Be Supported

I went into doing craft fairs, not needing to make money. I was still working or in school or something. So it's a weird balance to be able to do both, I think. I don't know why, but I'm fairly successful. I haven't lost money at a market, ever. I don't know, I think part of it is the engagement does drive the sales more. I'm not so worried about money. I'm just worried about engaging with people and having a good time. I don't look at my numbers all the time and things like that. I'm not trying to make more money and sell more of the certain product. I'm just, I look at it as for the experience. I think there's a little bit of that money versus engagement mindset, which has also lended to me making money, too. I guess it's just that everybody's goals are different.

You want to sell stuff, but you also want to teach people stuff in the process and you could just use brand marketing, all the... Unfortunately all the human brainpower that's gone into how to sell people, stuff you could use all of that knowledge, and apply it to science communication in a commercial setting. And I think that exists. So there's a part of me that wants to push back a little bit and just say, "Hey, like guys, we could discuss this all right now." And try to figure it out, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel because I know that wheel is really smoothly grease then is running all the time, all around us to try and sell us stuff. So, why don't we bring in those people, if that is really our primary goal to sell stuff. And in that process, teach people something, because that's what advertising has been doing since mad men era. And we should probably just hop on that commercial bandwagon if we really want to do this well, and not in a way that's, I don't use the word amateur, but when we do that and we don't acknowledge that that expertise already exists in the world,

the way I would describe the way my business works is, yeah I'm an artist and a scientist. I guess the flow of my business is that the talent I have as an artist and what I produce as an artist with my science knowledge drives my sales and then my sales allow me to do more science engagement if that makes sense. So, if you're looking at that. Where what I create makes sales and the sales give me more allowance with science engagement, the problem is that the bigger you get with something like this, the less important the science engagement would become. Because when you get to more business minded people it'd be really hard for them to rationalize spending money on the science engagement if that's not necessarily the driving force of sales, but that's something I'm going to experiment more with in the future.

this experience made me want to ... I've been thinking about the deficit model and saviorism and wanting to come back and be able to tell the story and how we tell the story, because Sarah said about this lets us do the work. And is that about doing the work that's funding? Coming back to get more money, to do something like this. So we can come back and claim credit and show the pictures and whatever, what does that mean? And all this has made me realize that I want to do, this is going to sound weird, but I want to do less better. I don't want to feel I have to cover quite as much ground. I want to go build more meaningful relationships, be a better partner and do less better.

so much of our professional development exists in conference spaces. And sometimes there are moments where that's super, super, super helpful, but I also think that this intimate, you're observing me on my ground, in my space and giving you that feedback, it's a totally different professional development, but I feel it captures something the money spent in a conference space, never could. And I think that's a really, really important piece, especially I think for you Ben, because that's often where you sit and you do so many things, but I feel in just thinking about the balance of funding and attention and time and all that stuff, I think being able to have people support each other on the ground is hugely valuable.

I felt you guys did a really amazing job of really articulating what the strengths were and then really talking about the weaknesses of it as they related really to the systemic things that we were trying to think about. So I really felt as I said at the beginning, it's one of those things where you, especially because it's been so long, because the world's so weird and as Jeannie said, so much of this now feels even more heavy and important. That really I think that having an outside observer and obviously Justin, you were the perfect unicorn person to have to be that person and I don't know how that managed to happen, but it certainly felt you were a unicorn and the way that you brought your perspective, but just really putting language to these things that we were really struggling with. And I think having that outside perspective, lets you have more of the conversation around those sorts of frameworks and systemic issues and ways in which the specifics could try to chip away at those systemic things differently or ... So I felt aside from your just being a special unicorn who could have those observations and Jonathan, you're hugely important to our organization and its history. So there's all that lovely bit of it. But also just having a third-party who's invested felt so special. I just feel so often you're getting your feedback from some random dad or grandpa or somebody's cousin or whatever. And so it was really nice to just have such a thoughtful, careful conversation that really touched on the highs and the lows in ways that felt super respectful and really, really, really helpful. [inaudible]

I think that for me, it's about triangulation of different things. And I wonder if maybe in efforts to scale up if there could be some strategic and creative triangulation of different modes of evaluation and measurement, so that on some level, I think that it's hard to measure community impact. And I think that, like you said Sarah, what were the values that you set for yourself in doing this project? And if those values were I'm going to do no harm while I'm here, I want to leave something that they can hold onto afterwards and I'm going to follow up with them to extend the relationship beyond this one event. And those are the core values then I think that you can build something around that. I think that it's tough to grapple with scale when I think that so many of these things are so specific to a certain geography, to certain histories

how do you create a toolkit that's mostly about values, right? That's what's being passed on, I think in many ways. It's these are the principles and I think it goes back to meaningful, right? If I can articulate what the values were that drove my decision-making, then those can be concrete, but in such a way that they become a scaffolding for people to fill in in the circumstances, right? Because the other piece about the partnerships in ... Communities are different and you're going to have, if you're trying to meet people where they are and to build from the ground up, that ground is different. So I think and I'm not sure what that would look like but to think about how you might create a toolkit that is values driven as opposed to logistics or content or any of the other things that we would think of as being primarily in a toolkit of that nature.

I think scaling is a good thing, and I think it's totally possible, but I don't think individual things should scale to infinite numbers of people. Right? I think when we think of scaling and in the context of this type of engagement work, I sometimes think it's scaling to the point where here's the basic infrastructure or blueprint of what I did in my community. Take this and tailor it to your community. And keep it tiny, always keep it tiny. And I think that's, for me, how scaling would be most effective in this work.

I do think that this question of language, we started with meaningful and we talk about success. the idea of impact, right? I struggle so much with figuring out capacity building, but what's the capacity. And I just feel the language itself gets me tripped up and it needs to be the way in which we tell the story, right? Ultimately you need to have the language to tell the story to do the work. And sometimes I feel the language fails me and we just haven't quite figured out the right language to use to make these things make sense outside of our hearts. That feels so much what I felt like actually driving the other day. I was reflecting after listening to y'all's conversation in Atlanta and I was like, "Wow, what did success really look like? And what would success even look like for us?" I mean, let's just say that every single kid that came to one of these booths now became a scientist. That's not realistic, and that's also not what we're even shooting for, right? We're just trying to get people interested in science and liking it. And in my case, when I really distill what it is, why I'm doing what I'm doing, it's because I want to make Yale be less shitty and certainly even better. And that doesn't necessarily mean make every single kid in Dwight, a doctor or scientist, engineer, but it's more so just enrich their lives and the way that which they should be getting already from having Yale in their backyard. And there's no 200-year plan for how to make things more equitable... At least that I have mapped out or seen mapped out. And that's why I think that I have real difficulty with these metrics of success for do I have to, does it really mean that I did a good job if I hit 100 students versus 1000 students? Do I have to increase their math scores? Do I have to have a pre and post survey to tell them that, "Oh, they have two more science facts in their head now." But there is this gut feeling when you see a kid run up to you and remember you from last time and say, "Oh, what are we doing today?" And I don't think that any of our activities are necessarily going to be these eureka epiphany moments for any kid necessarily, but it's a layering of just more resources and capacity building and what you said as well. They get a chance to play with slime or they get a chance to learn about how their muscles turn a bike, but they also get a chance to be in a nice green space and have access to food and housing security and stuff like that. So I have no idea how to actually put it in the grant, because if you write that in the grant, they're just like, "What is this person saying?" Because also if you try to communicate to that somebody, especially who hasn't done this work, or hasn't put a lot of thought into it necessarily, it's tough to even articulate that in words,

what does success look like? Right? And when we are plugged into a super inflexible structure where we have to have X, Y, Z metrics, and it has to take place within this one or three year, whatever the funding cycle is, as you mentioned Justin, I think it's really hard for people to think about success as building capacity when capacity feels such an immeasurable entity. People just want metrics, they want numbers, they want graphs, and that's how you get your money to sustain your engagement work. And so we are pitted against what needs to be done just to survive. And I think that is highly, highly problematic.

I think the experience for me I was really ... I listened to the interview in New Haven and in Atlanta I saw similar themes across both, and I didn't expect that. And I think that there was some really good cross-fertilization that could happen between those two conversations. So I just look forward to getting into there with those connections where I'm seeing how we can learn from each other and how those two events, I think can really learn from each other and try out some ways and move forward strategically with do it in community as these events happen.

All of this happened pre-pandemic, and I can't think of another time where this would be even more relevant than it was in that moment in time. I did not expect for that to be the case. Rick and I have chatted several times, even on our own outside of Science in Vivo after this and we touched on a lot of this event really, I thought, helped bring us together around these certain philosophies. I still think about the time I spent in that space as one of the best integrated sciency community engagement events that I've seen in a way that felt super culturally sensitive. And I think was hitting on all of the right points and bringing up all of the gaps that we've always known existed, but being able to articulate those specifically was really powerful and hearing how Dottie and the other women who were part of this community were sharing their views on things and just reflecting on what they had to say and then also thinking about that in our new context that we are experiencing in 2021, was very powerful.

Surveys often are that way to collect data on outcomes, I always think about whenever I'm administering a survey, I try and think very carefully about how I am as a survey complete, or how I am as a person completing a survey. A person who is giving off those outcomes that people are trying to collect. So I think that while they can be valuable in many ways, I think that they're limited, and I think, especially when we're talking about this, when we're talking about what is happening or what happened on Saturday, it is so much more than outcomes, it's so much about process and I think this goes back to everything we were saying around the relationship building piece, the cultural competency piece, how you have to build those parallel strategies. If you are building those parallel strategies, then it's just not about sort of the outcome of what was learned, or how did you engage with science, it is about the process of how this event came to be. So something like an interview with a Dottie Green, or a set of maybe even like three or four qualitative questions that you could ask a subgroup of students or parents leaving the event. I think that is some of the data that should go hand in hand with some of those outcome metrics.

what if we said Saturday was so successful that we want to know next fall, go to a fall festival, similar fall festivals around the country and have volunteers come in and bring science to the community. So I think that the biggest takeaway for me is that every time there has to be sort of these parallel strategies. So it is sort of logistics of like, let's get science out there, let's get the volunteers out there, let's get the material out there. But, I a big question for me was how much of the success of Saturday was just based off of setting up that table and the volunteers and the science, and how much was based off of the relationship between Richard and then the community and the relationship and strength of the community itself? That is not necessarily going to be the experience in any place that you go into. So equally, if not more when I think about hierarchy of need again, I think below as the foundation of even coming in with science, it's really that piece of just what sort of just training around cultural competency and around entering communities are folks getting what sort of tips and tactics are there around relationship building? How does outreach look like to become a part of an event? How does relationship building with event organizers look like? Those pieces seem extraordinarily important, it was the reason when me and Jeanne were standing on the line of then 70 somewhat people outside and tried to sneak through the door, and we're very abruptly stopped by Dottie Green, and then we just gave Richard's name and she was like, "Go ahead, go in" with a huge smile. That can look very different, that could look like, I'm with Jim and no one knows who Jim is. So those pieces are really important, and so that's just something I really think about because I think oftentimes, when we think about taking something good and scaling it, we miss something, and that's why the scaling doesn't happen in the right way. So I would hate to see sort of strategy around science outreach take off, without clear strategy around sort of cultural competency and Jamie said, cultural humility and really this piece around building relationships and entering places as "outsider" in the right way.

having some kids play with slime is not going to fix a pipeline program or pipeline problem, or it's not going to increase, just by increasing exposure to STEM is not going to be solving any intricate and multifaceted problems, and I never thought that it would. I think that maybe this isn't an idea for a springboard, for how best to get... Like for instance, one of the main drivers of Science Haven was that I saw that all these graduate students that are from largely privileged backgrounds, are living in a neighborhood that is extremely secluded away from everyone else in New Haven, and it's just basically for Yale students. I was really bummed out about that and I was like, "Wow, these people aren't experiencing New Haven for what it is truly, they're just from one Yale bubble to another Yale bubble that's separated by New Haven." Which is like some sort of some sort of tunnel they have to go through to get to their job, and I think that's extremely problematic, because there's such a wealth of experiences that would be formative for them to better ground themselves and be able to use their privilege later on once they are continuing to earn more money, become more politically influential and things like that and they're not actually seeing New Haven residents for what they are and realizing that they are neighbors and that they're friends and just because they don't have a Yale ID hanging from their neck or from their belt loop doesn't mean that they're not supposed to interact with them. I am not really good at articulating these sort of ideas, but this is the sort of feelings that were bubbling up when I was thinking about this stuff, and it's not that I think that a VR headset is going to like, it's going to break down all the systemic barriers. Like, "Oh, this kid, he had a chance to see a VR headset and then he just loved science and became the next NASA director." But there's more to it to where I think that working together with people that have a lot more experience with this kid could help you know make this more of like a neighborhood development and leadership program, and like honestly just like soul searching for graduate students who are extremely privileged to be able to be paid to go to graduate school, and to do research to get a PhD, to where they could be interacting their community in a much more serious and important way for all society and not for what they get to put on their CV.

I don't need to get too defensive about it, but I've been thinking about this stuff for a long time and it bums me out that we are having to knock on doors for departments to do stuff like this, and that, even though it gets written up in science strategies from Yale, but they really care about science average in the community, I'm just not necessarily seeing it at the level that I think might be the most interesting and impactful, but it's all about bringing students onto Yale's campus to see exactly how cool and cutting edge stuff is. But it's not like, "Hey, Yale's actually situated in New Haven." It's not the other way around.

the emphasis on relationship building was first and foremost, because we have to have relationship between the graduate students and the neighborhood leaders to have repeated ways of getting out to the community in a real and genuine way. So it's more so just like teaching graduate students that they need to be thinking about outreach in a way that's not just, I'm going to take a Saturday afternoon go in front of my laboratories, my laboratories like lobby area and do some activities with kids who came here with their parents who are also professors or scientists or something like that. So it was sort of shifting the way that we think about outreach overall,

So I think in some ways, success is just figuring out how to have a real moment of engagement with a new organization or a new partner, with a new institution that feels meaningful. That feels like it serves their mission, which thereby serves our mission and that it feels like it's a relationship that means something. And that then potentially, has room for growth. And then sometimes I feel like those things feel so small and we have goals and as success markers and this is something we're all obviously struggling with too. It's like when you run a festival that reaches 60,000 people, it sometimes feels like not as meaningful to say that you had a really great several long hour event with 10 families. But I also think that, it's doing a little bit of different work.

think a little bit more about what's already happening and what are the ways that we can amplify what's already happening instead into what's already happening, as opposed to thinking more about, "How can we help you meet the next goal?" But rather thinking on a longer timescale, how can we help you do what you're doing next month, as a way to develop the partnership and the trust, and an understanding how you operate on a day-to-day basis or how you are readier during your public events or your family science nights or whatever to integrate there before moving to the next piece which is not necessarily the way that I had... It's certainly the way we... I come to understand how people are doing their work, but I don't necessarily try immediately to think about how to support them in the immediate future, but rather how to help them move to the next phase. And I think part of what I'm pulling away from this conversation that's really, really useful is how can I help you do the next thing that you already have on your calendar? And how can I make that easier for you as we develop this relationship? Before we try to turn that into something that's much bigger

I reached out to all these different groups. And there were a lot of people that either wouldn't respond. And I felt very sensitive as far as like, "Hey, I'm a stranger, can you do a favor for me?" I'm trying to build this relationship. And I felt excited at the fact that at least coming out of this, we developed a lot of relationships that I think we can build meaningfully and work on something together in the future.

This was important in a lot of ways, but particularly it prompted me to go back to doing collaborative, peer reviewing of events in my local community. Particularly, those that are outside of my comfort zone, or not in cultures that I normally interact with. I have this collaborative event listing thing that I put together with other event organizers every week. These are 12 things coming up, that I think are interesting, and they're not even science related. There just interesting. Because it helps me keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening here. We invite a guest curators, so like one of San Francisco's great drag Queens. Let's find out what's interesting from his perspective. And so I came out of this, I was like, "Yeah. Actually, going to other events, and seeing what other people are doing, the problems they're struggling with, and the creative solutions they have, it's very hard to fold that into all the deadlines that we all face. And yet I feel it's just so necessary to do our work well.

And I feel really fortunate that I was paired with another observer, who's an expert in the field. We were able to play off, we had really different sets of eyes, I think, on it, and learned a lot from each other, both in the moment when we were talking, but also afterwards, when we were typing up our notes together in the followup. I think that part of it, was really a great experience, which I definitely got a lot out of that. And I think, our ability to think through what was going on, was really enhanced by that, that we had really different previous experiences, I guess, in different ways of engaging with the event.

it was very anxiety inducing, to find out, that not only am I participating in a new program at the convention, but we're going to have to two people who I don't, know and have great credentials, fly into to observe what I was doing. Like I said, it was a little anxiety inducing, but ultimately, I found the experience incredibly rewarding. I don't often get to converse with peers in the field, at the level of Paul's, and Bart's experiences, and credentials. and whatnot. I found it incredibly enlightening. Obviously, they brought a completely outside perspective of it.

I think it's hard to create, and then objectively assess. The people who participate in activities, are very much married to them. They're in love with them. It's their baby. Whatever analogy makes sense to you. But, "This is my thing that I've created, that I can't see the blind spots of." The value in having people with very particular kinds of expertise assess this experience, especially if it's expertise you don't have. Of course, I think there's a value there.

interrogate those assumptions that you're making about an audience, that you "Serve." And actually taking the time, the money, the energy, to ask these audiences what exactly they need from you. Versus deciding that they need a science exhibit to inspire kids to pursue STEM. The idea is that kids aren't inspired? Kids are inspired all the time. It's the connections, from passion, to purpose to, I guess, career that gets lost. It's the support, from passionate, to purpose, to career that gets lost. And so what we've also been having conversations about, it's not just enough to inspire.

And anything that only happens once a year, it's really hard to get a handle on it. Because it's the buildup, it happens, and then it's gone. It takes a while to move through the different spaces of it. I think, there's real value in being able to leave the booth, and see what are all the different things that are going on there, and what are some of the different ways to engage it?

I've been documenting the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for over 10 years. And it's a big event with a lot going on. Really distinct communities who participate. And if you're in the blues tent, running the sound booth, you really can't be looking at the crafts, and you don't know what's happening in the kid's area. There're so many distinct activities, and communities, but the energy of the event, is that all these things are happening together. And so, being able to move through these different spaces, I think, and then reflecting back on how your part fits in. I think, it is a challenge for any of us who participate in big events, because you do have to keep an eye on your booth. Not just staffing it, and doing what the booth is doing, but also coordinating, and managing. The loading in, and the loading out. There're just so many logistics, it's a huge amount of work.

this whole thing sparked for me, at the very beginning, when I was doing outreach with the MIT Museum, I've been doing Museum of Science Center outreach for a long time. Had the keys to the van. At every institution I've gone to. But I had the chance to be part of this outreach, and not have to do anything. I got to show up, see what was going on, and then walk away from the table, walk away from the tent. And when you start walking away from the table, and walk away from the tent, and this is not a metaphor, they had tables and tents, and they're down, and they're intense, and they're in their activity. And they're in their space. And that's great. But then you step back, and you look at, "Well, there's the tent. Look at everything else, swirling around. Look at all the other things. And why are people here? What are people doing at this particular fair, at this particular festival?" That you hadn't seen the cosplay awards before, that's fine. I'm not putting any judgment on that. But to me, that was the first spark, is being able to handle this, because you were working. You were busy. That it's completely natural, that you would have thought, that there's this opportunity over there. And maybe the wrestling, you might not have even thought of, except for that you happened to be right next to it, so you couldn't avoid it. But I there's something about, maybe Helen could speak up just a little bit, for the value of just letting yourself be a participant at times as opposed to being on on on and being a producer.

And I do want to point out too, that after that event, I actually reached out to the rest of the people, and said, "Let's get some space themed wrestling matches happening." And that was in the works, but then again, we haven't done... We did one convention, two and a half months after that, so they do two a year. Just for context. They do a Fall, and a Winter one. We did one the very beginning of January, which is a smaller show, so the wrestling wasn't there, but this past September 2020, we were going to try to get some astronauts fighting aliens, or some scientists fighting each other, or something like that, but we haven't been back since unfortunately. We were trying to find ways to integrate into that as well. Pluto, versus Neil deGrasse Tyson, was the big hit at our science wrestling event. People lost their minds. That, and also Watson and Crick, versus Rosalind Franklin. I don't know if you can extend it to that, but it worked.

There's this question, is this a really good use of our efforts? What value does this have? The impact, all those classic questions. In which case, is this feeling really small, and insignificant? Participation in cons, or parades, or other programs? Does that move any needles that I actually care about? Or on the other hand, is this a really good path to reaching people? And particularly people we don't normally reach, and is this actually really important? If this idea, that if your organizations, and your values aren't visible, then they're invisible. And is this a great way, to ensure visibility in the communities that we operate in?

It's like going over the top with this, or having things be bolder, and louder and bigger is super cool in this kind of a venue. It's so visually loud from all the individuals coming in the door primarily through what's some of the spectacle that's there already, so I could just raise that up. And that being part of the creative process for the Space Center to take on, and I immediately thought of here are some grant opportunities that they could pursue that would allow them to do this in a venue that is primed for... You've got literally thousands and thousands of people who love this content or who would love this content if they were to engage in it more, so it's grabbing more people.

Yeah. I think having a bigger presence on the exhibit hall too, the planetarium and some of these little booth things were good and the tabling activities, but just ramp that up, you see the potential of being able to get more people engaged. And as Bart says, it's a good base there but if you doubled or tripled the resources that went into it, you'd get at least double or triple, you'd probably get five or six times the number of people engaged.

For me, I just want to say the experience was awesome. There's a couple of different things that are going on here. One is looking at the con overall and the science content, one looking at the cosplay components specifically, and there's this idea of just being able to go someplace and do peer observations and peer reviews for a day and a half, was such a wonderful luxury. I don't get to do that very often, have just dedicated watching and thinking time so just participating in this was great.

I have this internal gauge that I know when I'm on the right path. I know when things are right. That's when I get chills. When I get chills, I'm overcome with such an emotion that I can't really describe it in words, but it's just, this is so cool. It's almost, it gets to your heart, whatever it is and when you're on paper and the thought behind it and you're going, "Yeah, these were put for these reasons," but when you're there and you're dealing with humans, you're dealing with kids that are so passionate about what they're doing, and are so generous to want to explain it to other kids, and then they tell you their reasons why, it just sends shivers throughout my body.

I feel like I've just got a real learning point from this in terms of practicality. I put that in bold here in my notes of the importance of doing this more than once because- Sorry. I mean, I've heard from, I think that in each of the recordings I've done with people about who've done this sort of a thing, like flags, sorry, St. Petersburg effort, they really stepped it up the second time. They kind of were like, we're ready for this. The first time, they're like, "I'm not sure why we're doing this. Where do we get a trailer from? How's this going to?" Well, yes. Then, the second time they're like, "Right, you know how this goes."

I agree that having seen some of the participants during the parade, where we leave some big organizations unnamed in this, for the fact that they just showed up with a Jeep and a banner on the float, I personally was turned off by that. And when you know it's a big and well-funded organization, and you think, "Really, guys, that's the best you could do?" So honestly, it demonstrates how much effort you put into doing this. So there's a little bit of go big or go home. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or at least put in effort to show that you care.

It does take a bit of effort to create a sophisticated [inaudible], but I think it's important that we do have a float much like the other major floats that are there and not just a flatbed trailer from U-Haul. Nothing against that, but it decrees a different presence, I should say.

The background mix matters a lot, I think. Pairing people from just different disciplines, I think, is a great idea, because it just expands every... It doesn't have to be two people. But every member of that gets a different perspective all at the same time. It really enriches the conversation.

so much in the event business, you worry about the what you're doing, how you're going to get it done, what it's going to look like? But the whys are really what gives you the support and especially moving into the future. And I found this in my experiences that a lot of people want to be able to support you and give you the whys and tell others about the whys. But I feel like our job sometimes is to provide that verbiage to tell them what the whys are and then to give them examples. See this did this instead of so much the what. Because I think when I'm talking to board members with limited resources, they're looking at how much time they're going to have to put in and where are we going to get the money and why are we doing this in the first place? So it's not really the what, which we all get hung up on, but I think we need to have this so well thought through and to be able to show them the whys and the impact and that's what they want to support you and they want to help you gain more support, but we need to feed that to them.

it's by doing it that you figure out how to do it better. And that it is an iterative process, inherently and it's also by doing it that you build some of those relationships and then you can imagine ways to strengthen that or to look in new directions for partners. So I just think that that. Yeah. I think just recognizing that, that it's a practice that's potentially very different from the other work that you're doing the rest of the year, I don't know. So if you weren't previously a festival maker or parade maker, you are learning how to do it by doing it and with your own goals. And I think that all festival makers and parade makers do that.

it's helpful if people on your board and people in your organization can go and participate in the event and get a feel for it. Even if you don't have a lot of other data, that first hand experience of being there, being in the crowd and seeing the enthusiasm makes a huge difference especially if you're having difficulties trying to make your case and want to continue it. It's helpful to get those people down there too.

I've been involved in project evaluations for a lot of different projects, but never anything that was the subtle or nuanced or sophisticated. So there's just a lot there. And even though I wish that I could have time to watch the video, to look at all the imagery, all the archive that was created, I'm sure from that process, there was just so much there. It's very, very rich.

I think one thing across the two conversations I saw connection was that is tough to do, I guess in the mandate is to go into communities that are underserved and do this work of creating awareness and adding resources or capacity building within those neighborhoods. I think it's the way that I guess the time constraints on it undermines the mission in a sense, because I think what we've determined from Atlanta and New Haven is that to really build that capacity and do that work that I think people are earnestly trying to do with it, it takes a long time because these are structural things that have emerged over a long time. I think that so much pressure gets put on people who put on these events to do X, Y, Z, and A, B and C. And I think that oftentimes when it's like that, it's hard to grapple with the reality of the everyday politics of just building rapport with people, as you're trying to actually communicate with organizers and events and then integrate with another ongoing event. You're really integrating into that with Atlanta, for example. So that made it so much tougher to even do all of that. And it was a hope that I think the other organization would do some community building work that they didn't seem interested in doing that kind of work. So I think that it made me think about how these initiatives are structured and how, I guess maybe funding cycles or grant cycles are structured and how many ways the structure of the grant cycle and the accountability measures of the short, measurable time grant cycle that undermines the overall mission of building capacity in neighborhoods and communities. And I think that maybe, with recovery to think about it is just alternative approaches to I think nonprofits or philanthropy efforts or whatever that I think that oftentimes there's constraints of budget, the timeline, get it done. And I think that if there's a commitment to trying to wither away at the structural inequalities, that won't happen in the funding cycle and that it's going to have starts and stops. And I think that may be an overall approach to this work has to change on that level too.