January 6, 2014

The purpose of the Leadership/Planning group is to formulate strategic goals for Code for Asheville and to translate those goals into a concrete plan that can be carried out in the context of the regular CfA events and meetings. Participation in the group is open, but several CfA members have committed to participate regularly to ensure continuity.

The first meeting was organizational, with the following decisions:

• CfA goals need to be externally focused - ways to make local government more usable and accessible for citizens and local businesses and to enable government officials to more effectively communicate and collaborate with them.
• The goals and plans also need to be inspiring and attractive to a broad range of CfA participants - activities that people will want to work on and promote.
• The group will meet every other Monday until the February 22 event, then monthly (next meeting: 1/20/2014).
• The top priority for CfA is creating and promoting success stories to build momentum and gain public attention. We can use a couple existing examples: a recent tourist map created by a local entrepreneur using newly available data and the Asheville App.
• Current 2014 focus under consideration: bring CfA resources to bear on the creation of a high-profile app that delivers value in both directions (government and public). Focus not just on the technical implementation, but full delivery of a “product,” from requirements gathering to marketing and development of a user base.
• We will use the 2/22 event as a kind of kick-off to the 2014 strategy. A key goal is to have this leadership group fully functioning by that date.

Full notes: Code for Asheville Leadership / Planning: Jan. 6, 2014 Attendees: Eric J., Dave M., Jason M., Scott B.

Strategic plan is internally focused. What are we trying to accomplish for external stakeholders.

Lets figure out outward-facing goals for strategic plan. People care about what they can do with open data, not just with the data itself.

Code for America - “User Interface for Government”; how to make govt usable for citizens/business.

Useful example is the creation of local businesses from open data; e.g. tourist map of Asheville

What should be the goals for 2014 to make these kinds of things happen?

Other stakeholders: Government employees: make work easier; more with less People that participate in Code4Avl

What if citizens could help make govt agency tasks/work get done? Idea: Someone from govt comes in and presents challenges. This could be done on a recurring basis to get ideas, get people engaged, etc. Example could be Asheville App of info flowing both ways. We could create a couple of case studies already: Tourist Map, Asheville App

Big need: marketing (case studies could be used) to encourage more involvement

Another CfA role: Help startups navigate access to govt and how to work together

Mentoring of interns/staff between local tech businesses and Code4Avl

What are incentives to participate in Code4Avl??? Create opportunities with local businesses (e.g interns) Learn new skills; build resume Altruistic?

Other goals: Identify at least one significant product that we can build and deliver to Asheville

Candidate product: Budget App (new interface for government): Govt Citizens Media

What groups are out there that can participate related to particular issues of interest?

Code4Avl: Create a success from: Govt provides data; citizens take data and deliver value/benefit Manage expectations: learn from failure, “fail fast” and move on

Leadership Team - needs to be planning events/priorities in advance so that preparation can take place before the current activity ends

How do we balance structure of hack nights/ goals and flexibility of new ideas? We could have a “sandox” activity for new ideas along with a focused hack night activity focused on larger goals.

Set goal of 2/22 (Code Across America) to be up and running as a leadership team. Rough out goals. Figure out what the content of “Code Across” event will be: Stakeholder engagement: Govt, citizens, media, etc. Bring ideas for reuse Not just what to do, use stakeholders to buy in to help make it happen