Never Enough Screens

As we ramp up our in-person involvement one of the challenges we face is the lack of screens. When we run Zoom we have the big presentation on the TV in CIC along with useful audio, but the virtual audience is missing. Conversely in Zoom we get a great camera angle of me presenting, but no sense of the audience. As I though through how many screens we truly needed to get Zoom to do what we want, I made my way to four:

• Big slideshow screen for room.
• Big Zoom audience screen for room.
• Zoom audience view for presenter
• Slideshow view for presenter.

We then want at least two camera feeds into the Zoom from the main room. One to show the speaker and another to show the audience in the room. Doing hybrid suddenly sounds a bit complicated, but it is part of the growing pains we are enduring as we figure this all out. If you have ideas for how to best set this all up, send me a note.

In the meantime we’ll keep experimenting and see how we can best deliver our programming both in-person and online without breaking the bank.

What We’re Reading and Watching:

• Alex Soble on levers the federal government has to reduce administrative burdens at the state and local levels.
• This shit user story lamenting twitter’s attempt to change its home timeline from latest tweets to some algorithmic thing.
• Marty Walsh toured the Texas Gigafactory with Elon Musk.
• Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s youngest minister, has turned technology, cryptocurrency and social media into modern weapons of war.
• A slight modification to the open source package dedupe can yield big gains in linking large but disparate datasets.

Matt & The Code for Boston Team

Jobs

Housing Navigator: Project Coordinator

Housing Navigator Massachusetts, Inc. (HNMI) seeks a full-time Project Coordinator for our five-person team based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is a rare opportunity to be part of a growing organization delivering tech for good with passionate, problem-solving colleagues focused on improving affordable housing access. We are a nonprofit start-up offering tools and information—for renters, for owners, for anyone–throughout Massachusetts. We make it easier for people to find a home, giving everyone more time to focus on their hopes, their dreams, and their lives.

P2PU: Contract Front End Web Developer

Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is a U.S.-based non-profit organization that cultivates peer learning in public spaces around the world through an informal education model that we call learning circles. Our organizations’ role supporting learning circles is multifaceted: we build open source software for managing meetings, we train groups to facilitate learning circles, we maintain an online community for facilitators, and we develop and curate open educational resources. We recently launched two exciting new initiatives: an institutional membership program for library systems and credit-bearing learning circles in partnership with College Unbound.

Project Updates

Clean Slate

• Massachusetts Recreational Consumer Council website work continues.
• Testing framework updates.

National Police Data Coalition

• User testing
• Complete MVP

Mattapan Mapping

• Doing a design workshop with Harlan.

Legislative Testimony

• Getting user feedback.