June 20, 2018 Meeting Agenda

Attendees: Jill Bjers, Dawn McDougall, Chris Alfano, Jason Hibbets, Emma Burnett, Neil Planchon, Nina Kin, Janet Michaelis, Laura Biediger, Christopher Whitaker, Hashim Mteuzi, Veronica Young,

Pre-Meeting Updates

Upcoming Calendar

  • NDOCH (August 11)
  • Congress (90% sure it’s October 19th - 21st): Charlotte

Upcoming Workshops

  • June 18: NDOCH Virtual Workshop
  • July 9: Brigades Present Housing Projects

Brigade onboarding / offboarding

Onboarding- Hack Michiana, Code for Sonoma County (awaiting signature of MOU), Code for Fort Collins, Code for Homestead
Offboarding- Hack for LA has a new fiscal sponsor, figuring out transferring of funds

Wins/Props (please include links and/or storytelling)

  • Data Ohio meeting this am - all Ohio Brigades tuned in. Supporting Open Data legislation

Attendee Updates (pre-meeting)

Neil

  • Code for CA/CA Civic Building momentum
  • CA Water Data Challenge - June 26: Lots of Gov agencies, Hack for LA, OpenOakland, Code for Sacramento
  • Encouraging subscription to Discourse
  • Slow/No responses to Slack requests for engagement and sharing of celebrations, challenges and Agenda
    Janet
    Dawn
  • Brigade Congress content advisory committee
  • Keeping up with brigade captains
    Laura
    Jason
  • Participated in the workshop for NDoCH planning earlier this week
  • Good movement on the IDEA BAT, with great discussion ← great use of DIscourse
  • Been trying to keep up with Discourse and chime in on a regular basis
  • I’m on vacation from June 25 - July 10
    Emma
    Chris
  • Discourse!
    • Valuable materials accumulating, conversations happening
    • How to get NAC members using as their megaphone?
  • Progress with OPS proto-BAT
    • Zeroed in on courtbot as an ideal pilot project to support
    • Helped courtbot community start to organize via discourse
      Nina: Not much!
  • Promoting Discourse.
  • IDEA BAT still needs to submit their proposal.
  • Interested in prep for Brigade Congress + further building out some of the great ideas we’ve already had.
    Jill:
  • Not much to update. I’ve been working on developing the recognition letter to go out with the stickers. Also, thinking about how to improve the recognitions for next year.
  • I’d also like to do hex stickers for all the brigades and have started working on designing them.

CFA Updates

ST

  • Hiring update:
  • Applications are coming in.
  • Nina and Emma agreed to be in interview process
  • Still looking for talented candidates - please keep getting the word out. The JD is here.
    Christopher
  • Steering Committees in general
  • National Day of Civic Hacking
    • Version 1 of website live: nationaldayofcivichacking.org
    • Version two will build out the site to give NDoCH it’s own branding / looks sharper - more like what opendataday.org has
      • Version two will also focus more on general audience - right now just getting event signups
    • Signups now live
    • Goal is to get 80% of Brigade Participation with 50% of government partners taking part
    • Meeting with ELGL to try and get more government staff involvement
    • Staff Travel
      • Staff will be travelling to St. Louis; Dayton; Charlotte; Orlando, San Jose (Currently working on, not final)
      • Will be a mix of the Network Team and other CfA staff
  • Brigade Congress
    • Fully funded! No sponsorship needed!
    • Dates will Oct 19th - 21st
    • Still verifying the date with the venue. Back up date given is the next weekend.
    • Half day Friday, Sunday
    • Will announce dates when we have the venue locked down
    • Veronica leading training day
    • Steering Committee Recruited! (Thanks Dawn!)
    • Steering committee will outreach to Brigade to get insight on content, training needs
      Hashim
  • Community Fellowship convening June 27th - 29th
  • Public Interest Tech Job Board
    • Volunteer needed to participate in user research
    • Public Interest Tech video from Summit. Video

Questions for NAC (ideally answer by each NAC member)

What was the most valuable part of Summit for you?

  • Jill: Seeing everyone and developing face to face relationships and conversations.
  • Nina: In person conversations with gov and brigade people.
  • Jason: Being together, helping my Brigade buddy, Keynotes – having brigades and the NAC highlighted on the main stage; training was great too

What was the least valuable part of Summit for you?

  • Nina: Early mornings following late nights? Hah! Seriously though - poor understanding of which Summit sessions would be best for Brigade members, vs Government employees, vs Vendors.
  • Jason: West coast trips are hard

What would you like to see changed?

  • Nina: I’ve heard from some people that they missed having a quiet room (they thought that’s what the Brigade Lounge was going to be). I see a benefit from having two room/lounge/areas - one that promotes interaction and one that is a quiet retreat.

Raise Your Hand NAC (these are items that should be shared tasks)

Listening Tour with Brigade Day Attendees - the idea is to personally reach out to Brigade Day Attendees to get feedback and suggestions. Some will have filled out survey but a personal connection is always amazing.

Agenda

Health Check-in (10 min)

  • Neil- feeling energized!, Nina- taking it easy, Janet- fine, just fine , Laura- good, Emma- recharging, Chris- doing great, Jason-fabulous, Dawn- really tired, Jill- overall good

What was successful this month?

  • Summit!!
  • 37 survey responses
  • Discourse is being used!

Do you need anything to increase your “health”?

  • Need help forming steering committees, how will they be structured, expectations for committees

Election Review - Jill (5 minutes)

  • Form a small committee 4-5 people to discuss how we get clear feedback and recommend changes to the election process.
  • Hands Raised: Jill, Nina
  • Recruitment of: Mohith,
  • Formulate ideas about what we should revisit about election process, what NAC should present to CfA and NAC (committee of no more than 10 people, mostly non-NAC folks)
  • Need more than 1 week notice
  • Who’s raising hand for review of election process: reach out to Mohith (OpenSTL), Jill,
  • Workshop ahead of Congress? And announce process at Congress

After Action Review - Jill (25 minutes)

Brigade Day

  • Survey Response Review- 37 responses
    • Overall feedback: Brigade Day was impactful
    • Too many Different channels, information in too many places
    • Communicating to Brigade members what to expect at Summit
    • Laura- big fan of newsletters as way of communication (once a month, with information about action required, open for all Brigade members)
  • Do we want to reach out to those registered
    • Does NAC want to reach out to folks who registered for Brigade Day at Summit?- Yes, Jill creating list
  • Delivery
    • What did we do well
      • Laurenellen!! +3
      • First workshop got great feedback, second one seemed to get less positive feedback
      • Recognition was great, stickers were great conversation starters, maybe improve on execution
      • Grouping of the regions
      • NAC social- good venue, games, rogue swag
        • Next year: Civic Trivia!
      • Sticker table
      • Civic trivia!!!
    • What can we improve on
      • Better execution of recognition
      • What do we want people to broadcast conversation starters?
      • More regional connections
  • Brigade at Summit
    • What was delivered well?
      • It was great to have a space. However, it was rarely occupied by Brigade members and those non-brigade members in there weren’t interested in interacting about Brigades.
      • Stickers were great and drew some people in.
      • Wall/Hall of Brigades
        • Include recognition in there.
      • More stuff ilke Code for Asheville and Disaster Relief
    • What can we deliver better next year?
    • Brigade Track would be amazing
    • Brigade Lounge- expand??, need more signage, maybe a hall of Brigades?, social media handles
    • Lightning talks turned into presentations
    • Tech/project (tech fair?) highlights like we did two years ago, but in the lounge instead
    • Have a giant sign that says brigade lounge and a smaller sign on a tripod that explains what it is

MOU Update - Christopher (10 minutes)

  • In speaking with both Brigades and CfA staff we’ve found no show-stoppers to the current MOU. Which is good!
  • Next steps will be laying out a calendar / workshop meetings to talk possible improvements and adding supplementary material
  • Timeline:
    • Congress
    • Early Nov Draft
    • Late Nov Review
    • December - Signing Month
  • ACTION for Brigade congress: explain MOU process and how big a brigade needs to be

NDoCH Update - Christopher (10 minutes)

  • Steering Committee
  • The idea is that the event will be more of an advisory but will have more network buy-in. Steering committee and NAC are complimentary.
  • More staff support than in the past (marketing team is interested in helping), CfA staff traveling to NDoCH events
  • Responsibilities: website makes sense, outreach and marketing makes sense and working for community, looking for stories for national press.
  • Questions about NDoCH?
    • Meeting cadence: TBD, private channel in slack, less meetings more slack conversations.
    • Timing:
    • Jason: Yes, please September, mostly because 1) more planning time, 2) students are back 3) let’s be consistent year over year 4) about a month before Brigade Congress

Brigade Congress - Christopher/Jill (15 minutes)

  • Ideal dates for October 19-21
  • Backup date is October 26-28
  • Suggested goals:
    • Strengthen [something about CfA relationship with brigades- like operational/ administrative?]
      • MOU discussion
      • Communication
    • Strengthen the network (connections with / between brigades)
      • Networking
      • Sharing ideas
    • Strengthen the individual brigades (leadership, etc.)
      • Leadership
      • Practices to use in brigades
      • [something about relationships with government partners?]
  • Steering Committee; how large?
    • What time of training people want
    • What type of content people want
    • Basic feedback on how the event is shaping up.
    • Touchpoint between network and curated feedback.
  • How can ensure diversity of participation and an inclusive environment?
  • What Summit activities should we bring over?
    • Sticker exchange
    • Rogue Swag (Charlotte team is already thinking about that)
    • Civic trivia
  • Questions about Brigade Congress?
  • NAC (Jill): When do we want to have the NAC meeting around Congress? Friday?
    • Jason: Yes for Friday (I will not be able to attend on 10/21 due to a work obligation)

Zoom Update - Christopher (5 minutes)

  • List of questions to ask Brigades
    • When is it best to have National Day?
    • When is it best to have Brigade Congress?