Working in the Open: July 29 — Aug. 9, 2019
One of Code for Canada’s principles is to operate in public. These regular blog posts put that value into practice, giving readers a window into what we’re doing — and how we do it.
Welcome to a double edition of our #weeknotes! Here’s Code for Canada’s Rose, Bud and Thorn for July 29 — August 9, 2019.
🌹 Rose(s): We held our second and final Code for Canada Showcase of 2019 in Edmonton! You can see some of the highlights on Twitter. This was our first Showcase outside Ontario; we were really humbled by the turnout and impressed by the amazing civic tech and digital government work underway in Alberta. We’d like to thank everyone who came out, and everyone who made the Showcases possible. The events are a bit of an ‘all-hands on deck’ moment for the C4C base team, so it’s pretty awesome to see that effort result in a great experience for so many folks.
The Edmonton Showcase also marked both an ending and a beginning for the fellowship program. Our second cohort of fellows have just concluded their nine months working within government. While they’ll be missed, we‘re excited to see them continue advancing civic tech in Canada. And it’s great that they’ve seen the value of public sector work — so much so that some of them are sticking around in government!
On the other hand, we’ve been ramping up recruitment for our fourth cohort of fellows (applications close August 23!), both online and through a bunch of upcoming Open Houses. We’ve never had so many Open Houses on the calendar before, and we’re really excited to connect IRL with folks from Vancouver to Halifax.
🌱 Bud: In our work, we often use terms like ‘digital,’ ‘tech,’ and ‘design’ interchangeably. We were recently asked what each of these terms mean and how they’re different from one another. When we use ‘digital,’ we don’t necessarily mean building tech products and services. Rather, we mean it as a broader term that involves changing the way we approach and solve problems using tech and design practices (which can sometimes involve building products and services):
While these terms make sense to us, it’s important to remember that many people don’t share our contexts. Jargon is not only a barrier to collaboration and communication, it also risks creating cynicism. We really don’t want terms like ‘digital’ to become meaningless buzzwords, so we have a responsibility to be intentional with how we employ language. To that end, we’re thinking about maybe creating a glossary of terms we can use and share when we’re communicating with partners, members and the broader community. If you’ve encountered any good glossaries for digital terms, let us know!
📌 Thorn: We unfortunately had to say farewell to Samira, who just wrapped up her work at Code for Canada to head off to graduate school. Samira stepped into the Fellowship Program Coordinator role over a year ago, and she’s left an indelible mark on our flagship program, from recruitment to off-boarding. She helped grow the fellowship to what it is today and has now officially passed on the baton to Fatima. We wish Samira all the best in her program at the Institute without Boundaries and we’re glad to know she won’t be too far away.
As always, thank you for reading our weeknotes! If you’d like to know more about Code for Canada, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter.
