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       Join the Greater Good “Policy Hackathons”

 

The Greater Good Gathering consists of lively discussion grappling with the challenges now facing our country and the world.  Our goal is to help create innovative answers to how institutions, individuals, and, in fact, you can advance the “greater good” – through the public, private and non-profit sectors, or in ways that may be completely new – in this era of rapid change in technology, the economy, politics and society.  But that’s just the start.

Throughout 2026, we will be asking regular Americans across the country to join in discussing these questions – and developing answers – too.  The discussions and ideas at this year’s Greater Good Gathering will be distilled into video and print materials to help all Americans to grapple with the challenges and opportunities we face with Artificial Intelligence, and then themselves join a national conversation on these issues.

 

The Greater Good Initiative has developed a unique “policy hackathon” process in which anyone can participate, contribute to the discussion, and help shape the direction that America takes in responding to AI in the years ahead.  We will be organizing grassroots hackathon events in communities across the country – but you can use our process to organize your own, too, and contribute to the national conversation:  Just as anyone can host a local version of the famous TEDTalks, through a “franchise” system known as TEDx , our hope is that, over the course of 2026 and ensuing years, these “policy hackathons,” informal gatherings, and other methods of conversation will be organized organically in localities across the country: a GGGx ecosystem.  And you can help to do that.

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If you’d like to help put together a Greater Good “policy hackathon,” “town hall,” or a simple discussion at your home, school, or local coffee shop or bookstore in 2026, use the Contact form below to let us know how to reach you!

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Throughout the year, the results of these individual conversations and events will be woven together “live” here on the Greater Good website, for you to react to questions and answers raised by others across the country.  After the election, the product of this nationwide “policy wiki” community will be integrated with the views of experts at the Greater Good Gathering and other gatherings around the country to provide Americans’ consensus views on what the next Congress needs to do to tackle the economic, social concerns, and national security raised by the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence.  This will be presented to national and state leaders at a special event in Washington after the elections – allowing the voices of thousands of Americans to be heard in the corridors of power.

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This “bottom up,” decentralized, and democratized grassroots effort – reflecting the times and the technologies of today) will synthesize a broad national consensus … not a “top-down,” centralized, “expert”-driven process that so much of politics consists of, and which people everywhere are rejecting – represents a new way of generating ideas and reviving the democratic spirit.  We hope you, and all Americans, will join in this process. 

 

How We Built the Greater Good “Policy Hackathons” 

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In the build-up to our 2020 national conference, we developed and “road-tested” the idea of grassroots “policy hackathons” around the country.  These local gatherings were developed and refined from the tech “hackathon” model – allowing small but diverse groups of Americans to come together to propose and flesh out new ideas for addressing the country’s challenges. 

 

Greater Good Initiative founder Eric Schnurer developed the initial model in a course he taught called “Deep Policy,” on the deep issues underlying policy debates, at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  This process was then piloted in early October 2019 at City College of New York (CCNY), where sixty students showed up despite the fact that it was a gorgeous Friday afternoon, and spent four hours energetically working together on policy proposals.  This approach was then tweaked based on the lessons learned at CCNY, in conjunction with Dave Baiocchi, and engineer and innovator at the RAND Institute in Santa Monica, California, and the improvements tried out in another “policy hackathon” at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.  The week before Thanksgiving, a room full of RAND analysts and doctoral students who specialize in developing such “scenario” exercises and “delta processes” helped to tweak the technology hackathon concept to work as a policy design process.

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With some further adjustments learned from the RAND exercise, we launched a full slate of Greater Good “hackathons” across Iowa in January 2020, in the two weeks before the first presidential caucuses of that election cycle, in an interesting range of settings:

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• At Buena Vista University, Storm Lake, about 60 participants drawn came, largely from the community, in a small industrial town in the heart of farm country.

• At Simpson College, Indianola, somewhere between 60 and 80 students, faculty, local notables and neighborhood residents of this college town participated, along with a sprinkling of business leaders from nearby Des Moines, and a group visiting from Australia for the Iowa caucuses.

• And finally, at the Cedar Rapids Public Library, nationally recognized for its novel design and award-winning civic engagement programs, drew several dozen participants from across this major industrial and ag-processing community.

 

Leaders from each of these organizers then discussed the process and outcomes of these grassroots trials at the 2020 Greater Good Gathering in New York City with noted journalist James Fallows.  You can watch a six-minute “highlights reel” from these original “policy hackathons” here. 

 

Building an Ecosystem of Civic Participation

There is in fact a growing nationwide ecosystem of civic participation and democracy organizations. There are several efforts by pollsters and political organizers to get Americans talking across ideological and cultural divides about their own perspectives and perhaps even understanding those of others.  What we hope the Greater Good Initiative can do is to get people not simply talking but, even more so, working together to find solutions.  

We are firmly convinced that there is still a general consensus on the country’s direction and basic values, and our collective role in addressing that, which the vast majority of Americans share.  We believe that if the forgotten voices of most Americans are brought together into a coherent, broadly-shared agenda, that agenda, and its necessity, will itself bring the political system along in its wake, just as grassroots movements have done throughout American history.  And we believe – because we’ve seen it in action – that everyday citizens, not just policy “experts,” can devise the creative solutions we need to start forging that agenda. 

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Join the Greater Good conversation!  Click the Contact Us button to join  or organize an event near you.

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