusing on the teacher / student interaction? Might there be higher leverage areas to focus? What evidence/research/experience is pushing you to focus on this interaction as a key moment in the school to prison pipeline?

Overall, I like the flow and how it builds from your main goal (building empathy among teachers and students) – and particularly appreciate how you use space, time, and physical objects to help make student emotions visible and more tangible for teachers

B. An additional value that I would include is ‘collaboration’. At the beginning of the unhackathon (and at subsequent stages), both hackers and government officials should work together to share insights, best practices and advice .

C. I can play a role in making this convening happening by offering my skills in user-centered design and facilitating participatory design workshops. I like the idea of an ‘unhackthon’ and in fact, I may adopt the ideologies of this particular convening in my future workshops! 🙂

I imagine you might propose something like a concert of honesty. The musicians would lead in speaking (or singing?) their reasons for doing what they’re doing, both the “I love what I’m doing” and “I gotta put food on the table” (and perhaps “why don’t you people pay us!?”)… but somehow you’d get everyone to reveal their own true rationales, even for being there. If done right, this could be healing. But it would probably be a one-time thing: we do that, but then go back to our same lives. What would it take to actually change both our selves and our systems?

What value suggest as an addition?
System Thinking: The hackathon though being focused on personal growth also exposes participants about how their ideas can and will have broader impact on their communities and larger society.
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@Other thoughts
How can we reach out to people who don’t traditionally think of themselves as makers to make the circle of our value of inclusivity wider.

B. Constructive contribution. Individuals are the fundamental component of a community, and the community is not exclusive to but is greatly influenced by what each individual decides to bring to the table. In this regard, it is important for each person to think about what constructive offerings they can make to the community to shape the culture.

C. Unconference and workshop sessions that encourage communication and exchange of skills and values does seem critical in promoting the values. Just as a thought, it would be interesting to see a town-hall discussion of this specific topic of DIY vs DITO for direct self-assessment and socio-cultural awareness as a community.