Open Nouse: November 2020
Open Nouse is a monthly update from the Code for Australia Base Team, and is one of the ways we put our core value of working in the open into practice.
We’re coming up to the end of the year so what better time to reflect! November saw us working really autonomously for a variety of reasons but we’re excited to reconnect now that the year is winding down for real.
So with that, we’re sharing what’s been challenging (📌) emerging (🌱), and good (🌹), in the past month.
📌 Thorn — Sometimes we’re rushing
As a teeny Base Team of three, our systems and practices are important to us. This month, two members of Base Team came down sick in seperate weeks and the third member took some long-overdue leave. This resulted in a very sporadically populated month for us that left us slightly vulnerable and rushing when new pieces of work came in.
We can often struggle to maintain processes as urgent tasks enter our orbit when we’re at full capacity, let alone when we’re one person down. We’re figuring out some ways to trouble shoot this, but ultimately — sometimes we all need to get a little better at saying “sorry that’s not going to be possible this week.”
We’ve also been bitten by the end of year bug when everything is due. This is a bit of a double edged sword though… read on!
🌱 Bud — Exciting end of year things
There is truly so much to be excited for at this time of year! Content wise, we’re going to see our second ever Impact Report go out early next week. It’s a great opportunity for our community and our friends in government to see how we tracked in 2020 across the things we feel are worth measuring. Check out last year’s for some insight into what you can expect.
We’ll also have our ever-popular 2020 iteration of our GovWin Awards — where we bring acknowledgement to those that deserve it within the public sector. Here’s last year’s awards for reference!
We also held our first official meeting with our new Advisory Board! Plans are being made and friendships formed.
Oh, and let’s not forget our upcoming holiday party. Some of us are yet to meet in person so we’re excited to share the end-of-year-cheer.
🌹 Rose — We’ve done good!
Reflecting on 2020 is making us really proud. Our teams are happy, our community is growing and there’s so many exciting things on the horizon. From upcoming Fellowships, to working on new products— it’s safe to say 2021 has a lot in store for Code for Australia.
Want to know more? You can leave us a comment or question in the comments or via Typeform, or reach out to us here, and we’ll be happy to answer all your burning questions!
