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Day 2 — Build and Report Back

Day 2 is the main work day. Your team has about 3.5 to 4 hours of total team work time across the day.

This is where most of the project happens. The goal is not to do everything. The goal is to build one useful thing and document it clearly enough that other people can understand what you tried.

By the end of Day 2, your Summit team should have:

  • Questions, hypotheses, and context from the morning
  • At least one visual, such as a photo of a whiteboard or notes
  • A clear product direction or analysis direction
  • Evidence of work, such as data, methods, design, code, a concept, or a prototype
  • One early result or obstacle
  • A 2-minute report ready

📣 Edit the Day 2 sections Open Home See the Example

D2-A — Morning focus: questions, hypotheses, context

Main pages: Define, Explore, Data, and Methods; Project Question

Use the morning to draft questions, hypotheses, and context. Add at least one visual, such as a photo of your whiteboard, sticky notes, sketch, or shared notes.

Ask:

  • What are we trying to understand or enable?
  • Who would use the answer?
  • What would count as progress today?
  • What is realistic today?
  • What is too big?
  • Does this still match our product?

Write one working question, a few hypotheses or hunches, and the context someone needs to understand the work.

D2-B — Use AI breakout intentionally

Main pages: Define, Explore, Data, and Methods; Method and Code

Decide quickly who goes where during the AI breakout rotation.

Each person should go in with one question and bring back one useful idea, method, example, or warning.

The four focus areas are:

  • Building Earth embeddings
  • Co-producing digital twins for environmental futures
  • Advancing best practices for using large language models in environmental data science
  • AI and causal inference for ecological mechanisms and decision-making

Document only the ideas, methods, examples, or warnings that change what your team will build or test.

D2-C — Afternoon focus: try datasets and analyses

Main page: Define, Explore, Data, and Methods

Try a few datasets and analyses. Keep it visual, keep it simple. Update the site to reflect what you test.

Choose one primary output type for the rest of Day 2.

Pick one:

  • A figure or map
  • A prototype or workflow
  • A concept brief
  • A decision framework
  • A notebook or code example
  • A research question and next-step plan

Do not try to make all of these. Pick the one that best matches your team, your time, and your question.

D2-D — Update data and methods as you test

Main pages: Data Exploration, Method and Code

You have roughly 3 hours total to build something.

Focus on making one useful thing. Update the page as you go. This page is your shared record.

Use these sections to capture:

  • Snapshot showing initial data patterns
  • 2-4 promising data sources, with links and 1-line notes
  • 2-4 methods or technologies you are testing, such as stats, models, or visualization
  • Challenges identified
  • Visuals
  • Short-term and long-term next steps

Keep it visual, keep it simple, and update the site to reflect what you test.

D2-E — Synthesize findings and visuals

Main page: Results

Focus on synthesis. Highlight 2-3 visuals that tell the story and keep text crisp.

Use the Results section to prepare a 6-minute walkthrough of the homepage:

  • Why
  • Questions
  • Data/Methods
  • Findings
  • Next

Add:

  • Team photo
  • Findings at a glance
  • Visuals that tell the story
  • What is next

D2-F — Prepare the 2-minute report

Main page: Report Out (Day 2, 2 minutes)

Spend 15–20 minutes max preparing this.

Keep it simple:

  • What you are making
  • What question you asked
  • Why it matters
  • What you tried
  • What you found or learned
  • What you will do tomorrow

This is a checkpoint, not a final result.

Day 2 finish line

You are done when you have something real, even if it is incomplete.

Before leaving, your page should have:

  • A drafted and focused question
  • One chosen output type
  • Evidence of work
  • One early result or obstacle
  • A short, clear 2-minute report