We had a small but fun kickoff to the unconference on Friday morning Asia time/Thursday evening Americas time, with 3 sessions, each with 4-5 people attending.
Session 1, led by @samchua explored post-nationalist futures, going into the awkward “fake nations” history of Asia, the weird history of the Westphalian nation-state (west-failin’) being bolted on regions with very different histories from Europe, and so on.
Session 2, led by @Venkat explored the distinction between Rule of Law and Rule BY Law proposed by Francis Fukuyama, and the different implications for the constraints on sovereign power and how balances of power are actually negotiated.
Session 3, led by @strangeattractor explored a weird Kafka protocol case study involving a tricky corner case in Ontario building codes that make it hard to build a new home. We wargamed a bunch of ideas to work through the situation and have common sense prevail over bureaucratic absurdity.
People who attended the various sessions, please add your notes/points in comments below.