Working in the Open: Sept. 23–27, 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 our #weeknotes! These regular posts took a hiatus for a few weeks while we focused on assessing our next cohort of fellows, but we’re back! So, without further ado, here’s Code for Canada’s Rose, Bud and Thorn for Sept. 23–27, 2019.
🌹 Rose: At our weekly retro, there was a huge cluster of appreciations for the regular 1:1 meetings we have between staff. Plenty of folks have extolled the value of 1:1s, but seeing all the positive sticky notes on our retro board really reinforced why we do them. They’re a great tool for building trust and rapport between team members (especially new arrivals), and it’s clear that creating opportunities to check in, give and receive feedback, and connect directly and thoughtfully with managers and teammates makes our team happy. It was a reminder to prioritize 1:1s — to not cancel them unless it’s really necessary — and to be intentional about how we use that time.
🌱 Bud: Since Code for Canada’s launch in 2017, the team at NATIONAL have been our pro bono public relations partner. They’ve helped us reach new audiences, and lent their expertise to our fellowship recruitment efforts. Now, one of our earliest champions at NATIONAL, Rick Murray, is leaving to head up one of their partner agencies in Boston. We’re obviously sad to see Rick go — as much as the partnership is between two organizations, partnerships are always also about people, and he and his team have been great to work with. However, his departure is also an occasion for both us and NATIONAL to take a breath and reimagine how we‘ll work together going forward.
📌 Thorn: We’re conducting technical interviews for our next fellowship cohort, which means coordinating 75 interviews between C4C staff, candidates, and selection panellists (the pool of veteran designers, developers and product managers who help us assess prospective fellows). A few times this round we’ve been left scrambling to reschedule interviews because panellists have had last-minute conflicts, or had to drop out of the pool. We’re really grateful to our volunteer panellists — these are experienced tech professionals whose time is valuable and they’re choosing to use it to help our organization— and we’re thinking about doing some user journey mapping with them. We’d like to figure out how we can make it easier for them to make and keep their time commitments, or enable them to step up on short notice if we need a last-minute panellist.
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.
