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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.

The moment that I reflected on the most on my time on Saturday was just a pull-aside conversation that I had with Dottie Green and realizing the many, many connections we had just around the work she's been doing for decades and work that I'm interested in researching and doing policy work around. It turns out that Dottie was a principal in several jails and correctional facilities across the state of Connecticut. So it's like the exact nexus of a lot of the research I do around the criminal juvenile justice system around the education system. So I just remember having that conversation with her wanting to connect with her afterwards, and then just spending a lot of time just reflecting on this conflict between who does sort of this broader scale programming and policy on the institutional level or on the national level, on the government level. I just thought a lot about how much of an expert somebody like a Dottie Green was, and all the time she has spent in jails and correctional facilities, and her time spent in middle and high schools and then as a principal within these facilities and how much she's an expert on the change that needs to happen, whether it's in education or whether it's in different systems reform, and just thinking about different rooms that I've been in with policymakers and in government where nobody has that expertise that Dottie has.

those who are facing the obstacles or challenge are closest to the solution and know best the solution. So being somebody who feels like a little bit of an outsider to this science outreach field, in some ways, or in a lot of ways. So I guess the one thing that wasn't spoken about in this dialog was, and maybe it's because there's just knowledge of it beforehand, but it's a big problem that we're trying to solve for, it's how to get science out into communities and received by different communities. I think that I would approach that in centering the voices of those who are at the end of that solution. So the young people in the room who should have that access to sciences should be gaining knowledge of science. So I just think about how much as we think about like, what does this look like when it's scaled or expanded or replicate this outreach? I think a lot about not just thinking, just trying to listen to the voices of the young people and how they react to this sort of outreach or just more broadly like where... I don't know, Rick, if this happened to anywhere along your process, but have you ever sat in a room with kids from the Dwight community, or from the New Haven community and just ask broad questions about what are the best ways to engage you around science? Is it coming to a fall festival? Is it coming into your classroom? Is it doing something in the neighborhood? Really centering those voices because that's the solution that you're solving for.

how do you not just be a flash in the pan? I don't know. I think you do that through organic relationship building, but I don't think that the goal is to be, maybe your goal is not to be a flash in the pan, but your goal certainly isn't to be within that community in the same way. At least that would be the case for me. So me moving into a Dwight community I think it would be a building relationship, but those relationships are going to be different than Dottie's relationship with the 80 year old woman and I should never expect it to be the same. So I think it's a little bit of balance, not wanting to be just as quick in and out peace, but also realizing that it takes work to be part of a community. It takes that time, it takes not only relationship building, but experiencing common experiences together. I think this happens a lot too often in research, where folks on the outside, where researchers go in and they think that six months of relationship building is going to make you this ingrained part of the fabric of a community and it's not, and I think recognizing that and being okay with that is good because I think someone like a Dottie can look at somebody like Rick and say, "You are part of this community in this way." With knowing that it's like you weren't with us 20, 30 years ago when X, Y and Z was happening. So I think it's being realistic about how to what extent you will fit in within the community and being okay. I think sometimes it's pitched as the goal is to become an insider. I never think that the goal should be to become an insider. The goal should to be, to build a relationship as an outsider.

I think it goes back to sort of just narratives and dialogue in the field of just social justice and community change in general around this savior mentality of how much can I go in and really just change or impact the community? I think especially how much can I do so as an outsider of that community, and there are so many different levels to what it means to be an insider or an outsider of a community, right? I think you can in many ways, be bold, you can be somewhere on that continuum. So I know for myself even though I looked more like the people in the room as a black woman, I was not from the Dwight neighborhood or Dwight community like Rick was, for example. So it's a lot about thinking about how much the change has to come from within, how much is that nexus of control really, in that organizing body of black women in the Dwight community who for the past decade has been pulling together these events, have been doing work in the community, and how much can actually be impacted by a Yale or whatever organization, or even a really great community or a really great outside activist who has just good goals and intentions in mind,

So the main focus is not in a lot of these events, actually, especially with this street organizer has not been, let's see what really fancy and cool science activities we can do, but more so how can we help enable the sort of activities that you know that the community that you live in can benefit from, how can we help enable those and also partner if we think it's appropriate to have science activities there?

How do you know that someone's really the right person to be speaking to and not just the person that happens to be willing to speak or lonely? Well, I think that's a cool strategy because I think that when you come into a new place, the person that most likely would talk to a stranger is the person that's more gregarious and that's more outgoing naturally. So I think that keeping that in mind, knowing that, "Okay, this may just be the one person that nobody wants to talk to. That's why they're so willing to talk to me." But also just talking to that person and seeing their personality and seeing what they say about the neighborhood, how they feel about the neighborhood, how they [inaudible] back into the neighborhood. And then I think that's how I come to turn up, is this just an outsider or an insider? Based off of their connections, the depth of their experience within the neighborhood, and also how they feel about their neighborhood, because folks who are passionate about their neighborhood, those are the ones who I really want to talk to. Those are the ones that have the memory of the neighborhood. Keeps a memory of wherever they are, and they can give you the insights into who the key players also. The ones who are really passionate about, "I'm from this neighborhood. I'm from here, I love this area." The whole respect cat cable, for example, I think those are key people that can be reached out to. And you're going to say, "How can an event like this work in this particular neighborhood?" Or, "How do we align our aim with your aim?" It's like this is the best event possible.

There's not one silver bullet. And there're a lot of different avenues to push. One, I think, is availability. When you require people to come to you for science engagement, then by default, you're eliminating a lot of the population that can't get there. Even down to the way the museums have photos of their engagement. Is it a distinguished, non-minority leader in a room full of little brown kids? There are different cues, conscious and subconscious, that we embody. And I will say, that the majority of science communication, is just recognizing, that despite your best intention there are tons of ways that you're still very exclusive. In terms of the ways that you connect with audiences that you think are in need, even down to deciding who is the person in need?

I think is really awesome, because it's going into an environment that's not one, that we as providers of learning opportunities, we don't own those spaces. But we can go into them, if we're respectful about it, and actually provide some opportunities. And so, that's what I think a lot of organizations are trying to figure out now. This diverse audience that we all want to have be part of, and see the value in what we do, in terms of providing learning opportunities, it's not going to happen in our spaces, because they're not their spaces.

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.

But based on the conversations I had with attendees there, this idea of identity, people being able to express who they are, and this being a safe place to do so, or who they aspire to be. I heard comments, about a sense of safety, and belonging. There's a subset who are outsiders, but they found an inclusive, welcoming group. There's definitely a strong culture of fandom. Of just being able to say, "I love this thing," and being able to share it, and connect with others.

I felt very welcome there. People felt like it was their place, and I don't have a specific anecdote or something that I overheard as part of that but whether you were in costume or whether you weren't, didn't really matter. It was all this congenial scene and people were having fun and they were learning things, and so this is a fantastic environment for people to learn in on their own terms, and that's what the whole informal thing is about, and it just is so ripe for that and I saw so many people learning things that were interesting to them, and they were driving that learning and providing more opportunities for that that are fun, and some of it was poignant. Some of the sessions that you guys did with the LGBTQ focus and the women's focus, those were awesome. Not being an active member of either of those communities but living with them and around them, I was welcomed there too. It was super cool. I think that it's a pretty big tent at this place and we need to take advantage of it, not just in Long Beach but as a typology and I'll be really interested to see what you guys find out from Dragon Con in a totally different part of the country and whether it had the same kind of vibe to it.

we were talking about the replicability of this program and that's one of the things that I worry about, is the best programs, you're really dependent on actually having someone who is authentically part of both of these communities and that's not easily replicable.

It was a wildly diverse crowd. If we had that kind of diverse crowd in museums we'd be really happy. That's the overall reaction, is that this is an audience to an event that you could make some really... It's got great potential for making connections to this audience to the STEM content and the connections to audiences that the National Science Foundation and other agencies and foundations would love to do. So it seemed really primed

I'd like to bring up a point. So on my way there, I took the MARTA, and what I saw was so many different kinds of people who weren't the typical television definition of a nerd, dressed up in their costumes, and because it's free and it's public it's really accessible, and because it's on the MARTA line and downtown, there's fewer barriers to entry. And so little Latin X kids were on the train in their superhero costumes, and you could see some of the teenagers dressed up as their TV shows. And I think in all things there should be a diversity in approach, and if we look at DragonCon as just one tool of communication of science then ... You have a whole group that does tons of different kinds of science, so I guess what I'm trying to say is, in so much as DragonCon is just one avenue of science communication or of science engagement, I think it's actually really inclusive, and I guess just from my experience on the MARTA, there were people that I just did not expect to see excited about DragonCon, and they were hype and loud and building their excitement as they got closer. I'm just reading myself at this point, but to the extent that this isn't the only way you connect with audiences, I think it's just one really, really effective tool to reach people.

Yeah, I think that one of the things, from studying science communication, that I have seen over and over again is this idea that it doesn't matter, that the concept of science and being a scientist is easy for a lot of people to remove from community and cultural contexts, which I think is wrong, but I think that a lot of people do it. And so it is always gratifying to see when people are willing to do those outreach things and say, "No, it's not all academic ivory towers. Science is made up of communities too, and it matters." Not just communities, but minorities. And I think a lot of minorities feel it quite intensely when they're not represented, and they don't feel like they're seen.

I think I've just come up with another implicit message from the activity, which is that science is for everyone. There was no one from the crowd that was excluded from participating and engaging. Yeah, I would agree with that. I was just thinking. Yeah, this is Michelle again. That's what I was thinking earlier, that a message that I personally really love that you belong. You belong however you identify, and you belong in science, however you identify.

And my one big takeaway I had was just the accessibility and inclusivity aspect of the events of a free, open public experience that is not ticketed and it's not limited and it's not necessarily directed to a specific audience. But yeah, it's an opportunity for people's varying identities to come together.

So one of the things that come up a lot from me in the past 18 months, is not just as an adult, because it feels like it had a spotlight shone on it is the idea of inclusion, who is included, where they're included. And the fact that a lot of people are not necessarily... I know our event, I'm pretty sure that people will come, they'll enjoy them, but they don't necessarily feel free to be themselves. And something like Pride and Dragon Con, people go there because they're expressing themselves, this is a huge event, but it's a safe space for them. And it's somewhere where they don't have to be someone else, they just to be themselves in all their glory, wherever that is. Just our event, I'm sure people come and they code switch, they don't get to be themselves. So I think there's something unique there by taking something in situ, to something that's happening where we have to adapt to the situation as the people create new experience.