| Dates: | August 2016 ― Present |
| Skills/Subjects: | civic, civic media, leadership, management, open data, open government |
As a member of Code for America, I’ve worked with the Atlanta, Portland, and Austin brigades. One key difference about Austin, though, is its strong design community, which its brigade takes to heart by eschewing the “Code for” and embracing the “Open” in Open Austin. After contributing to organizational projects and working on my own projects in the open, I joined the leadership team to better contribute to the overall culture and productivity of the group. In doing so, I’ve given talks, facilitated workshops, and helped network with public and private entities in the city to better position Open Austin in affairs we could grow in.
I also work with non-local organizations like Mozilla and the broader Code for America organization to share knowledge about how to grow and engage others as an open organization. As the projects lead and co-captain with Vickie O’Dell, we have worked to better facilitate projects through to completion and have allied ourselves with other brigades across Texas and beyond to collaborate on new ways to engage civic hackers. We are currently working on incorporating as a 501c3 nonprofit organization to better connect with other organizations and provide our members with more and better resources. It’s also surprisingly fun in a wonky way.