This is Matt Zagaja Signing Off…

Greetings Civic Hackers!

Last night I shared with the community that after nearly six years of volunteering with Code for Boston, I have decided to step down as lead organizer. I wanted to do this in a time and manner that would be of my own choosing and when I would still have the bandwidth to guide the organization during a transition. I will be staying on as a Senior Advisor to the leadership team, but will be unburdened by the operational responsibilities that come with running hack night. You may not see me on Tuesdays, but I will still be present in Slack.

I am proud of the legacy I have left. Working with the organizing team we developed and improved how we partner with non-profit and government organizations. We created a better process for recruiting volunteers for these projects. In 2019 we were the largest brigade in the network with eight active projects and nearly a hundred folks participating in Code for Boston every week. We built VaccinateMA.com which was the only vaccine site directory that withstood the deluge of traffic when vaccines were made available to the general public. I have volunteered hundreds of hours a year and raised thousands of dollars for the Brigade. Code for Boston remains strong and its future remains bright.

Over the next few weeks the rest of the organizing team will be sharing updates and changes they will be making to transition. If you have been attending Code for Boston for a while they may ask for your help. If they do, I hope you will say yes. Volunteering on the organizing team may be a different experience, but it is rewarding and impactful. It is worth doing.

If you want to stay in touch the quips and links you typically see me share in this newsletter will be on my blog and twitter. You can email me. I am still in Boston, and hope to see you around!

-Matt

Events

Mob Programming and TDD Workshop

All experience levels welcome! Spend two hours mob programming features for the “Mob Timer Kata”. Learn about TDD and Typescript/Jest by doing it.

Mob Programming is a technique for facilitating a group of people working collaboratively on one computer. TDD is a powerful technique where you write tests before writing one line of code and your design evolves from the tests.