Every Sunday at The KINN in Venice Beach, we hold what I call Church for the Curious. Part science fair, part hackathon, part beach party. A marine biologist sits next to a blockchain developer sits next to a high school student. The unexpected connections are the point.
How It Started
Science Sundays didn’t start with a plan. It started with a table, some laptops, and people who wanted to talk about what they were working on. The KINN — a community incubator right across the street from the Google campus and Gold’s Gym — provided the space. Smarter with Science provided the scientific programming. The community provided everything else.
The format evolved: pod leadership in the morning (11 AM to 1 PM, real work — sprint updates, blockers, cross-pod coordination), open community in the afternoon (1 PM to 4 PM, anyone welcome — demos, discussions, onboarding). The transition between sessions is the connective tissue. Pod members become hosts, sharing what they built with whoever walks in.
Why “Church”
Not the religious kind. The gathering kind. The weekly rhythm kind. The place where you show up even when you’re tired because the people there make you better.
The scientific community has a credentialism problem. Conferences cost thousands. Journals hide behind paywalls. Lab access requires institutional affiliation. Science Sundays costs nothing, requires nothing, and excludes no one. You don’t need a degree to belong in this conversation. You need a question. And I can tell you’ve got one.
What Actually Happens
Ocean ViSION pod members show a high school student how to sequence eDNA from a Venice Beach water sample. The Community Resilience pod plans their next rapid-response protocol. Someone who’s never written a line of code asks a question that reframes the entire approach. A venture investor from AI Impact Ventures pod meets a grad student whose work she’ll fund six months later.
The unexpected connections aren’t a side effect. They’re the product.
The Venice Beach Factor
Venice has a forty-year history of art-meets-tech community building. Gold’s Gym, Spacepost Labs, Budman Studios, the Google campus — all within walking distance. The geography matters because proximity creates collisions, and collisions create collaboration. Science Sundays didn’t invent this pattern. We inherited it and gave it a scientific mission.
Come Through
Every Sunday. The KINN. Venice Beach. Bring a laptop, bring a question, bring a friend. The door is open.