I was recently
lucky enough to be invited to attend the 2015
Science Hack Day in San Francisco. At first I honestly thought that the
invitation had been sent to me accidentally (because I have imposter syndrome
like everyone else), but once the organizer Ariel Waldman followed up, I
happily accepted. A big reason I decided to go was the location: I grew up in
the Bay Area, and the bulk of my family and my in-laws are scattered around the
region. This meant that I could bring the little ones along (R, 4 years old and
A, 3 months), and the grandparents could help take care of them while I was
busy science-ing.
As the date
approached, I became a bit more nervous than anticipated. My role, as I
understood, was: (1) to give a quick talk about coral reefs and in doing so
help spark ideas for people to work on during the weekend, and (2) to bring a particular
perspective and expertise to the arena that might be useful and (3) to observe
and report on the event. The concept of Science Hack Day was still a little
muddy to me, though I watched the explanatory
video and read some blog posts previous Science Ambassadors had
written. In these, it was explained that teams of people would form organically
to chose and work on a topic for 24 hours, and then present the results of this
“hack” to the entire Hack Day crowd when the time was up.
My lingering
worries fell into two camps: (1) sciency-types, myself included, are not
legendary for smooth social skills; how will we form groups spontaneously if we
are too shy to interact? and (2) how will people decide what to work on, and
how will they physically do so? I had also invited my dad to join me at the
event as a participant. He designs new and refurbished labs for researchers at
Stanford, has patented several inventions, designed and built multiple houses,
and is to me the epitome of someone who can come up with clever solutions to
problems. He also articulated another worry as we read through rough ideas that
participants entered into a shared Google doc ahead of the event: (3) what if
all of this potentially amazing collective energy and expertise is wasted on
trivial projects?
The Friday
before the event, the other ambassadors, the event organizers, and I met for
lunch at the waterfront in San Francisco. My mom entertained my littles nearby
while I enjoyed interesting and uninterrupted discussions about science with
other grownups, and got to eat with both hands. Thrilling!
 |
| Giving my talk in the Oval Office. I love to gesticulate. |
On Saturday
morning, I left my 4 year old again with my mom, and headed back to The City
(as Bay Area folk call San Francisco). Science Hack Day was hosted at the
headquarters of GitHub. The space was, to put it mildly, amazing. If you could
take all of the coolest things you could think of – a DJ booth, full bar, catering
kitchen, pool and foosball tables, a replica of the Oval Office, etc. – and put
them all into one architecturally beautiful building, this would be it. Oh,
also throw in an on-site daycare to be even more awesome. I don’t even fully
understand what GitHub is, but the building made me want to work there.
The first hour
of the morning consisted of enjoying breakfast at large wooden tables
reminiscent of movie versions of Oktoberfest. Participants donned decorated
name-tags and began meeting one another during this time, exploring the work
area and gadgets that were on hand. A small CNC milling machine and two 3D
printers were staged on one table, along with a collection of powertools and
electronics equipment for making circuits and the like. A lot of people were
already typing away on computers at the tables, or scattered around on beanbags
and swiveling captain’s chairs.
Next, the
organizers kicked things off with some opening remarks. Some of this spoke
directly to my fears: we shouldn’t worry if it takes us a while to find a team,
and the lab-coated organizers could help if we were feeling like a fish out of
water and didn’t know how or where to join in. They also explained that nine
upcoming lightning talks – in three concurrent sessions around the space –
would be followed by time devoted to anyone who wanted to do so making a
42-second pitch for their Hack Day project. Both of these points calmed my
fears a bit, but I still wondered how things would actually fall into place.
My lightning
talk followed an audio-visually stunning and content-rich talk by a planetary
astronomer, Alex Parker, who
had a knack for explaining his science in a straightforward and digestible
manner (and who was also super nice). I was both totally impressed and happy to
learn from his talk, while also terrified about having to go up next. My talk
was decidedly less visually arresting and, I worried, perhaps both too simple
and too overwhelming. I explained what corals are, the main things that make
them unhappy (hot water due to climate change that causes coral bleaching,
overfishing, and polluted runoff), and ended with some quick ideas for “hacks”
that I thought might be possible and rewarding to work on during the weekend*. Originally,
I had planned to just put baby A in a carrier and give the talk with her, but
my dad offered to hold her instead – helpful as she decided to throw a fit a
few minutes into the presentation.
I didn’t feel
confident enough to try to lead a group towards a particular hack, so didn’t
pitch a specific idea. Instead, I listened and then cruised around for the
first part of the day to see what kinds of projects got started. Indeed, though
my initial worries were centered on how people would find groups and decide on
projects, it did seem to work out. I should have probably realized that if
groups of organisms like ants
can end up with coordinated behaviors, then surely humans can, even if only due
to emergence.
After a while, I
found and joined a group that aimed to make a game to teach kids about human
threats to coral reefs; perfect! But, we took quite some time to actually
decide on how the game should work and to then make it – in fact, by the time I
left that night to get A and myself off to bed at a hotel nearby, we had very
few solid ideas of how the game would work.
 |
| Our game prototype. |
Our group didn’t
work through the night like some others did; we had good sleeps and a
relatively leisurely breakfast back at GitHub, then realized we really needed
to step it up as we only had a few hours left to complete our hack, and had
nothing yet to show. We quickly started brainstorming and making decisions on
what direction to follow, and who should work on what tasks. We managed to
complete the game and even had time to do a run-through, and it seemed to work.
Our game, which we called iSea Life, was a
cooperative, timed game with the goal to build a coral reef that had more
colorful (healthy) pieces than white (bleached or dead) pieces. Some of my
teammates are continuing to revise the game, and the final version will
eventually be up here,
so check it out!
At 1 pm on
Sunday, everyone finished hacking and gathered to see presentations of
everyone’s projects. First, Heather from GitHub gave a nice speech where she
showed that although some of the projects that people have worked on during
previous Science Hack Days may have at the time seemed trivial, some of them
led to real and useful solutions
to problems. Indeed, jiving off
of other people and applying their thoughts to another problem is a great way
to come up with new
ideas. Case in point: I came up with my PhD research project by chance
during coffee with a friend. Although Science Hack Day could be perhaps used to
bring folks together to solve pre-determined “real” problems facing the world, in
many ways the design seems perfect for stimulating creativity in a sort of
random-walk approach. Even if the presented projects don’t immediately seem
useful, maybe they can be further refined in the future or applied to known
problems.
Since I’m an
environmentalist, the projects I liked the best were those that had some obvious
application towards environmental problems. These included “smogify,” a filter
to make photos visually reflect the air quality at the time and place they were
taken; an extension to Google maps to quantify the carbon footprint of various
transit modes on calculated routes; and an application that would redirect someone
from a dubious website to a trusted source after they searched for something
“sciency” like “climate change.”
In the end, I
really enjoyed my time at Science Hack Day and found it to be a highly
rewarding experience that I will think back on often.
 |
| Another cool hack: a bias-meter for news articles. |
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*Here is a brief
rundown of my ideas for coral-reef hacks, most of which were not exactly
feasible to work on in such a limited time and space (GitHub being rather dry,
after all):
Three biggest
problems for corals:
1.
Climate
Change à causes coral bleaching and increases
disease susceptibility
a.
Suck
greenhouse gases out of atmosphere (this was not actually a suggested hack, but
something that needs to be figured out)
b.
Improved
suctioning device to combat
black band disease (one of a large number of coral diseases, this would
perhaps not have a large impact but is somewhat manageable)
c.
Shading
devices
d.
How
to mix up deep, cool water
e.
More
zooplankton?
g.
Map
potential poleward expansion?
2.
Overfishing
à one consequence is algal overgrowth
a.
Underwater
chicken tractor, to
enclose herbivorous fish and get them to clean off macroalgae on a particular
part of the reef?
3.
Polluted
runoff à many causes and consequences
a.
Minimalist
sewage treatment
b.
Runoff
reduction ideas
c.
Water
cleanup?
I LOVE the idea for an underwater chicken tractor, put those fish to work!
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