Session: We the North! Civic Tech Organizing in Toronto: Origins and Extrapolations from an International City
Presented by: Emily Macrae, Alex Jung, Patrick Connolly (Civic Tech Toronto)
Original notes here: http://bit.ly/brigade-congress-toronto
Copied below!
2019-10-19 Brigade Congress, #WeTheNorthCFA
bit.ly/brigade-congress-toronto
Comments/Convo: We the North! Civic Tech Organizing in Toronto: Origins and Extrapolations from an International City [Brigade Congress 2019]
:::info
Hello! If you’re reading this, you’re welcome to contribute!
- Click top-left icon or press CTRL+ALT+E.
- To subscribe to changes via minimal emails, sign-up and click Watch.
:::
Date: Sat, Oct 19 @ 11:15-12:30pm ET / 15:15-16:30 UTC
Location: Cleveland Public Library
#WeTheNorthCFA
Who’s here?
(Add you Twitter handle or name if you feel like it!)
- Alex, toronto
@dotorithoughts
- Emily, toronto @emilyamacrae
- patcon, toronto @patconnolly
- Ryan H, New Orleans @CodeAndData
- … ~15 other attendees
- you?
Note-taker:
-
Nick.floersch@codeforbtv.org (notepad) -
@cyrus (pictures) - …
(but pls halp! all support welcome)
:::info
Note: link.civictech.ca shortlinks are generated from this master list link.civictech.ca/shortlinks using a schedule script link.civictech.ca/about-gsheet2shortlinks
:::
Links shared
- Join our slack!
link.civictech.ca/chat- Organising channel:
#organizing-open - minimally-used
#organizing-priv- [name=patcon] One of the few formal proposals we’ve ever done (after months of unsuccessful casual convos) was for migrating from a totally private channel, to this more public strategy: CivicTechTO: Usage Guidelines for Organizing Channels
- Organising channel:
- Google Drive (of everything)
link.civictech.ca/gdrive - Hacknight presentation
-
link.civictech.ca/welcome-deck(newest) -
link.civictech.ca/welcome-decks(all)
-
- Hacknight roles/runsheets
link.civictech.ca/roles - Civic Tech 101 presentations
link.civictech.ca/101s(directory with ALL)- OG “Civic Tech 101”: July 2015
- Latest “Civic Tech 101”: June 2019
link.civictech.ca/101(newest in ALL directory via github.com/CivicTechTO/gdrive-whats-new-app)
- CivicTechTO Community Toolkit http://toolkit.civictech.ca/
- h/t @rapicastillo of Progressive Coders Network for
code/inspiration
- h/t @rapicastillo of Progressive Coders Network for
Collab Notes
h/t Nick Floersch for live-noting (some formatting/additions by @patcon and mystery strangers)
- History
- Started 4 years ago; (one of) first groups in Canada (we don’t call them Brigades)
- First hacknight: “beta”
-
link.civictech.ca/beta-hacknight - Thoughtful list of people from many domains invited to first kick off invite list
- very intentional
- participants were asked: is this interesting enough to do every week?
- participants were offered: consider yourself a co-founder!
- Inspired by Chicago, too
-
- How the brigade works/is
- General structure
- Speaker at every meetup
- [new] Attendees come for the speaker mostly
- Philosophy of speakers
- Important to welcome speakers in
- Build them up in how we talk about them
- How can we support them and not necessarily confrontational
- We are holding hands with speakers, not pointing fingers
- Roles
- Roles switch up
- The roles are identified and they change up monthly
- MC
- AV person
- Welcomer/greeter
- Sharing “generosity of leadership”
- Positive pressure to change up roles
- Not a virtue to keep doing the same role
- Transfer of knowledge
- Articulate values
- Better understand the what and why
- Use a spreadsheet for coordination
- For each role there is a run sheet to let folks know what to do in that role
- Mitigate burnout
- Link to role sign-up sheet and descriptions of roles:
link.civictech.ca/rolesor direct link to dir link.civictech.ca/runsheets - Different assumptions of power for each role… we are all in charge, “we are all the government”
- [name=patcon] Avoid merging small roles into larger ones; this creates more barrier to participation/leadership by removing opportunities for new leaders
- New organizers may not even know the “old timers”, but it is maybe a “good smell” in terms of participation and flows of leadership
- Invites to grow
- Try to do active invites to get more folks involved
- Example: Person might start out livetweeting or door greeting, and continue into more challenging organizing roles
- Try to do active invites to get more folks involved
- Reminders
- Automated in Slack every week
- [name=patcon] Philosophy of community infra (WIP)
link.civictech.ca/infra-philosophy - [name=patcon] some via simple Slack reminders, but many via CircleCI script-runner for scheduled tasks, that’s kinda like a “public cronjob”
link.civictech.ca/scripts - Depersonalize reminder process to avoid nagging
- Pulls info from spreadsheets to determine who gets what reminder
- Automation should be wanted by organizers… doesn’t force itself on people in a bad way
- Use emojis and symbols to keep things light
- But also visual representation of topics/items (alternative learning types; information/text/data processing ≯ visual processing)
- List of tools and resources for each role too
- Automation doesn’t do the real work! It focuses energy
- Does not pretend to be a human or do emotion work like sending a real “thanks!”
- Gratitude
- Reminders automated to encourage offerings of gratitude (“what went well?”)
- Focus on sharing gratitude to avoid burnout
- Thank you Chi Hacknight!
- Gratitude runs in line with attribution
- Thanks Cyrus for visual note taking!
- Docs
- Share docs and archive them over time
- Keep docs accessible to all and avoid personal email/service/platform accounts that keep knowledge locked up
- Who is in what role
- What are pitches each week
- What are role needs
- Venue choice/option …
- A philosophy of tools doc exists
- [name=patcon] Philosophy of community infra (WIP)
link.civictech.ca/infra-philosophy
- [name=patcon] Philosophy of community infra (WIP)
- Link to google drive w/ all docs (sorry, disorganized): https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B4jGklalvuvwfjhLekdZdUZKNTN6UlVvdGNjSUZjYU50YXlCMUh5emI1SmhxNWZKU3Q2MXc
- Every week
- All invited for pitch
- all split after
- Meet Tuesday nights
- Post-hack-night huddle thread starts after every meetup
- [name=patcon] used to organize in-person, but hard to do when some are leaving or coordinating post-hacknight social
- Speaker at every meetup
- Values
- Rotate space - not focused on one space or sponsor
- To avoid melding identity with sponsor
-
link.civictech.ca/venue-map
- Work in Progress / Process-orientation
- “Just enough process to hold things we value in place”
- Co-organizers talk a lot about what we value and why
- Less project driven and collaborating
- Rotate space - not focused on one space or sponsor
- Generosity and gratitude are key values
- General structure
-
Activity: self-organized brigade measure via thermometer method
-
Photos of all activity results
- Activity: thermometer (spread out along the wall, left side means very few, right side means a whole lot)
- How many people come to average gathering?
- 30-40 - 25 - 8
- Activity: how many “projects” (breakout groups)
- 2 - 4 - 7
- Activity: how long have you been involved in your brigade?
- 10yr - 6mo
- How many people come to average gathering?
-
- Visual Note-taker invitation to help engage
- Pictures etc. explained
- Cyrus
-
Activity: Breakout - 3 corners of room/ 3 pitches
- Process
- Dolphin Tank
- Like shark tank but friendlier
- Why did people show up? What first brought you in?
- asks: 1) people who have ideas/topics they think might make good breakouts, and 2) people who want to help workshop those challenges/ideas
- People see the “way things move” modeled, the flows of leadership and what we value.
- [name=patcon] place to share tips-and-tricks for this weirdo “project management/stewardship” world of community projects, building on what previous breakout groups have learned/tried.
- [name=patcon] place to help new/undecided people participate in informing future projects that might get pitched.
- How to Invite from people outside the space
- Reconsidering metrics. How do we measure success?
- Consistency is important, but plenty of reason to “count” the number of people that pass through even if they don’t commit long-term
- [name=patcon] many people in city will say “i’ve heard good things, but haven’t made it out yet”
-
Inviting really helps.
- [name=patcon] “every tuesday” makes it as easy as possible for any community contributor to invite ppl they meet. Zero logistical overhead.
- See someone who might make a great organiser? Let them know they’d be great at it, be friendly, and show them the ropes.
- See someone who has a cool potential project? Be friendly, help grow the project, help them feel comfortable seeding something new.
- Reconsidering metrics. How do we measure success?
- weekly Civic Tech 101 breakout session is essential
- Set a baseline
- Get folks on slack
- Baseline is a moving target
- In-depth volunteering opp for growing organizers! Everyone adds their own flavour and customizes (without discarding past versions wholesale)
-
: Activity: Mapping Sentimental Landscape
-
Photos of all activity results
- move around room to measure what people feel about “subjective feeling statements” on a topic
- PROMPT question for provoking feeling statements: Should our communities grow? If so, how?
- 3 corners mean Agree, Disagree, Pass/Unsure.
- [name=patcon] new feeling statements emerge from asking participants why they are in a specific corner, esp “unsure/pass” corner.
- inspired by pol.is tool and g0v.tw’s vTaiwan community
- Statement 1) “I feel like more people that show up, the better.”
- *people shuffled*
- Some yes
- #ask why UNSURE? Some that it is a false metric
- #ask why DISAGREE? Sometimes the correct size is a sweet-spot number that is not big
- Statement 2) “I feel like growth is more diversity of expertise at the hack night.”
- *people shuffled*
- #ask why UNSURE? A diversity is best if it is relevant to what you do
- Statement 3) “I feel it’s more important to have diverse backgrounds that are motivated toward the same goal.”
- *people shuffled*
- #ask why AGREE? Diversity of thought can bring value because you never thought “that way”
- [name=patcon] had intended direction, but ran out of time: to consider whether growth is size of groups, or instead more hacknights acting as incubators for civic projects in different neighboods with different concerns/focii, rather than getting everyone to each city’s one hacknight in one neighborhood.
- out of time
-
