The launch was accompanied by requests for feedback. I put together some thoughts on an area I think could be explored a bit: profiling prominent data sets through conversations with subject matter experts who understand and can share the value of the data with people who may not immediately understand its value. Take a look at what I put together.

Example of: A Visible Future

Then I started thinking about how things are made now. Making things inside government is different than making things outside of it.

I’m not in the camp that believes the private sector is a panacea. There are problems in the private sector just as in the public sector. Most of my career has been outside of government, and I haven’t experienced a perfect project yet. But I believe that an awareness of the context within which you are making something helps make that thing better.

I’ve made things in both worlds. In the hope that they may be helpful in improving the making of things within government, I thought I’d lay out some of my observations about the differences.

Product/Market Fit

One of the key concepts in the startup world is the idea of “product/market fit”. As Marc Andreessen has said, “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” You should be willing to explore various combinations of product features and offerings that address the needs of potential audiences and markets, but you should also be willing to abandon certain audiences if others prove more fruitful. Success can be defined as finding ‘fit’, regardless of whether the initial problem or need the product set out to fix ever got solved.

In the world of government, there is frequently less flexibility. “Product” and “market” can’t be so casually discarded. The product mission is often largely predetermined, seeking to address a societal ill or neglected ‘market’. There is a fixed need in search of a solution, not an open search for new product opportunities. The market is also less flexible. Government organizations often have specific constituencies that must be served. So there is a responsibility to address particular needs for a particular audience.

That still leaves opportunity for exploring different approaches and tactics to address the needs. Variables still exist, and the iterative, quick learning approaches of ‘lean’ are helpful. Sometimes; however, policy decisions are put in place that require very specific methods. These fixed variables reduce the product’s flexibility, even while delivering some policy benefit to a constituency.

So when making things within government, there is usually fewer variables to play with, and more constraints to work around. That’s not an indictment, just context.

The Founder

One of the implications of ‘lean’ thinking that has bothered me is the almost mercenary attitude of finding any ol’ unaddressed market and exploiting it. At times it can feel like the application of a process without being invested in fixing a specific problem. (Insert silly pivot story here.)

While there’s nothing wrong with this, it seems a bit boring. It also seems out-of-step with the mission-oriented spirit of those in government, or other civic hackers, working to resolve specific issues for the betterment of the larger community.

This is not true of all startups. Many of the best startups begin with a founder with a keen insight into a particular audience or need. While that founder may lead his or her team through many iterations towards a goal, there usually is a goal. The thing that drives the founder toward the goal is passion. It’s a passion that says, “I may not know exactly how we’re going to get there, but I know where we need to go. Let’s figure it out.”

That founder probably started out on his/her own, or with another founder or two. Cobbling something together, probably while working on something else. At some point, he or she just had to put it into the world.

It can be tricky to replicate that critical role within government, but it’s important to try. The vision of a founder can be critical at many junctures; points where going down the wrong path could be hard to recover from; points where a fight is needed. This is true inside and outside of government. Having someone in a position that fully embodies the thing that’s being made is important to making sure it‘s made right.

The Client/Vendor Relationship

Both inside and outside of government, organizations choose between whether they will make stuff themselves with their own staff or whether they will hire outside vendors to make the stuff for them. Frequently there is a mix of internal people and external people. Regardless of the context, this choice has an impact.

Of course, there are business reasons for choosing one over the other. Sometimes the resources needed to hire staff are too great and don’t make long-term sense. Other times the organization doesn’t value the skillset that the vendor brings enough to hire internally. And other times the need is temporary and a vendor makes perfect sense.

But the more a product becomes part of the core function of an organization, as it does in a “digital by default” context, the more important it becomes for the organization to live and breathe the product and understand all of its intricate inner workings. It becomes critical to have institutional knowledge that can remind the team why a certain decision was made, assess the wisdom of that decision against ongoing learning, and adjust based on the full knowledge of where the product started, what’s been successful, and where it’s going.

This is somewhat awkward for me to say because I’m on the vendor side most of the time. Regardless of whether you are internal or external, you want the stuff you make to be a success. When some significant portion of the team that makes something is going to leave after a certain milestone, it’s critical to find ways to internalize the ideas and knowledge of those folks, so that the people who remain will be able to evolve the product with the full body of knowledge that went into making the thing in the first place.

Acquisitions

Innovation is tricky everywhere. Any organization can become stale (and usually does at times). Sometimes what the organization really needs is an injection of outside innovation. Everyone knows that hiring and procurement is far harder inside government. So is firing. While this prevents a lot of cronyism, it also makes it harder to get that extra boost that a particular person or team could really add to the internal team.

Companies outside of government can hire freely and bring in folks who they know are needed on their team. But another way a lot of companies develop innovative products is by buying them, sometimes for boatloads of money. They watch startups trying things out. Most fail. Some don’t. When something catches, they buy them out. Usually the founders and key people need to stick around for a couple years to institutionalize the mojo that made the product successful and frequently to spread that mojo around other internal products that have lost their own. But after some time those people leave and go build private spaceship companies or other products that they are curious about.

This is a process that is trickier to emulate within government. The government can’t acquire a company. Besides, they probably wouldn’t want to. But that churn in and out is a helpful one that is harder for government to benefit from. The Presidential Innovation Fellows program and similar programs are a great start. Other means of hiring people for two or three year stints could also be helpful.

Conclusion

I’m of the firm belief that government can and does do great work. It does things and solves problems that other people don’t care about. It’s just important to recognize that the context of making things within the government is different. If you’re making things within government, you should have a clear head about what works outside of it, what works inside of it, and how the best of both can be brought to bear in that unique context.

I’d love to hear if you’ve had experiences making things inside and outside of government. What are the differences you’ve witnessed? Have you learned ways of spreading the good from one into the other?

Example of: Constraints, Empathy

I don’t write much about the Web medium here. I’ve tried to keep the content here more broadly applicable than just specific to practitioners of my industry. But I think about this stuff a lot. It’s what I spend most of my time doing. “Communicating Complexity” is a long-form look at some of the problems we face communicating complex issues on the Web and proposes a possible route to doing it better.

Example of: A Visible Future

“I’m not being hyperbolic. You will do deeply meaningful work. You will work with truly inspiring people. And you will become significantly better at whatever it is you do. You’ll step up your game. My time working on HealthCare.gov was truly life changing. The opportunity that is being made available through the Presidential Innovation Fellows is remarkable. You should request an application right now.”

Read the full piece here.

Apply to become a Fellow here.

Example of: Live / Work

When the floodwalls were breached, the Gentilly was flooded and with it, Lake Area Middle School. Jess heard nothing from her New Orleanian students. It would be months before she would hear the harrowing stories of students waving down planes from their rooftops or hear about the boy who was forced to break through his ceiling to get free.

It was the students in Ulan Bator that she heard from. They were worried about their friends. They had heard about the storm and seen pictures. They set out to help. The students raised a few hundred US dollars—a lot of money in Ulan Bator—and collected and sent clothing.

Why? Because they knew the students in New Orleans. Their lives had intersected and a hurricane 7000 miles away had come ashore in their own lives.

- - -

Jess founded One World Youth Project eight years ago as a high school student. She’d had the opportunity to travel to South Africa and experience the life-changing shift that occurs when you are able to step out of your own context and see it relative to the very different and very similar lives of people in other contexts. But she knew this was not an opportunity most people get to experience. Out of this realization, OWYP was born.

In the eight years since it’s founding, One World Youth Project has connected students in 67 schools in 26 countries.

One World Youth Projects develops global citizenship skills by establishing OWYP “Hubs” at universities around the world. University students are trained in the curriculum and program methodology. These “project ambassadors” are then assigned to local middle or high school classrooms, where they facilitate a cultural exchange program with students in another classroom somewhere else in the world.

In the eight years since it’s founding, One World Youth Project has connected students in 67 schools in 26 countries, most recently focusing on Washington D.C. and Prishtina, Kosovo. This coming year they will expand to Islamabad, Istanbul and Georgetown in Guyana.

- - -

Recently, OWYP hosted a reception here in New York City. Several of their painfully young and smart staff shared stories. Surya Kundu spoke of the challenges she had as a Teach for America corp member in Chicago with students entirely unfamiliar with her Indian heritage. Ossob Mohamud spoke of her experience in a OWYP classroom in Qatar, discussing women’s rights with students, some of whom questioned whether the idea was inherently Western. Cady Voge expressed that “once you know someone’s story, it is impossible to hate them.” Jess told the story of the Ulan Bator / New Orleans connection.

Their experiences have proven to them the importance of building a skillset that increases student capacity to see themselves in one another, while developing the ability to communicate cross-culturally and work together effectively.

- - -

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jess and team for about two years—along with my colleague Kaushik Panchal—to help the group communicate online and develop some of the tools they need to do their important work. In my work life, I have tried to focus my energy as much as possible in supporting organizations who are doing good work in the world. OWYP meets this criteria in every way.

I have no doubt whatsoever that their successes are just beginning. Please take some time to learn more about them. Not long from now we will speak about them in the way we speak about Teach for America today. That’s where they are headed. They have no small plans. I just thought you’d like to know now.

Example of: Empathy, Telling Stories

This is also true with government spending and taxes. The actual “settings” often don’t match what we think the should be. We are also usually unclear as to what the settings are at all.

The purpose of this idea would be to A) clarify what we feel is most important B) see how that matches with reality and C) develop a sense of where our priorities should go.

I don’t have the time to take this any further, but here’s what I mocked up as a possible Web tool to accomplish this.

Example of: A Visible Future

You can jump to the ideas I found most useful.

Dialogue Catalyst

I was asked to participate as a “dialogue catalyst”. The GSA folks didn’t set down specific requirements and allowed me and the other dozen or so catalysts to determine how best they could participate. Some catalysts felt their most valuable role was in lending their unique subject matter expertise to the discussion. This made a lot of sense for the people who have very deep knowledge within a specialization. I felt the way I could be most helpful was in encouraging discussion around posted ideas, bringing in ideas that I see outside the dialogue into the discussion, and reaching out to experts whose input would make the discussion richer.

Quality of Submissions

In general, I found the quality of suggestions was very high. The discussion around submitted ideas also usually helped to fill out the original submission. Across the board, ideas seemed to be coming from people who “knew what they were talking about” and who have thought deeply about the issues outside of the dialogue.

Participation

In just over two weeks, 436 ideas were submitted and 996 people participated in the discussion, either by submitting ideas or commenting on existing ideas. I heard some feedback that the fact users had to register to participate was a disincentive to participate, but my feeling is that it kept the quality of discussion high and clean. (You could register without identifying yourself.)

Many of the people who participated appeared to either be government folks, or people who might be considered near-government: either good government advocates or people who encourage government to address certain issues. This makes perfect sense, although I would have liked to see more people who are Web practitioners from across the private sector offer up lessons from their work. This is harder to do, and something that would be worth trying to figure out for future efforts.

Also, there was a strong tendency towards practices that are thoughtful, measured, research-based, and done “the right way”. Generally, this sounds great. We want the government to practice in a responsible, considered way. But outside of government, this isn’t always the case. So what’s the problem? I feel weird saying this, but sometimes there are situations where the best thing you can do is “just get it done” and put it out into the world. In the world of startups, there is a lot of discussion now about Lean thinking; that if you wait until your product is fully ready, you waited too long. So I’m not advocating for bad practices, I’m just saying that voice, for good or bad, wasn’t really present in the discussion, but it definitely exists outside of government decision-making.

Important Ideas Raised (General)

Big vs. Little, One vs. Many

One theme that emerged across many ideas was the issue of whether the government should focus on delivering services through fewer, or possibly one central website (see “Follow UK’s Directgov Model”), or whether it should focus on more, topic/audience-specific websites (see Kaushik Panchal‘s “Use the Network”). As with most things, both is probably the answer. To me, the best approach is probably to encourage practices that allow content to be found and shared easily across platforms:

• Apply proper metadata
• Use semantic marked up
• Ensure easy discovery via search
• Properly archive outdated or ephemeral content
• Do whatever needs to be done to put content and services at hands-reach for 311-type services

Differentiate between ephemeral and evergreen content

This is an issue that I think about a lot and which I see done wrong all the time. Content is not all created for the same purpose. Some content serves a short-term purpose and some is more timely and ephemeral. This is not just an issue of old vs. new content. Being conscious of the purpose and appropriate channel for the content is important. Generating content is easy. Managing a large collection of knowledge and up-to-date, relevant content is hard. Which leads to…

Content Strategy

Kristina Halvorson recommended creating a federal website content strategy. Other people submitted ideas along the same track. The point of the theme is that you should think ahead about the substance, function, need, audience, governance, and maintenance of the content you produce. This is often at odds with the last minute push to “get something out” about an upcoming event or marketing push. It’s important to recognize the needs of those who are marketing the efforts of an agency, but they need to be balanced with the needs of those within the agency or department who need to serve the ongoing content needs of their audience.

Better promotion of existing .gov services

Many times during the dialogue you heard people stating that the Feds should do this or that, followed by the Fed folks humbly stating something like “you can similar service here”. The takeaway is that there is a ton of great work already being done by the various Web teams that people don’t know about. Somehow more effort should be made to let the public know about these things, or increase their visibility. Some things, such as search.usa.gov are great tools, but could potentially be tweaked in ways to make them more useful or more visible. This mirrors my personal belief that one challenge for government is that when it does things well, it doesn’t get credit because those efforts become invisible.

Usability

There was a lot of talk of usability. i agree, but you can read the usability stuff here. Be sure to read Aaron Gustafson‘s “Optimize user paths”.

Open Analytics

Dmitry Kachaev recommended “open Web analytics for all .gov websites. This is an interesting idea. It would allow the public to crunch numbers in an interesting way. I think it would encourage content creators, who don’t always have access to analytics about the content they create, to take better care of existing content.

Important Ideas Raised (Social Media)

I was asked to pay specific attention to the Social Media space. Ideas from this discussion that I find important:

Use existing and open source tools

There was a theme I liked that focused on using existing tools, frequently open source, often with established users and cultures. It makes sense from an economic standpoint, but even more because these tools reflect iterative lessons learned about what works. Some known areas of concern for the .gov context involve accessibility and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) considerations. See:

• Dan Latorre‘s “Encourage use of popular #OpenSource platforms”
• ”Do Not Replicate Social Media”
• ”Have a Gov-Wide Team that Evaluates, Presents and PurchasesTools”

Allow Feds to communicate with citizens via social media

The idea to Support Employee Access to Web 2.0 Sites was raised. I agree, though it does raise some issues of workload, loosening control of message, and culture shifts.

Plan for effective use of social media in disasters

I posted the idea Institute Effective Social Media Emergency Plans. Many gov teams already probably do this, but what may not be as considered is the content strategy for producing resources, materials and content ahead of time that can prove effective in times of crisis, and pushing those materials out as soon as disasters strike.

Tension over ‘get the basics done” vs “be where the people are”

While not an idea in itself, I wanted to call attention to the difference of opinion between those who feel .gov teams should do the basics first (read: create effective websites”) before embracing additional responsibilities such as engaging on a variety of social media platforms.

Requirements, Guidence, Incentives

In reading through the ideas, you read a lot of “require all .gov websites to…” or “all .gov websites should…” statements in connection with thoughtful ideas. (Ex: “All Gov sites should use search.usa.gov to power site search” or “Make usability testing and 508 testing required PRIOR to launch”) In considering the validity of an idea, I think it is wise to consider the requirement aspect separately from the idea aspect. Establishing requirements for some perfectly good ideas could create inflexibility or “box checking” that would work against creative problem solving. Some things should be required. Some should be encouraged. Some should be incentivized. Some should be nudged. My guess is that the require/encourage issue closely mirrors the submitters’ views of the role of government in general.

Summarizing concepts

The next step for the GSA team will be to ingest all the ideas that have been submitted. They have said that they will in some way report on lessons learned from the dialogue.

Ratings

It would be good for the team to take the user submitted ratings with a grain of salt, especially on the lower and middle end. I think it’s safe to say the really highly rated ideas deserve their ratings, but when it comes to the ideas that were submitted in the second half of the dialogue, they are handicapped by two things. As more and more ideas were submitted, it became harder to get a sense of the full breadth of ideas submitted and you started to see some fragmentation and related ideas being discussed under different posts. Also time wasn’t on the side of late submissions.

Themes

I believe it was Candi Harrison who recommended that a summary of the dialogue could be gathered into maybe a dozen themes. I’d second this approach. I do think themes emerged, and a good summary would look for those themes and then cite key ideas and comments from within those themes, which I think don’t necessary align with the pre-defined campaigns set up in the IdeaScale system. The themes may be along the lines of “Process Issues: Activities that ensure a consumer/citizen focus”.

Tag IdeaScale

I would also recommend the GSA teams add/edit some of the tags associated with the ideas into a useful taxonomy that could aid in the consumption of the ideas in tandem with the summary.

H2>Potential future structure

To me, the IdeaScale platform succeeded in it’s core function of collecting ideas from the public and allowing for some discussion of those ideas. I don’t see any reason not to use this or a similar platform again in the future. But there may be ways to make the process even more successful. Here’s one approach:

• Instead of keeping all topics open the entire time, it may be helpful to have a series of focused sessions (usability, search, etc.)
• Possibly 3 or 4 days in duration
• Market each session to the main websites, experts, or organizations of that specialization
• Have dialogue catalysts with a somewhat more focused role of nurturing discussion, asking follow-up questions, seeding topics, and drawing in important voices
• Have an additional role for high profile subject matter experts whose task is to use his or her social reach to drum up activity and who would be the main participant of…
• A live, webinar/web chat/audio discussion that would happen half way through the session. The public could log in and listen to/ask questions of the expert related to the ideas that have been submitted. The expert could select some of the ideas he or she finds more important for further discussion.
• The dialogue catalyst could be the moderator for the live chat.

Thanks!

I was really pleased to be a part of the dialogue. I hope these comments help, and I apologize for the length.

Example of: A Visible Future, Identifying Value

The National Dialogue on Improving Federal Websites is a two-week online discussion of how the Federal government can better deliver information and services online. The dialogue will launch Monday, Sept. 19 at 2 pm ET and run until Friday, Sept. 30.  You’ll be able to access it at: http://web-reform-dialogue.ideascale.com/. Please join in the discussion.

I will be participating as a “dialogue catalyst” to help keep the conversation moving. I’ll be trying to connect ideas and ask good questions; draw people into the conversation who may not already be in it. I’d appreciate if you do the same. Join in. Share what you’ve learned. And if you think particular people would add to the conversation, reach out and ask or contact me and I will.

You can also follow comments about the dialogue on Twitter using the hashtag #dotgov.

As Craig Newmark puts it, “the deal is that Fed workers are seriously interested in better customer service, etc, via their web ops. I’ve worked with these folks for years, they’re the real deal, and are really listening.” I agree. In my experience working with Federal employees on HealthCare.gov and in other capacities, I’ve been impressed time and again with their intense commitment and drive to serve the public.

Of course, diversity improves all things, especially ideas. Those of us who work on Internet-related things all practice differently. We all do things in ways that we have found better for one reason or another. That’s what they want to learn. Upload your wisdom so that we can all learn.

And please, let’s keep this positive. We’re citizens and our government is asking us for advice. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Candi Harrison warns, “whiners aren’t allowed to play.  This isn’t a gripe session.  This is a chance to float your ideas and join citizens, colleagues, advocates, authorities, and others in thrashing out ways the government can improve customer service through the web.”

I’ll see you at http://web-reform-dialogue.ideascale.com/

Example of: Identifying Value, The Long View

If you’re developing a business, it is of course important to find “product/market fit”. If someone’s investing money in your company, they don’t want to think you’re on some meandering expedition to just make some stuff. But simply finding a market and figuring out something to put in front of them is, well, kind of boring.

For the last ten years, my MixTrail partner Robb Smylie has been helping Teach for America solve their big challenge: to educate children in low-income, underserved communities. That’s a big problem. He’s done this by leveraging technology in a way that makes the impact of the organization scale up efficiently. The more work that can be automated through algorithms, or eliminated by making data more usable, the more that can be done with fewer resources. Technology can have a huge impact on how people do their jobs when applied thoughtfully.

In my own design practice, I have tried to work with and accelerate the efforts of clients that were doing good work in the world. Whether it was designing the site that allows all Americans to find the private and public health insurance options available to them, my work with colleges helping current and prospective students know what educational options their schools offer, or helping a youth-run organization articulate it’s mission of developing young people’s global citizenship skills to investors and partners, I always try to work with people who were working towards big things.

Look, I spent many years working on projects that were interesting and challenging, but that didn’t quite get at the big issues. They pushed product or told a good story, but they largely left the world alone. I know that experience well. But I work towards more.

MixTrail is working to solve a big problem. Despite, or perhaps because of, the Internet’s low barrier for publishing information, we are not necessarily more knowledgable, deeper thinkers. As a whole, we don’t have a better handle on complex issues. In many cases, the reality is obscured by a lot of fluff and news. We’re likely to hear the latest news, but not be able to contextualize that information.

MixTrail’s not going to entirely solve this problem, but it’s the space we’re working in. Bit by bit, we’re trying to create a system that will allow you to connect ideas and content in ways that makes it easy for you to gain background, context and peripheral ideas.

We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re excited and working hard to make it great. More in time.

Example of: The Long View

That doesn’t mean I’m a pushover when I’m prodded to deliver more than originally agreed upon. It means I pretty much always stick my nose where I haven’t been asked. Not forcefully, of course. Just out of inquisitiveness.

You know those moments, don’t you? When you feel that the thing that needs to be done isn’t exactly what you’ve been asked to do. It’s a bit beyond that. It’s the thing that others think isn’t really necessary. But you know, if you just did it, they’d see it’s value and it will make everything better. You can always just skip it, but sometimes it’s an opportunity.

It can be an opportunity to practice an aspect of your craft that you are still trying to figure out, or gain experience in. In the work I do, there are many invisible or behind-the-scenes things that clients often don’t know they need. It’s a great chance to work through it, develop your skills in the area, and create examples of real-world work that can help you get paid for similar work in the future.

At Work

I’m sure this is true is most work scenarios, but most of my work is consulting with clients. Here are two examples of how this has played out for me.

Free People

Free People is a long time client of mine. Together we’ve redesigned their e-commerce site (a few times), created a mobile store, launched several new feature sets and a wholesale e-commerce store. It’s an ongoing relationship that has grown and changed over the years. (All development has been by Weblinc.)

It started when Carrie Yotter saw the site I designed for the band Blanche many years ago. She thought there was an aesthetic affinity with what Free People was about. There was. The tactility and sense of history fit well with the Free People sensibility. The earliest work I did with them focused on telling the aesthetic story.

By the time the project was complete, Free People knew I approach problems from as broad a perspective as I can. When they decided to foregoe new physical wholesale showrooms in favor of an online wholesale site, I was brought in again. Much of the information architecture and user experience work was not explicitly called for in the original agreement, but it was clear that it needed to be done to get it right.

We needed to think through the way wholesale buyers shop showrooms and how that experience and mindset could be translated in an e-commerce experience. We spent far more time on wireframes than planned, but it showed the value of the process and cut down on fiddling with designs later.

A bit later, when FreePeople.com was ready for another full scale redesign, the design efforts focused entirely on creating a cutting edge store with a structure that would allow Free People’s super-creative internal design team to regularly and easily reskin the site along with their marketing campaigns. The resulting site still pushes the limits from creative and technological perspectives, all while being appropriate for their unique audience. It was “Responsive Web Design” before there was such a thing.

So while the original motivation for approaching me was because of certain aesthetic affinities, the reason I’ve been asked back again and again is because of an entirely different skill set that I proved I had along the way.

More info on Free People work: Free People Retail Redesign  |  Free People Wholesale site design  |  Other Free People projects 

Oberlin

Another (shorter) example is Oberlin College. The college was undergoing a large scale branding overhaul that spanned more than a year. While the larger effort was under way, they asked for some help creating an interim Admissions site. The designs were well received. When the branding project wasn’t, they commissioned me to take a stab at designing the homepage.

The design that was delivered wasn’t just a graphic arrangement of elements. It foreshadowed the extended site experience, and also dealt with some difficult issues they faced; namely a branding campaign in which they were deeply invested (but wasn’t well loved), and the organizational challenge of being two schools in one, the College of Arts & Sciences and the Conservatory of Music.

That design seemed to strike the right could with all the interested parties, and I was asked to take over the redesign of the full global website. This work subsequently led to other higher education work for Columbus State, GWU, Stockton and more.

More info on Oberlin College work: Oberlin College Website Redesign

Work Outside of Work

Using your “work skills” outside of the workplace is another great opportunity. Contributing your most valuable skills to help community groups or advance social issues you care about frees you from many of the constraints of paid work. You can often approach problems in ways that business often prevents. The work you do in a volunteer capacity is just a usable in exhibiting your skills for future employment. Take it as an opportunity to do it the right way, document you work, and take it seriously.

For me, extracurricular work has been very important in my career. I’ve written about my work on HealthCare.gov already, so I won’t go into it here. Also, I plan to write soon about the work I did for Blanche and all the projects it led to.

Conclusion (finally)

There are lots of opportunities to do the work you’re interested in. If you can’t figure out how to get paid for it yet, do it anyway and use the experience and output to prove you can do the job. That work, because you care about it, will be your best work. It’ll be the best projection of where you want to go and will help others see you in that light.

Example of: Identifying Value, Live / Work