#pspc

On Monday, we had a few team meetings and sync-ups, and then in the afternoon Maddy and I headed over to the Old City Hall to volunteer to help set-up for the OneTeamGov Unconference. 

If you haven’t gleaned from some of our photos, Maddy has wonderful penmanship, so she was put to work on signage:

If you haven’t attended an UnConference before, there are no speakers or topics selected in advance. It’s generated by attendees on the day. After an initial collaborative activity, the agenda was populated with topics attendees wanted to discuss. This isn’t an event to sit back and doze off - I mean listen. Everyone is expected to participate. 

Tuesday started bright and early for me as I was also volunteering for registration. After that, I was free to attend sessions through the day. Maddy volunteered to facilitate and note-take at sessions, as did others in our NextGen family: Robyn, Ali and Giselle. 

It was pretty cool to see all the engaged, forward-thinking public servants at the event, and I was a bit surprised that I recognized so many of them! 

There were some common themes across several of the sessions, and sometimes it was difficult to choose what to attend. There were quite a few on remote and flexible work arrangements. I chose to attend the following:

All teams across gov communicate in the open about their successes and failures on a centralized platform

Keep humans at the centre of design + delivery (in and out of government)

Lego Serious Play

Increase opportunities for generating, testing, implementing solutions, coming from the ground up/grassroots

It was an inspiring, albeit tiring, day!

Then on Wednesday, we fellows met in the GCCoworking space to retro (our first in close to 6  weeks - sorry Maddy!) and talk about our work. 

I’ve been working on creating a service blueprint for a service that doesn’t have a centralized booking tool, so we talked through my design. This is in addition to the ux research and design we’re doing for our prototyping efforts, so I’ve been feeling some pressure of having a lot on my plate. As I was worried about it being refined enough for a group review later in the week, Mike gave me a helpful reminder. The purpose of the meeting was to gather feedback - I didn’t have to go crazy trying to make everything perfect and in a final state. Get things in a state to elicit feedback, and then spend more time refining it afterwards. Thanks, Mike! 

The time away from the office was a nice chance for the three of us to re-connect and just make sure we’re still feeling positive about our direction and what we hope to achieve through our fellowship. Time is ticking, and we need to be sure we’re working on what’s most critical. #constraintsBreedCreativity

I also got a giant copy of the existing Service blueprint of the travel journey, to post up in our work area. If anything, just the sheer length of this is a clear sign we have plenty of opportunities to improve this experience!

On Thursday Maddy and I spent the morning over at Courts Administration Service, shadowing some of their financial folks to get a better sense of their current financial processes related to travel.  It can be easy to think only of the traveller as we’re working on a solution, but we have to be sure that we are considering the other parties and processes involved. Getting a glimpse at what goes on behind the scenes can really change how we approach a problem. 

Then we headed right to a Service Blueprint review with some members of the NextGen Travel team, as well as some other partners that are working on blueprints. It was a chance for us each to show our work, and some of the ideas we’re exploring. I wish we’d had more time to really dig in and poke at each others’ concepts, but there was just too much to go through! The meeting did help me feel like we have a solid concept and are on the right track. I’m glad I took Mike’s advice and didn’t worry about spending time making a perfectly polished deliverable. 

Also! I published a mammoth blog post on the Code for Canada blog about prototyping. I appreciate Luke’s patience in reviewing and editing it! 

Then came Friday..

We attended the Digital Services Branch Executive Committee to present our work. We talked about the design sprint that was held back in October, as well as some of the prototypes we’ve been working on. Despite the fact it was THREE O’CLOCK the FRIDAY before the HOLIDAYS, attendees were very engaged in our presentation. It helped that Chief Information Officer Tammy LaBelle framed our work and its importance, but I was pleasantly surprised at the thoughtful questions we received. It was a great wrap-up to lead us into the Christmas break.

But, we weren’t quite done - the bulk of the NextGen Travel team (who weren’t already off for the holidays) met for drinks at Queen St Fare to kick off the weekend and Christmas break. 

After a drink or two, Mike leaned over and said to Maddy and I “you know, I think if this were the end of our fellowship, and that was our final presentation of what we’d done, our fellowship would have been a success”. 

I still get goosebumps thinking of that a couple weeks later, and hope we can continue to feel that sense of accomplishment and impact through the remainder of our time. 

Buildings constructed before 1919 are full of traditional features that make them great places to live. Such character also brings specific needs and requirements when it comes to their maintenance and repair which many home owners find challenging to address through lack of appropriate information and the costs involved. Industry professionals spoke to a packed room at the first property repair seminar in March demonstrating a clear need for accessible advice on historic building issues.

The evening was chaired by Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust and began with Annie Flint from Under One Roof who introduced the audience to a wealth of online accessible information on maintaining and repairing historic homes, especially those in multiple ownership such as tenements. Specialist talks followed from Graham Mitchell of @rchitects Scotland Ltd on the benefits of involving a conservation professional when undertaking repair projects, John McRitchie of Perth College UHI, on timber window maintenance, and Paul Higginson of Arc Architects Ltd on key repair issues that can be encountered.

The presentations were illustrated using examples of completed building repair projects in Perth City Centre offering the audience tangible evidence of the beneficial outcomes to arise from repairs employing best conservation practice. The evening was concluded by Sara Carruthers of Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust who introduced the Perth City Heritage Fund’s latest phase of grand assistance for home owners looking to repair their historic buildings which has become available this year.