I was an early helper when I saw that on reddit and joined your slack before you had a discord. I was also one of the ones you mentioned that fizzled out after the initial excitement died down. But I didn't stop helping because the excitement died down. I stopped helping because I felt like we weren't "doing" anything. Other than raising money and getting paperwork in order. Have you guys actually "done" anything in the three years since? Other than, you know, collecting data and sitting around talking about "stuff"
I can only give my perspective on the project: I showed up when PDAP had 2,500 members in Slack, right after Kristin made her original case study and Reddit post. There was a flurry of conversation. I empathize with the people trying to keep everyone focused in those days. It was like trying to have a 2500 person web scraping flashmob with nothing planned in advance. However, all that conversation was important. We still benefit from the combined relevant experience of those 2500 passionate people.
I took a step back from the project for a few months, not having time to volunteer. My understanding is that the board was basically formed out of all the people remaining after some enthusiasm died down.
When I came back, the board had incorporated and applied for 501c3 status. There were four board members, and a few volunteers who mostly just helped talk through the massive problem and plan. Eventually Kristin (OP) stepped down from the board, but was still at some meetings. A rotating cast of 2-3 other people would be hanging around the meetings at any given time.
I became Director of Operations on a volunteer basis for a bit over a year. This mostly just means paying bills, knowing passwords, and updating the website.
We had weekly meetings, where we'd talk for a few minutes or hours about the project, our ideas, and what we could do to move things forward. [0]
We ran a data bounty during this time [1]. One volunteer, Eric, made a bunch of prototypes around metadata for data sources.
Then we got 501c3 status after waiting for almost a year. I quit my day job and started writing grants and set up online donations. I hired two contractors for a bit of grant writing help, but otherwise did not have "coworkers" or "co-volunteers".
We got the grant money [2] about 8 months later. I went looking for a full-time software engineer. I started getting a salary and working full-time on the project as Executive Director, doing all the non-technical design, planning, and product work.
Throughout, I spent a lot of time interviewing and doing design research: investigating the work being done journalists, transparency activists, and local data users in Pittsburgh (and elsewhere). I've also been collecting feedback and experience from everyone in the Discord. Most of our current ideas about what's important and where to start come from that work, and the recent addition of an engineer with excellent journalism and software experience (about 6 weeks ago) has allowed us to start prototyping and developing something together in earnest.
Now: We're excited about our strategies, and it's probably a little early for broad consumption. We didn't coordinate this post; everything you can see is a work in progress. There's lively discussion in Discord about our goals, and I've been typing for about 24 hours straight with a break to nap and a break to eat something.
Clarifying: when I said "otherwise did not have "coworkers" or "co-volunteers" I mean only for a period of a few months. There have almost always been people in the Discord to respond if something came up, but there were many working sessions in a row where I was the only one to show up.
