Life stories and an inspired cause, supported by AI – and people

As day broke, I looked out over the sea of ​​tents, camping gear, and bicycles that stretched across the campus of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and said to myself: We are doing something important here…

On August 3, over 6,000 cyclists set out to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The total number of participants was about 10,000, including several thousand volunteers. This was the 45th year of a bike-a-thon that began in 1980 with just 40 people and raised a total of $10,000.

As of this year, the event has raised an incredible $1 billion for cancer research and treatment over its lifetime!

Our final destination was the southernmost tip of the Massachusetts countryside in Provincetown, and along the way I learned a lot about the people and their desire to help each other.

This bicycle pilgrimage lasted two days and many of us stopped overnight at the Mass Maritime Academy, where we camped outdoors or, some, slept in the library (where there is air conditioning).

Then, in the early hours of the morning, before dawn (4:30 am to be exact), we set off again, a sea of ​​people on a long journey. In total, I covered 300 kilometers.

When you cycle together you get the feeling that people can work together in complex ways like schools of fish and come together in a vibrant community for a common cause.

PMC was founded by Billy Starr, who lost his mother to melanoma at the age of just 25.

Now that legacy has grown into a crowd that seems innumerable when you are in the midst of it – I have met so many people from so many places, with photos, buttons and pennants of their loved ones on their backs and chests, or memorabilia identifying their “teams”, those they ride for and those who want to help. I have seen Team Daisy, a group of around 60 people who collectively raised $296,000 and a powerful memorial to those who fought cancer, some of whom are gone, others who continue on their journey. It turned out that I knew the founders of the company that created this team.

I also connected to a TED talk I produced 10 years ago.

It’s a success story that is inspiring – Sammi Janower was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of three and had to undergo intensive medical treatment to emerge victorious. She rode this year and has rode every year since. And I remember how rousing her speech was – Go Team Samantha!

For me, this was a powerful example of the human resilience we supported, but there were many more stories of parents, children, husbands and wives, friends and loved ones who had been touched by cancer.

Saturday night I slept next to a Dana Farber doctor who is doing groundbreaking cancer research. He happened to be an MIT graduate and had a motivational story to tell. This man lost his wife and son to cancer – his son worked at SpaceX before he was diagnosed. After his son’s death, the doctor, who was already actively involved in the fight, inherited his son’s stocks due to a lack of heirs and is using them to start a company to fight cancer. He is putting the money back into the cause. It’s confidence-inspiring to see how committed people are to eradicating one of the deadliest diseases we face in clinical medicine.

Each of us knows someone who has struggled with this diagnosis, and seeing so many people working together gives you a sense of the joy that comes with something that is not a competition, but a profound collaboration.

I would say AI has a role to play in this too. These technologies will help with the kind of crowdsourcing and leverage of money so that the proceeds from the bike-a-thon will benefit cancer patients the most. I also thought of the analogy to events like FIRST Robotics, where I saw tens of thousands of youth working together on hardware projects. We could all learn a thing or two from FIRST & PMC about how to really work together for a common cause.

As for the experience, it’s hard to fully describe it, but there’s a sense of togetherness that you don’t get very often in life. Everyone has their reasons for being there. People you pass say “thank you” – because we’re there for a reason.

At a time when society is so polarized and we face so many confusing challenges, it is gratifying to be among people who are united on a cause like this.

It was fun being out there on the open road too! And even when we stopped, we were all there together. You can really compare the event to a cafeteria in, say, a high school – only here there were no cliques sitting separately: jocks, hipsters, nerds like those portrayed in movies like the Breakfast Club – the PMC was all different kinds of people together, with common goals!

Another way to explain it is to graph or scale the interactions you have with other people on a regular day. If you were to compare that to the experience of attending PMC, the result would be overwhelming! I had so many conversations, so many interactions in a single day – that it felt like I had spent years meeting and visiting new people.

Eventually we made it and then we went our separate ways. But it was truly an unforgettable experience!