Northeast Region - Small Brigades
Jason Anton, Code for Baltimore
Biography:
I am a full stack engineer and systems architect with over 12 years of experience building systems and leading teams. I have been the tech lead for Code for Baltimore for nearly 2 years.
The civic tech community is growing up, and I’ll help it continue to mature by…
Encouraging interoperability, promoting smaller more manageable reusable projects, and promoting development best practices and human centered design.
In 2021, all NAC seats are elected regionally, with two members representing each region. How will you represent and support all Brigades in your region? How will you collaborate with your NAC region counterpart?
Regional representation starts, for me, with listening. A hard lesson I’ve learned in my years of professional development is that engineers tend to look for a solution immediately. I will listen. I will listen and discuss with my NAC counterpart to seek options to problems and to promote good ideas. Each brigade is full of leaders. If elected to the NAC I would look to listen to those leaders and help connect the region with my counterpart.
What do you see as a key problem that the NAC should help the Network solve in the next year?
Assuming a vaccine gets widely distributed the NAC will be vital to supporting the brigades as they reemerge from COVID hibernation. Marketing, community outreach, event planning: all of this and more could prove overwhelming for smaller brigades or brigades that are operating in a more isolated way. The NAC could really help support these efforts. Even if we’re not physically coming together this year, many brigades may be looking to get back into a virtual groove. The NAC could help with that for sure.
How will you balance your work with your local Brigade with serving on the National Advisory Council?
My work encourages CfA work and I am given time during my work week to work on civic tech projects outside of my contract work. This helps balance my efforts substantially. Outside of the work day I find balance in a variety of ways. Some of it comes down to just keeping everything in perspective.
How can the NAC and the Network team support your efforts to make your brigade more diverse and inclusive? Can you speak to what work you’ve already done in this area?
CfA has already done a great job of setting the standard for inclusiveness and diversity through policies and cultivating a welcoming ecosystem. By our nature we’re very technical, which is great! That can, however, alienate certain segments of the population who may have ideas or unique perspectives, but lack the technical experience to even know that our brigades exist. The NAC and CfB could do more to offer less techy outreach solutions. This can be done by offering workshops and tutorials aimed at less technical folks. Focusing on human centered design and lowering the bar for entry would go a long way towards greater diversity in all CfA brigades.
Micah Mutrux, Code for BTV
Biography:
Hi, I’m Micah! I hail from northern VT with Code for BTV. I’ve been volunteering in civic tech for 10 years, have co-led our brigade for 4, and I’m passionate about making our work as effective as it can be. Got Q’s or A’s? We should chat: calendly.com/micah-mutrux/nac-chat
The civic tech community is growing up, and I’ll help it continue to mature by…
STABILIZING NEW & SMALL BRIGADES - The majority of America is made of small cities and the fastest way to reach them is with our existing small brigades in need of help. In the northeast roughly 2 out of 5 brigades are meeting less than once a month. In the recent Pol.is survey, 37% of respondents said their brigades had fewer than 10 active members.
This isn’t a simple task though. The circumstances that propel and suppress brigades are unique combinations – they can’t be explained by a single cause. But collectively we are quite experienced with the individual issues our brigades are facing.
One idea is to establish a brigade “Med Team” - an organizational body tasked with helping brigades overcome their issues. This team could cultivate a list of experienced leaders willing to provide 1-6 months of periodic coaching. The team then acts as case workers; learning the brigade’s issues, bringing in the right volunteers, and seeing the team through to an appropriate resolution.
In 2021, all NAC seats are elected regionally, with two members representing each region. How will you represent and support all Brigades in your region? How will you collaborate with your NAC region counterpart?
POST-PANDEMIC ROAD TRIPPING - This year our members have been interacting across brigades more than ever before as we are forced online by social distancing. Volunteers made new connections at Code for Pawnee, aka Brigade Congress. We’ve met new people from the CfA Brigade Network team and National Project teams as they have presented their work and spotlighted similar efforts by brigade members.
I’ve chatted with Thad Kerosky (the Northeast NAC rep) a little about taking some of that online socialization offline. Pandemic-permitting, we’d love to arrange an Amtrak fall foliage tour of New England and its brigades. And personally, I’d love to arrange a social weekend biking around western Connecticut/Massachusetts with anyone interested in joining in.
Hanging out in person is a double win: in addition to being just plain fun, it builds up relationships across city and state borders that are really the foundation for a lot of bigger, more aspirational ideas.
What do you see as a key problem that the NAC should help the Network solve in the next year?
LOCAL IMPLEMENTATION <=> NATIONAL IMPACT - I want to see the Brigades and Code for America collaborate more closely with each other. The thing that distinguishes us from other civic tech organizations is a partnership nobody else can claim: 95 local, grassroots brigades partnering with a national leader in civic tech. We are in a great position to create a two-way flow of proven solutions.
Imagine if your brigade could flag a successful project for reuse and CfA responded with the skill & support to make it redeployable within a matter of months. Or imagine if your brigade could receive work that was ready to adapt and deploy and was accompanied by playbooks and support staff dedicated to the successful dissemination of our civic tech.
We’re not positioned to pass work and knowledge back and forth between the brigades and CfA quite yet, but the spirit is in the air. With effort and trust, we can figure out how leverage the full potential of Code for America and our brigades.
How will you balance your work with your local Brigade with serving on the National Advisory Council?
PILOT PROJECTS & EXPERIMENTATION - I plan to pursue initiatives that simultaneously meet the needs of the NAC, my home brigade, and the brigade collective. In particular, I hope to focus on initiatives that strengthen small brigades, streamline project redeployments, connect volunteers across my region, and elevate the collaboration between Code for America our brigades.
I like trying new ideas that test what is possible, and running small pilot projects is a great way to do that. In the coming years I would like to run experiments with representative sets of brigades (most likely 2-5) and hope that Code for BTV will be a regular participant. In addition to cracking that old redeployment nut, I am also interested in how NAC and CfA can best support the diverse needs of a large (and growing) number of brigades. In particular, I want to explore how NAC’s efforts and CfA’s interests can best support brigades, without diluting their capacity to execute their own agendas.
How can the NAC and the Network team support your efforts to make your brigade more diverse and inclusive? Can you speak to what work you’ve already done in this area?
INCLUSION THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS - Inclusive partnerships are an important path to inclusive brigades. Code for America messaging to brigades has largely been to seek partnerships with government. But seeking the space between government partnerships can sometimes be a better way for brigades to champion diversity.
A beautiful thing about brigades is the ability to work with tiny community organizations and non-profits who are invisible at the national level, but are often the most effective challengers of local status quo. Brigades are well positioned to engage both government and the community, and bringing the two together is perhaps the very definition of inclusion.
As our brigade’s project delivery lead I’ve reached out to both sides. I’ve worked with our local Office of Economic Opportunity on behalf of low-income families navigating a digital literacy gap. And conversations with Girl Develop It! resulted in a $10k grant for bringing historically marginalized folks into tech.
Michael Brown, Code for Buffalo
Biography:
During college, I joined the Brigade Network as captain of Code for Buffalo in 2018. After graduating, I worked on GetWaterWiseBuffalo.org in local government as a 2019 CfA Community Fellow. I now work as a software engineer with local health and social services.
The civic tech community is growing up, and I’ll help it continue to mature by…
Helping smaller Brigades become more strategically impactful in their local communities. I’d like NAC to explore how we might support more Brigades interested in contract-based work with their local governments. As a former CfA Fellow, I’ll bring another perspective to NAC of how CfA programs like the Fellowship fit with Brigades. I’ll also facilitate shared learning opportunities from others across the Network who have faced similar challenges whether on project work, advocacy issues, or Brigade management. Finally, as a recent college student, I’d like to develop Brigade strategies for how to best engage with young members.
In 2021, all NAC seats are elected regionally, with two members representing each region. How will you represent and support all Brigades in your region? How will you collaborate with your NAC region counterpart?
I’ll represent and support all Brigades in the Northeast by engaging in regular communication with the other leaders and by facilitating cross-Brigade collaboration. For NDoCH 2020, we had great success partnering with Syracuse and NYC to host a statewide event so on the NAC I would hope to support other Brigades in pursuing similar collaboration.
What do you see as a key problem that the NAC should help the Network solve in the next year?
If elected to the NAC, I want to help smaller Brigades set good goals and action plans. Throughout my time in the Network, many Brigades including our own have expressed that they feel hindered by high turnover and issues with active member retention. This past Brigade Congress I co-led a discussion on how to get new members engaged which made me consider that perhaps membership growth isn’t the right priority for everyone at all times. Brigades might operate more sustainably by striking a balance between growing membership and making impact through projects or events, no matter the scale or size of the team involved. By setting their goals, Brigades can also feel more encouraged that they are moving in the right direction at a pace that’s right for them. NAC specifically might help smaller Brigades set these goals through workshops on logic models and impact measurement.
How will you balance your work with your local Brigade with serving on the National Advisory Council?
After recognizing my feelings of burnout throughout the pandemic, I decided to pass the baton of direct Brigade leadership to another core team member. I’ll still be involved with new projects and with our Brigade’s core team, but in a more support and advisory capacity.
How can the NAC and the Network team support your efforts to make your brigade more diverse and inclusive? Can you speak to what work you’ve already done in this area?
NAC and the Network team can support these efforts by continuing to have a diverse team that uplifts underrepresented voices. One specific way they can provide support is by facilitating more Network-wide volunteer opportunities such as the recent GetYourRefund project that members can join and contribute to without necessarily having prior technical experience. Code for Buffalo has tried to improve our diversity and inclusion by partnering with and supporting local social, economic, and racial justice organizers and groups who know their communities and the challenges they face.