2019-10-19 Brigade Congress, #WeTheNorthCFA

link.civictech.ca/we-the-north

Comments/Convo: https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/t/we-the-north-civic-tech-organizing-in-toronto-origins-and-extrapolations-from-an-international-city-brigade-congress-2019/631

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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
• • Cyrus Sethna, Code for DC @c_sethna
• … ~15 other attendees
• you?

Note-taker:

• [e-mail] (notepad)
• @c_sethna (pictures)
• …
  ^{(but pls halp! all support welcome)}

Nick noting	Cyrus' drawing

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
    • 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
• 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

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/roles or 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"
      • 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
    • Reminders
      • Automated in Slack every week
        • Screenshots
      • patcon Philosophy of community infra (WIP) link.civictech.ca/infra-philosophy
      • 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
        • link.civictech.ca/inventory
      • Who is in what role
      • What are pitches each week
      • What are role needs
      • Venue choice/option …
      • A philosophy of tools doc exists
        • patcon Philosophy of community infra (WIP) link.civictech.ca/infra-philosophy
      • 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
      • patcon used to organize in-person, but hard to do when some are leaving or coordinating post-hacknight social
  • 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
  • Generosity and gratitude are key values
• 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
• 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
      • patcon many people in city will say "i've heard good things, but haven't made it out yet"
    • Inviting really helps.
      • 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.
• 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.
    • 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"
  • 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