Workshop Agenda

If successful, this workshop should end with a set of concrete projects (or plans for projects) around synthesis infrastructures, championed by workshop participants. We'll aim for this end goal in two phases of activities: 1) pre-workshop onboarding and project formation, and 2) synchronous "live" working and sharing/feedback sessions.

Phase I: Pre-Workshop Onboarding and Project/Theme Formation - Friday Oct 28 to Friday Nov 11

Goals

The goal of this phase is to generate and converge on a set of ~6 Project ideas or themes that participants will be excited to begin working on / discussing during the workshop and (where appropriate) complete after the workshop.

We hope that projects/themes will orient towards some tangible outcomes, which may include (but are not limited to):

• Resources, such as a system map/synthesis of the problem space, synthesis/directory of tools, essential reading list, case study library, or shared synthesis benchmark dataset
• Proposals, such as a study or grant proposal, or an editorial/essay
• Prototypes, such as a sketch of a common synthesis protocol, proof-of-concept of synthesis interoperability, or lo-fi/mid-fi prototype iterations around a common synthesis problem
• Data, such as user feedback / testing of a prototype
• Organization, such as a new organization, or convening of a community

We expect some/many projects to be combinations of these outcome themes/types. We also recognize many of you are coming in with existing tools and prototypes and workflows, so it's totally ok to have "compound projects" (e.g., joint/coordinated prototypes, or joint/coordinated pilot tests of a similar question/feature across a few tools)! We want you to get the most of what you want out of this workshop, and we aim for this outcome-centric structure to facilitate that.

Activities

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to:

• Find a mission
• Find some fellow travelers

We will do this through facilitated conversations and engagements on the Discord.

You have been assigned to an initial "table" with other participants to seed initial discussions. The tables are unnamed, but they are not random! The organizers have carefully chosen a mix of people that we think will kickstart a fruitful conversation that can lead to project ideas. NOTE: these are initial seatings, that you can feel free to change! You don't have to stay in your table either! Think of this as a potluck dinner party where we give you an initial seating, but you should feel free to float around, change tables, and start new discussions - whatever brings the right group together for the conversation you want to have! For example, we split up members from teams for more cross-pollination, but please feel free to come back together if you'd rather operate as a unit.

Each table will have an assigned organizer who will moderate and scaffold the discussion to converge towards a project/theme idea associated with 1) one or more champions and fellow collaborators, 2) a project/theme page here on the wiki, and 3) a project/theme channel on the Discord (with a pinned link to the wiki project page) for focused coordination and work/discussion during and after the workshop. The organizers will help you get these set up!

We estimate that participation per week should amount to (spread out across the days/weeks) ~1-2 hrs per week: one way to think about this is to divert some of the time you would spend thinking/discussing these issues on Twitter or in the lab or in your own notebooks/sketchbooks or elsewhere to the shared Discord and wiki for the ~1-2 weeks prior to the workshop.

Phase II: Synchronous "Live" Working and Sharing/Feedback Sessions - Saturday & Sunday Nov 12-13

Goals

The goal of this phase is to iterate on and gain momentum and progress on projects and themes of interest.

There is limited time during the workshop, so priority is on achieving some escape velocity rather than "completing" a project or "closing" a topic/theme. We will consider it a success if each working group ends the workshop with 1) initial progress and momentum on the project's goals or a distillation of discussion themes, and/or 2) concrete, energized plans for next steps (e.g., "let's keep working on X and [submit it to Y, etc.])

Activities and Schedule

The organizing team has synthesized (based on discussions in the pre-workshop phase, as well as workshop submissions) a number of proposed Workshop Working Groups (3 have coalesced substantially and were created by request from participants, and ~5 are latent/forming).

The intent is for progress to be documented on the evolving project/theme pages, which may link to prototypes/wireframes/proposal docs/code repos, or contain reading lists, or other markers of progress to share. Progress will happen via a mix of work sprints (synchronous and asynchronous) over the course of Day 1, along with a brief report back, and then culminating in a second/final report back with feedback/discussion from other participants on Day 2.

The following is the current proposed rough schedule (in US Eastern time). We're limiting synchronous joint sessions to ~3 hours in the morning of US East timezone, to maximize overlap in schedules across our major time zones.

Day 1 (Nov 12)

When (US Eastern)	What	Where	Notes
09:30 - 09:45 (your timezone)	Welcome!	Together, on Zoom(commentary on Discord)	Joel, Jonny to kickoff
09:45 - 10:00 (your timezone)	Launch working groups	Together, on Zoom(commentary on Discord)	Joel to summarize TL;DR of people/projects/themes from Workshop Working Groups so far so everyone is on the same page before joining their working groups
10:00 - 12:00 (your time zone)	Work sprints / discussion in working groups	In groups, on Discord voice or Zoom breakouts, as preferred, and on wiki	Participants work on and/or discuss projects/themes in their working groups
12:00 - 12:45 (your time zone)	Working groups report back	Together, on Zoom(commentary on Discord)	Working groups report back not just progress but open/new challenges that might connect to others. Assuming ~6 groups, this gives us up to ~6-7 mins for brief reporting for each working group. Report back should be mirrored/elaborated in the project/theme wiki page.
Various	Work sprints / discussion in working groups	On Discord and wiki	Working groups continue work / discussion sync/async as they are able

Day 2 (Nov 13)

When (US Eastern)	What	Where	Notes
09:30 - 09:40 (your time zone)	Welcome back!	Together, on Zoom(commentary on Discord)
09:40 - 10:40 (your time zone)	Work sprints / discussion in working groups	In groups, on Discord voice or Zoom breakouts, as preferred, and on wiki	Focus on summarizing/finalizing progress and next steps
10:40 - 12:50 (your timezone)	Working group progress reports and discussion, wrap up	Together, on Zoom(commentary on Discord)	Assuming ~6 groups, this gives us up to ~20 mins for sharing/discussion for each working group.

Detailed instructions

• We're expecting several of you to join us for the first time on Saturday (we're glad you're joining us!!). To help you get up to speed, we've tried to synthesize key entry points in the Discord discussions in the Workshop Working Groups descriptions. We've also put down some of your names where we thought you might be interested in a working group. Feel free to vote with your feet, though! They are just suggestions.
• We expect that those of you who've already been coalescing into one of the workshop working groups will join that particular working group. Newcomers can feel free to self-select into any of the proposed working groups according to our suggestions or not (it's ok if some of the latent/forming ones don't gain critical mass; they're just proposals!).
• We'll make a Zoom breakout room available for you, but you can also choose to do things on Discord.
• Some of the projects will be concrete enough that you'll spend most of your time working on a concrete artifact and documenting progress/resources/challenges in the group page. Other projects/themes might be best approached by discussing/sharing issues/resources, and documenting learnings and questions in the group page.
• Working groups are encouraged to self-organize in the time between Day 1 and Day 2 to continue making progress on projects/discussions.
• The focus of Day 2 is on synthesizing and sharing back what has been accomplished/learned and energy for carrying forward connections/ideas/momentum past the workshop.