Strange Loop

The education of a civic technologist

How can we use technology for good ends rather using technology to amplify our own, possibly implicit, preferences? Over the last two years, U.S. Digital Response has served over 200 governments and non-profits on over 300 projects to address the challenges caused by COVID across 38 states and territories. Rather than leading with solutions, we've intentionally chosen to partner closely with the domain experts doing the hard work close to real world problems. This changes how, as technologists, we approach problem solving and technical decision making. In this talk, we'll cover our approach, how we lead with a problem discovery and understanding mindset, pick tools that are suitable for both the job at hand AND the people who must maintain them, and how we translate this learning into creating scalable solutions. This talk is for anyone considering how to make an impact in the civic tech space.

Alex Allain

Co-founder and CTO, U.S. Digital Response

Alex oversees the development of technological tools, automation, and infrastructure at USDR. Alex most recently served as a Director of Engineering at Dropbox.