Flagrant at Code For America Summit 2023

Yossef and I recently attended the Code for America Summit 2023! 

I first learned about the summit while chatting with Andrew on the topic of Civic Tech and wanted to learn about opportunities for Flagrant to become more involved. Jim looped in Yossef as the conference was within commutable distance and it seemed like a good idea to talk and think about tech doing good in this world as opposed to, well, y’know.

As the summit approached, both Yossef and I were checking out the summit agenda and it was great to have another colleague attending the conference together as we could strategize about which sessions to go to.

During the conference, I got to hear from diverse groups of leaders and learn from a wide range of government officials across the federal, state, and local levels.

Though there were many digital and tech advancements highlighted throughout the conference, the sessions we attended trended more towards product managers and design researchers rather than developers.

The following are a few sessions and resources that stood out to us:

• Building in public: Developing shared open source software in government - a more detailed description of this session is on day 2 of the Summit Agenda.

  • CiviForm website
  • CiviForm GitHub repository
• Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract certification program - as a woman of color, I am cautiously optimistic as we take actions to bring equity into the conversation every step of the way.

• Digital Services Playbook - I love a good checklist! And more specifically, I see the relevance of the following plays in my current work today:

  • Play 8: Choose a modern technology stack
  • Play 9: Deploy in a flexible hosting environment
  • Play 10: Automate testing and deployments
  • Play 12: Use data to drive decisions
• Open Contracting Partnership - I hope that more leaders in positions of governmental power are looking 👀 at this!
• The Office of Natural Resources Revenue website GitHub repository - Thank you Jeff!

The summit also planned a few breaks and mixers that allowed us to decompress and network. During these breaks, I got to chat directly with Designers, Software Engineers, Researchers, Directors, Apprentices and Fellows from Nava, U.S. Digital Service, Code for America, U.S. Digital Corps, TechCongress, Hutch, Ameelio, Valerity, Schmidt Futures and many more!

While traveling, I always like to find opportunities to shift my perspective and make space to take a breath of fresh air after two whirlwind days of people and learning and making new connections.

It felt great to just be and just breathe.

THANK YOU, to the two colleagues that helped me overcome my fear of electric scooters again 

THANK YOU, to the crab man and the Designer that allowed me to take a crab headband home

And THANK YOU to the amazing women of color that spoke during Fail Fest about how she will NEVER fail herself again when faced with white supremacy. I hope you see this, I would love to connect!

If you’re looking for a team to help you discover the right thing to build and help you build it, get in touch.