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Mindfulness practice has many mental and physical well-being benefits. With the increased popularity of live stream technologies and the impact of COVID-19, many people have turned to live stream tools to participate in online meditation sessions. To better understand the practices, challenges, and opportunities in live-stream meditation, we conducted a three-month autoethnographic study, during which two researchers participated in live-stream meditation sessions as the audience. Then we conducted a follow-up semi-structured interview study with 10 experienced live meditation teachers who use different live-stream tools. We found that live meditation, although having a weaker social presence than in-person meditation, facilitates attendees in establishing a practice routine and connecting with other meditators. Teachers use live streams to deliver the meditation practice to the world which also enhances their practice and brand building. We identified the challenges of using live-stream tools for meditation from the perspectives of both audiences and teachers, and provided design recommendations to better utilize live meditation as a resource for mental wellbeing., Comment: Preprint for CSCW24

Crowdsourcing technologies, strategies and methods offer new opportunities for bridging existing gaps among law, policymaking, and the lived experience of citizens. In recent years, a number of initiatives across the world have applied crowdsourcing to contexts including constitutional reform, drafting federal bills, and generating local policies. However, crowd-civic systems also come with challenges and risks such as socio-technical barriers, marginalization of specific groups, silencing of interests, etc. Using a designthinking approach, this workshop will address both opportunities and challenges of crowd-civic systems to develop best practices for increasing public engagement with law and policy. The workshop organizers will suggest an initial framework explicitly intended to be criticized by participants and reconfigured through a series of iterative cooperative small-group activities focusing on “diagnosing” the failures of past crowd-civic system efforts and the successes of online action around social issues. While the ultimate objective of the workshop is to develop a best practices guide, we see iterations on the guide as a mechanism for fostering community and collaboration among policymakers, technologists, and researchers around crowd-civic systems for law and policy.