These are the initial notes from the Code for America Pre-Summit 2016 breakout session on Small Projects.
^ Use this!
There is tremendous value in taking hard to find information, and putting it in an easy to find place.
- Finding a champion for a project is difficult.
- Learning how to scope a project is important!
- Deadlines are important!
- Non-technical stakeholders can keep things on track.
- Demo’s are helpful to show progress!
- A webpage with 2 mailto: links, to email elected officials
- Just showing/linking information is valuable
- A google spreadsheet as DB, webpage hosted on gh-pages
- Budget clock “how many hours to…”
- List of city representatives on twitter, as a means to contact them
- Have a open “help desk” for community members and partners to get technical advice
- You can forgo a database, and just use a google spreadsheet often
- Engage with local media about small projects (i.e investigative reporting)
- Have a “call for ideas” event!
- Civic ideas speed-dating! - a way to bubble up common ideas
- Complaint ignite-style talks (generate ideas of what you’d like to fix in your city)
- Invite people to present ideas at Demo nights
- One of the roles of leadership is to prep partners for what ideas make sense.
- Leadership vets ideas
- Learn about partners & what their needs are
- Ask “what’s the problem” not “what is the solution”?
- Civic stories (how do accomplish civic process)
- Countdown clocks to important dates in your city
- A relatable data set with questions associated, for data analysis
- Collect twitter handles of city officials & how to communicate with them
- Static website showing eligibility & process for various applications (i.e SNAP)
- Website that links to services agnostic of city/state/etc