Brigade Unconference Day One, Session Four_ Process, Not Product (Carl).md

Process, Not Product: Civic tech as a (nonpartisan) social/political movement

Est. Attendance: ~15 ppl

SESSION LED BY: Carl V. Lewis, Open Savannah

Day One, Session Four. Room One.

TOPLINE:

This session aims to explore the end goal of civic technology communities, if there is one. While we certainly "create change by doing" and “show by example,” no single app or hack is going to bring mindset change in itself. Yes, wins can bring incremental change, but to what extent do we overvalue ‘apps’ and ‘projects’ over community engagement, diversity of participation, fostering of citizen support for what we do?

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CVL (Open Savannah): Have been asked this benign question at least half-dozen times: "What projects is your brigade working on?" as if projects are sole metric for Brigade success. Had this idea that the end goal of what we do isn’t projects or apps; it’s mindset shifts among residents and, in turn, among their elected representatives. The problem is more cultural than it is technical at its core. We’re building support for specific policy to be enacted. What we’re building isn’t an app, it’s a movement: for the kinds of policies, relationships, etc. In that sense, one might argue it’s even political.

Q. Who sees their brigade as being a political movement?

**CHI HACK NIGHT: **Most people in my brigade come with big ideas about changing society, even in small ways. We are a political group, we do aim to be nonpartisan.

With a 501c3 you can’t advocate candidates, but you can work to educate candidates.

Code for Tulsa: I like to see my group less as a political group and more as an interface for civic engagement. It’s the platform rather than the political action itself. But also probably a matter of semantics somewhat.

"Political" vs. “Hacking Policy” -- yes addressing policy, less organizing for candidates.

Signing authority: thinking through the practical limitations to applications (like who can sign checks for how much) could be a more effective route sometimes than advocacy / activism.

Q. What metrics of success do brigades use?

Diversity of participants, attendance at events

Has anyone seen a swift change in open data policy?

Code for Fort Collins: Example, solar scorecards use data from Boulder, and the Fort Collins got embarrassed and started releasing data; in another example ..

*Chi Hack Night: *I think the process of the civic tech hack can be one of the most important parts of the civic engagement effort—less sometimes the development and delivery of digital products.

**Code for Miami: **Food and drinks: be careful about the culture of drinking and inclusive of those who don’t. Empanadas were a part of being more inclusive with food offerings, some brigades don’t offer food.

Chi Hack Night: Our mission is to be a space where people can gather, learn, and practice civic tech.

CVL: What are the goals of that then?

Chi Hack Night: Having the space to learn about it has value, we just don’t push people toward a particular agenda. Sometimes that creates issues with figuring out how to integrate a volunteer etc.

Q. How many brigades spend 75% of their leadership team time running projects?

Code for Dayton: At Code for Dayton, the leadership team sees themselves as the intake mechanism— we interact with nonprofits, bring those projects in for hack nights, for technologists then to hack on when they come. The most successful projects are the ones when a city agency comes with a problem.

Q. How have municipal leaders changed by* interacting with you*?

**Code for Dayton: **City auditor’s office loves Code for Dayton! A portfolio of projects, past projects, they really come with ideas and push them our way. We try to really focus on the citizen— come with problem and we’ll all work together to try to solve it, and if it helps the city official, then that’s great.

Q. What happens with the energy that’s formed around a cause?

Breakout groups within Chi Hack Night have been piloting projects in different ways, separate from the Tuesday night leadership— for example, one group that’s doing a re-entry guide, partner driven and user-testing all over the place.

Open Savannah: Did a launchnight creating maps of social services, and just saw how powerful that was for people who came to do some work in a process that came to fruition over night.

Code for Fort Collins: people were more excited when we shifted from one group, one project and instead asked people to come with their ideas and helped folks develop them.

Regularly scheduled presentations have been especially helpful at getting folks to show up every meeting; one every month or six weeks.

**Open Savannah: **We found it really helpful reaching out to a nonprofit and seeing what their problems are and then moving to make action from there. Lots of attendance at those events.

Chi Hack-Night: We’re a small self-selecting group who chose [to come to this session], but how do we spread this kind of process-first mentality to other CfA’ers?

Code for Tulsa:, instead of listing things as "successes" or “failures,” list instead “what happened from it?” By mapping that, we don’t see all these failures but instead see the actual results of our labor. These kinds of self-reflection really show the actual value of this work.

Q. What happens with projects that are launching from a potentially adversarial point, especially when partnership building is so important?

Code for Tulsa;

1. have a decentralized model where a subgroup can be adversarial;

2. be adversarial!;

3. let the apparent neutrality of "information" be a project, not necessarily something that is explicitly constructed to win fights;

4. talk to the other side, even if you ultimately decide to be adversarial, all perspectives weighed.

CVL: Important to blame the institution/system, not the people.