Tl;dr Reminders from a volunteer effort to build an app for the World Health Organization (WHO) about the basics of working with large organizations

There’s a volunteer effort helping the World Health Organization deliver an app for people, beyond the governments and health and policy professionals that WHO technology typically serves. I joined that effort early on, and recently scaled my participation back. This volunteer collective and its collaboration with WHO started with excitement, sincerity, and the best of intentions on all sides and… stalled in a variety of interesting ways.

I shared some of my notes on this project with friends, both tech and non-tech. Based on those conversations, I’m sharing here some of what happened in the hope that the arc might be useful for others. The initial theme of the conversations with friends was how easily product/engineering people and non-tech industry people can “lose track of the plot.” Over time, the topic shifted — to bureaucracies and the management/leadership issues that accompany them, and to the power of volunteer and not for profit efforts, and the additional emphasis these kinds of efforts place on trust. …