Forge Relationships

merchandise could make people feel a part of the community. I live by Yankee Stadium and every game, there's tons of people decked out with all their Yankee stuff, and their hats. And you know that people are going to this game, they're going to [crosstalk]. And it's a five dollar cap, but everybody has it, and they're signifying that they are going to this game and their part of this community. And, I wonder if we could think about how can we tie these communities together in a way that it makes people feel a part of the community. Not we're just making them buy stuff, but there's a way to engage, and you're learning stuff, and that you're part of this community, and that you're signifying that, and that you really love critical thinking, and you really love to ask questions and build on your curiosity.

When you're looking at situated engagement, it's easy to look at the final event as the end product, and that you have to hang all the value around it from that moment. But in a lot of these cases, the actual end result is the tip of the spear. There's a whole lot that goes to that, and maybe the real successes in participating in the community, are part of that long process leading up to it, and not so much the final moment.

I think there are real opportunities, both for the Long Beach Comic Con, and some of these other events that we've been talking about, to really use the engagement at the event as, I don't want to say as a pretext, but as a moment to work towards, and to use that to build relationships. Or to have conversations, or to get maybe people thinking about science and craft, who don't normally put those together. I'm just thinking, about the power of the event to actually enable a lot of slower stuff. The Wednesday night, and Wednesday afternoon meetings, or Saturday morning meetings. Like, "Let's build the thing that we're going to bring to the con." Or, "let's work on our parade costumes, how we're going to make the planets." I just think those crafting events, or those slower moving things, but that are related to the event, that are gearing up to the event, those can be really powerful learning opportunities. And I know, that's not happening on the same scale, as the thousands of people who go to the con, but I think those can be really powerful. And then, the event itself could draw more people into that process for the next cycle. That's just a reflection, and maybe a slightly different way of thinking about the reason to be at the event. I know you want to engage people in thinking about science in other spaces, but the work shopping part, I think, can be also quite powerful.