To solve issues as urgent as racial injustice, income and wealth inequality, and climate change, we must begin by rethinking our underlying infrastructure.
“Infrastructure” is not just roads and bridges. It’s libraries, communities, and parks. It’s cellular networks, satellite arrays, digital commerce, and platforms for social interaction. To ensure everyone has the tools they need to thrive, we must first recognize that infrastructure is multidimensional - that its physical, digital, and social realms are equally important for ensuring opportunity for all.
Join us for a discussion about how we can modernize the definition of infrastructure.
We'll begin by introducing a new framework for Infrastructure, and then hear from organizations implementing this concept in action. We’ll next invite participants to connect their work together by making a crowdsourced landscape map. We’ll end by brainstorming the stakeholders, processes, and partnerships needed to build a better world.
The FIRST part (overview and lightning talks) is presentation format, and will remain the same regardless of session size.
The SECOND part (crowdsourced landscape and brainstorm) will change depending on group size:
- Small (<10): We will have a whole group discussion, and a Siegel notetaker will fill in the collaborative documents
- Medium (11-50): We will use breakout rooms for parallel discussions. Each group will fill out a collaborative document, and Siegel will aggregate and share the responses.
- Large (50+): We will move through the sections of the collaborative document as a large group, and lean on the chat function for participant interaction.
Crucially, the collaborative document format will ensure that folks can participate verbally, via chat, and/or by typing directly into the documents.
The end products (crowdsourced landscape and brainstorm summary) will be made available regardless of session size.
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:At Siegel, our remit for 2021+ is to source and enhance work that advances our concept of equitable and sustainable infrastructure. Below are a number of our ongoing efforts, and how they would be strengthened by and continue after Mozfest:
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AMPLIFICATION. We regularly publish articles, case studies, and research. We plan to publish a summary of our Mozfest session (including slides, landscape, and materials), pursue new threads that emerge during the discussion, and conduct/fund future research if applicable.
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CONVENINGS. We plan to host a number of events throughout 2021. We hope that the topics, speakers, and participants of these events will be shaped by our discussion at Mozfest.
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PARTNERSHIPS. This interdisciplinary nature of this work demands that we curate a robust network of stakeholders across a wide range of sectors and perspectives. Mozfest would offer a rich pool of collaborators, thought-partners, and potential grantees.
Our goal is for participants to see themselves/their work as part of a broader movement for sustainable infrastructure that encompasses the physical, digital, and social spheres. We will accomplish this by offering a framework to connect seemingly disparate sectors, asking folks to identify where/how their work fits the larger movement, and brainstorming together the immediate actions we can take to move towards priority goals.
The collaborative portion of our event is structured to gather this information in a way that will be useful to participants beyond the session.
- The crowdsourced landscape map will show where work is happening, where there are overlaps, and where there is more connective tissue needed
- The brainstorm portion will uncover the group’s thinking in terms of which stakeholders, processes, and partnerships are highest priority, as well as what actions can be taken in the short and long term to generate impact
Katy Knight is the Executive Director of Siegel Family Endowment. She has previously held roles in community engagement at Two Sigma, public affairs at Google, and a number of nonprofits.
Alexandra Mateescu is a researcher in the Labor Futures initiative at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she works on issues at the intersection of labor, technology, and surveillance.