#cfa2014

[codeisland]

Rhode Island rolled out the white carpet for us on our first day. This is the Rhode Island Department of Administration building where we will be turning the 3rd floor conference room into our command center this month.  We had some great discovery conversations with Chief Digital Officer Thom Guertin and Stuart Freiman & Alisson Walsh from Broadband Rhode Island.  Please stop in and say hi!

[teamlongbeach]

Curious what our month in Long Beach included? Here are some highlights!

[cfa14denver]

Research & Cookies

Hundreds if not thousands of constituents walk through the doors of Denver’s municipal buildings everyday. Some are seeking permits, some are registering their vehicles, others are paying their taxes. Most of the time, these constituents have one thing in common – they’re waiting.

This week I decided to take advantage of that simple fact by setting up a “lemonade stand” outside the Community Planning and Development department to collect feedback from constituents. The plan was pretty simple: lure in participants in with the promise of free cookies and lemonade and spend a few minutes soliciting feedback. My goal was to collect as much feedback as possible but to be honest I really didn’t know how well the whole thing would pan out. Would I get sign-off to do this? Would anyone want to talk? Would a few minutes be enough time to get any useful feedback?

The set-up was easy enough. I bought two gallons of lemonade, some cups, and about 50 fresh cookies from Safeway for a grand-total of around $10. I got sign-off from the department head with the help of my city partner and set-up shop in front of the check-in kiosk where I thought there would be a lot of foot-traffic.

As a proof of concept, this exercise was a pretty huge success. I got 5 participants over the course of just an hour. Each sat down and provided rich feedback to the following questions:

What are some things you like about your neighborhood?

What are some things you dislike about your neighborhood?

If you could get the city to build a mobile app to fix something in the city, what problem would it solve?

I also learned a lot ...

Get sign-off – I got a few raised eyebrows from staff working at the department but whenever anyone asked, I just mentioned that I had permission from the head of the department and they relaxed.

Position yourself – Sitting behind the department counter didn’t work out. First, people thought I was affiliated with the department and started asking me logistical questions about filing permits. I also got the sense people were less likely to speak with me when I sat behind the desk so I swung around and sat right next to where a participant would be sitting. I felt this changed the perceived dynamic from “interview" to “conversation" and made me seem more approachable.

Sell yourself – I played around with a few different signs. The first ones started off a bit text heavy as you can see below, but the sign that got the most attention was the simplest – "FREE COOKIES.” After I got their attention, I found that setting participants’ expectations by stating “It’ll only take a minute!” got more people to sit down and talk. Participants who were concerned about the time at first would stay longer once they started talking.

Consider context –  I thought I’d have a couple hours to collect feedback at the end of the day from 3-5 but the department offices close at 4pm leaving me with just an hour. People were more willing to give feedback after they had finished their business with the city so I often caught their attention while they were running in got them to sit down on the way out. I also found that participants had a lot of unsolicited feedback about the permitting process they had just gone through. I let them talk it out before asking my own questions.

Organizations often use the excuse that there is too much overhead to conduct user research on projects they are working on. This exercise demonstrates that very little effort and few resources are needed to get great feedback from constituents. My next goal is to get the city to start collecting feedback like this on a regular basis (hopefully weekly). I’d like to try out different locations like the DMV, tax office, excise and licensing, city hall, etc. And I think next time I’m gonna use donuts :)

- Kavi

[a-tale-of-two-islands]

Teammates

Rhode Island(left)   |   Puerto Rico(right)

[soundslikefury]

But enough about HIPAA compliance. Let's talk about hippo compliance. #lbcfa #cfa2014 (at Code for America)

[catsforamerica]

This may be the most Cats for America thing yet - a mashup of maps and cat news!

[codeisland]

Alex Tran, Code for America's Fellowship program manager, was our trusty CodeAcross food and beverage wrangler yesterday. Thanks for all your help and support, Alex!

[teamlongbeach]

Team Long Beach has been strategizing and brainstorming all week, watch our creative process in action!

[a-tale-of-two-islands]

With our government partner

Code Island (left)   |   Coqui Coders (right)  Thanks for following! Our residencies may be over, but our journeys are just beginning.

[techzans-blog]

Buckling Down

We were set to fly back to San Antonio in two days, but we had a problem. Our team knew we had to buckle down and form a solid strategy around what we were working on. We needed to focus.

We were at a good place. We had a main project idea we all felt good about — Homebase, an app that makes it simple to fix up your house. (More about that soon.)

However, we had a bunch of other project ideas that we were excited about too … around 50. These came to us through meetings with council members, government employees, community members, and the public. We couldn’t work on everything, so we made a plan: Team Project Tracker.

We wrote down the projects we were going to spend our time on and each one had three questions:

1. Who wants to work on it?

2. Who’s the project leader?

3. What’s the priority?

—

1. Who wants to work on it?

If you wanted to work on a project, put your name down. For whatever reason, this helped cut the fat and left us with projects we felt were worth spending time on. Projects that sounded cool at one point (e.g. a card flipping catalog with people's likes and dislikes about the city) became extra work that we were happy to leave behind.

Some projects we were all interested in being involved in. Others, just one or two of us. And that’s OK. We recognized we’re three different people with different interests. We’re all focusing on developing our skill set, learning new things, and we’re happy to help each other when we can. Still, some projects needed attention from a developer, some from designer, and some from both.

We decided to narrow our efforts, but stay open to helping each other out as projects evolved.

2. Who’s the project leader?

Before this strategy, our leadership roles on each project were not clear. We each have different areas of expertise and capabilities. Our leadership styles were different, but we’re all leaders in our own way.

We discovered that leading a project wasn’t about being named the person in charge. It was about stepping up and taking responsibility for moving forward. On our main project, we lead as a group by consensus. On other projects, just one person leads. This made management organic: we have each stepped up to guide the things we care about.

By distributing responsibility of the projects, we’re all invested and involved. This distributed leadership system gives us all an opportunity to take charge of a project, creates accountability, and streamlines our goal-setting process.

3. What’s the priority?

After choosing the mini-team for each project, we decided to give them a priority: high, medium, or low. This helped us decide how we’d map out our time and allocate resources for each project. We more or less agreed on the level of importance for each subject, and when our opinions differed, we were able to compromise.

—

When we sat down to brainstorm, we just wanted to figure out how we’d tackle all the projects we’d added to our list over time. But what we got was a structure for our team to work together.

We all have things to offer and contribute. We’re all here to work together to make San Antonio’s government more open and accessible. Our new game plan is strong yet flexible, decentralized yet focused. We’ve spent a few weeks using this strategy and so far it’s been working for us.

We've been focusing mostly on our main project, but we feel the real value this gives us is a way to work productively for the rest of the year.

-Maya

[soundslikefury]

All-gender bathroom. #adacamp #allgenderbathroom #cfa2014 (at Puppet Labs, Inc.)

[teambiglex-blog]

Are we there yet?

I can't stop reading newspaper articles and Wikipedia articles and other articles about Lexington! I'm so excited! Are we there yet? :)

— Lyzi Diamond (@lyzidiamond) February 2, 2014

I am currently sitting in Charlotte, NC after an easy five hour flight from SFO, waiting to board my flight to Lexington. The whole last month has been leading to this moment, and I can't remember another time in my life that I've been this excited, curious, anxious, nervous, and eager all at the same time!

This is really a huge transition, not just for me and the rest of the Lexington team, but for all of us. The theme of January was preparation: we were gathering items for our tool belts and attempting to stuff as much knowledge in our heads as possible. But every alumni fellow has told me the same thing: "No matter how much you learn, your residency will surprise you. You will not learn more this whole year than you learn in February. Soak it up. Ask questions. It's going to be amazing."

February has a new theme: experience. After everything we've learned, I think we're all ready to dive in and get our hands dirty.

I don't know if there's much left to say except what I've already said, so I'll say it again... are we there yet? :)

[codeisland]

CodeAcross Rhode Island

We are excited to be hosting Rhode Island's Code for America Brigade kickoff as part of the nationwide #CodeAcross weekend this Saturday, February 22 in the Rhode Island State House rotunda.

There are a limited number of tickets available. RSVP's close Friday at noon. bit.ly/1aWdPrL

We need everybody, not just coders: people that know about the community and the issues it faces, folks in government, artists that can make things gorgeous and usable, and those that can create elegant online solutions.

We’ll meet each other and discuss what's going on in Rhode Island and areas of opportunity that technology can help address. The output of our discussion will be a more concrete list of projects and ideas (and perhaps wireframes/designs) that the Brigade can tackle at future meetings. 

[catsforamerica]

Oh hai.

[a-tale-of-two-islands]

Capitol building

Rhode Island(left)   |   Puerto Rico(right)

[mesanaround]

The Art of the Robot. IDEA Museum grand reopening in Mesa, AZ. #robotsforamerica #cfa2014