Background

In late 2018, I moved out of San Francisco to Walnut Creek, a suburb about 40 minutes outside of the city, by car or BART.

One of the things I first enjoyed about San Francisco was the maker culture that manifested mostly at coffee shops. People interested in changing the world by writing software. I was particularly drawn to the makers at Code for San Francisco.

Code for San Francisco is a weekly meetup where people get together to learn, share, and work on civic projects; mostly software. The turnout at these events was good, in my experience. Always at least 10 people, and often more than 30. Code for America was gracious enough to host these events, and Microsoft even provided sponsorship for some of that time. Pizza, light snacks, and beer was often provided as a small incentive to get people to show up and focus on working together.

Starting a Meetup group focused on Civics

When I moved to Walnut Creek, I looked for Meetups on Meetup.com, and for community events at the Library and on Next Door. I didn't see anything that looked similar. So, I decided to start a Brigade Chapter.

Code for America has a very supportive infrastructure for starting and managing Brigades. They provided lightweight support and fiscal sponsorship for groups adherent to a reasonable set of conditions. In a couple nights after work, I was able to get a Meetup page, website, and GitHub repo up and running for "Open Walnut Creek."

If you build it. They will come.

Unfortunately, few people ever did come to a meetup about civics.

I did find it interesting that a certain member would sign up very quickly each week, then cancel within hours of the meetup.

I found it interesting that the Meetup group garnered 50 members relatively quickly, but few would sign up or engage in communications or discussions hosted on the Meetup website.

What I Tried

I ran Meetups on Tuesday nights at 6pm for more than 40 Tuesdays. I met less than 10 new people. The people I did meet, were fantastic, and I'm glad to have met them. But breaking a certain threshold for what I'd call "productive collaboration," never occurred.

In the last few months, I experimented with a number of more focused offerings.

• Civics 101
• Introduction to bitcoin
• Mapping downtown local businesses

No notable changes in signups of attendance.

I posted on NextDoor about the event, and got community flagged for "selling services." I was encouraged by support staff to use NextDoor's "Events" feature, along with a nudge to consider paid services.

What I Learned

Civics may not be inherently interesting; especially in a relatively affluent city, where there is low crime and low visibility of homelessness.

Additionally, the suburb may not have sufficient density of population to foster organic groups of creatives focused on civics plus technology.

I learned that community platforms don't focus all that much on community. Community comes after platform and profit motives.

If you build it, you need to make sure you're building the right thing, and engaging users on a personal basis. It takes a lot of work to get somebody to show up, let alone assess and orient them appropriately to meaningful work opportunities. Volunteerism is not free. It is a significant investment of attention and time.