47 Civic Engagement During COVID-19 Part 1
This is the first of two episodes where we'll talk to folks who are leading organizations trying to make civic involvement easier despite the constraints of COVID-19. For this one, we're joined by [Bhavini Patel](https://twitter.com/bhavinipatel_)to chat with us about their platform Be the Change which seeks to facilitate connections between constituents and state legislators.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- [Be The Change](https://beam-data.com/)<br>- [Blink - Malcom Gladwell](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40102.Blink){:target="_blank"}<br>- [Grit - Angela Duckworth](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27213329-grit)<br>- [The Transportation Research Board](https://www.nationalacademies.org/trb/transportation-research-board)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. Babini, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?
Yeah. Of course. First of all, I'd like to start off by, just thanking you for the invitation to have this conversation. My name is Babini Patel, as you mentioned, and I am the CEO and cofounder of Beam Data, which is a based civic tech startup. We recently just launched a civic action app called Be The Change that helps people take meaningful action on community causes by directly connecting them with their state legislators. And so my personal background, I've spent a significant amount of time involved in my community serving on various boards at the local and state level, and I've also previously run for elected office. So it's a sort of combination of these collective experiences that really inspired me to build beam data and be the change.
What would you say is your personal why? You know, that thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning to do what you do. Yeah. So my
my personal why, I think, largely sort of stems from the commitment to building a people centered organization, I think, that sort of helps people feel seen and heard. I think as a society, we face a lot of challenges today holding space for views that may not necessarily agree with our own views, and I think that that oftentimes prevents us from reaching our full potential as a community. And I think that we see this in various facets of life, but largely especially with what's happening politically in this sort of national political conversation. And I think that this is a result of various different factors. It could potentially be because, you know, leadership at different levels, doesn't necessarily meet the moment. We sort of lack tools that facilitate the dialogue and conversations that we need to be having. And then sometimes, which is oftentimes saddening, I think it's off it it can also be just because of a a general sort of unwillingness to want to listen to the stories of others and sort of create that process of empathy. And so for me, I think I I get up every single day wanting to bring us closer to that goal of ensuring that we're creating space for people to feel like they're being seen, they're being heard, and that there are there's a space for their stories to be told.
Are there any podcasts, videos, books, or other sorts of media that you'd wanna recommend to our listeners out there?
Yes. I think sort of following off of my previous answer, so I'm currently reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which is not necessarily a new book, but, it it came recommended by a lot of my close friends, and I'm I'm thoroughly enjoying it for a variety of reasons. I think that, the sort of thematic focus, I think that there's a lot to be said about the power of intuition, empathy, and emotional intelligence as a founder, but also someone who spends a significant amount of time, in the community talking to people of different backgrounds, which helps me to be a better founder, but also allows me to be a better person in general. And I think that's something that I really appreciate about this book, and I'm looking forward to delving a little bit deeper into as I continue reading it, is that we currently, I think, place a lot of emphasis on the importance of higher education, towards the path to success, however you may define success. And I think that in today's world where we're so connected, there's a lot of technology, a lot of innovation happening. There's a lot more value, I think, actually, in having lived or direct experiences that expose us to the realities of the world and sort of put us in situations that make us uncomfortable so we can meet the moment and and sort of experiment with the different facets of who we are as people. And so I recommend that book. And then I'm also reading, Grit by Angela Duckworth, which is a really good kind of sort of pick me up in case you're having a down day as a founder and something's not going right. She she has a way of really, like, getting you pumped up to just keep going.
You know, thinking about things that kinda force you to rise to the moment or maybe push push you outside your comfort zone. I gathered from your previous answer that, you yourself were a political candidate once Mhmm. Which is certainly that sort of activity. I believe you ran for the, I'm gonna probably mispronounce this, but the Allegheny County Council. You have to know, letting me know if I was any bit close. What sort of things did you learn from that campaign experience? You know, I imagine doing things like going door to door to some folks maybe feels like something from a different era with how this year's been going. Yeah. So I that's right. So it's Allegheny County Council. You're you're close enough.
So I I I was lucky enough to have run last year. I couldn't imagine being a political candidate in the current environment. I have a lot of, you know, I'm genuinely really thankful for a lot of these virtual events have been coordinated for current candidates. But that experience was really interesting, and so I it exposed me to a completely different facet of what it means to be a Pittsburgher. I, you know, I ran in a district that's predominantly, if you're from Pittsburgh or no Pittsburgh, the Mon Valley, and it also included Monroeville and Plum. And so the Mon Valley is really home to a lot of folks who sort of have deep historical roots. Right? So their families, you you know, they had parents that worked in the steel mills, and their homes were passed down to them through generations, and they sort of lived in those those those communities. And so there's, like, a deep sort of tie to that neighborhood sort of feeling. And so for me, you know, I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. I grew up in the Pittsburgh area and went through k through 12, but I my mom came from India, and there's that sort of immigrant background and that immigrant story. And so I've never sort of experienced what it means to be a true Pittsburgh and to be tied to that that historical narrative of what it means to have family that works in the steel mills or to have family that has sort of the background of being veterans and and and so on and so forth. And so being invited into these homes and having those conversations and having folks actually take the time and carve out the, you know, time to tell me about their lives was just a phenomenal experience. And and then being able to do the same and tell them about who I am as a person. And so it's those experiences knocking on doors and having those conversations as a political candidate that truly, I think, inspired me to want to create some essence of that in the Be The Change app and a platform in the company that we're trying to build. So that was sort of the inspiration behind why we did what we did.
And that and so as you mentioned, you you have that app, and I believe it's now launched to to the public in some way in the store. Is that is that accurate? That's correct. So we launched on August 6. We're currently in the App Store, and the Android version is coming soon. So I saw that your first partner, in this case, is state senator Jay Costa. To give listeners context, they represent the 40 Third District and are the leader of the Democratic caucus for that chamber. I imagine there is a considerable amount of effort needed to get buy in from an office like that. So how did you go about doing that? And, is there a strategy in my you have in mind kinda going for the sister as a starting point?
Yeah. So I, I was really lucky to have approached senator. Senator senator Jacas is actually my state senator in the 40 Third State Central District, and so I've been following a lot of the work that he's been doing. And he's always just been a really great advocate and very public advocate for wanting to explore technology, wanting to understand innovation. His district is actually home to Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh as well. So there's a lot of research component that he has to keep up with just as a as a legislator. And so having known that, I sort of approached him with this idea and, you know, kind of talked about my own race and why I was inspired to do this. And it it was actually not surprising to me that he agreed to it. I mean, it was a very basic idea just to create a platform that could improve communication. And so, at that time, you know, we had had the conversation about a year ago, and then we launched about a year later, obviously, in August. But the timing of it was also really critical because at that point, situation around COVID nineteen had peaked as well. And so as a state senator, he was facing a lot of challenges as many other elected officials just being in the community because a lot of the in person meetings, town halls, and so on and so forth had come to a halt. And so the launch of the API, the change, the the timing was actually really great too because we were able to facilitate that sort of communication gap to ensure that he could still stay connected to and keep keep pulse of what's happening in the district, and sort of create a new avenue for people to engage with him. And so that's sort of yeah. That that was sort of the the approach that we took. And so we launched with him, as I mentioned. We're sort of doing a pilot launch in the 40 Third District within our Acosta, trying to work out the bugs in the app, trying to get a sense of, you know, what we need to add in terms of feature in order to scale it. And so after about a couple of months of piloting with him, we're hoping that we'll be in a place where we can actually make the app accessible to other state senators in Pennsylvania and then hopefully, scale and expand from there.
So I I think I'm hearing there that then that office has already been using the app for a non zero amount of time. Am I hearing that accurately?
Yeah. So we launched on August 6. So, yeah, they've been onboarded since August 6, and we're currently in the process of just getting the word out to the constituency, doing different marketing efforts in the environment of COVID nineteen, letting people know that he's on there, and that his you know, legislative aids are responding to different concerns and questions. So it's been about, I think, roughly two and a half weeks today.
So I imagine that's that's not a very lengthy time to have gotten feedback. But, have you heard anything from the office in these, like, kind of first moments dipping the toes in the water by using technology in this way?
Yeah. So I think I think one of the things that they were excited with about was creating a platform, where there could be constructive dialogue, direct answer and questions sort of you know, a lot of folks don't necessarily feel comfortable picking up the phone and having a conversation with their state senator's office because they don't know if they're asking the right length of actually doing the Google search necessary to find that contact information, etcetera. Especially another reason I think that, that they were excited about coming on board was to be able to engage, younger audiences in the political process too. Right? So when we when we talk about voting and, you know, get out the vote and make sure that you vote, I think that the way that you inspire people to vote is when they feel like they're connected to their communities. Right? When they feel like they, you know, reach out to their state senator or their state representative, and they were able to have a dialogue, and they feel invested in their community, and that's sort of what inspires them to go out and want to cast their ballot. And so I think that it's it's, an app like this truly does engage a different sort of demographic of populations as well in the district. And so that's one thing that we're really excited about kind of tracking as we go forward is to
to see if there's a difference in who they're able to reach in terms of age, race, and that sort of thing. You know, I I would imagine that, like, just the act of, like, trying to reach folks to let them know, hey. Like, this is available to you. This is a cool tool you can use. It's probably in of itself, like, that first challenge, the first hurdle. What sort of things are y'all doing to try to,
get get get it out into the community, if you will? Yeah. So that's that's really interesting. So I think I think for sort of any app idea, I think marketing and figuring out how to reach the people that you want to engage in a conversation and get them to download the app is sort of, like, the million dollar question. And so for us, you know, with the elections coming up in November, I think there's already a lot of dialogue happening around, you know, mail in ballots, COVID nineteen, different concerns about unemployment, and so on and so forth. And so we've been relying on a lot of basic strategies of, reaching out to different partner organizations, community organizations that are doing a lot of grassroots work in the district and asking them to work with us to get them to get the word out, you know, if they have any questions around unemployment, COVID nineteen, and they can use this app and directly get a response. We've obviously been relying a lot of social media, you know, things like Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, and and things like that to get to get the word out. In an ideal situation, we would have had sort of a bigger launch party, but, obviously, that's not possible right now. And so we've also been forced to adapt in many ways just thinking about marketing and outreach approaches. But, you know, people are really supportive. I think that they see value in something like this, and so finding partners and being able to use their sort of social media real estate to get the word out has been a really effective work for us. And I will also add that, you know, I mentioned that Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh are also in a district. And so that means that there's a lot of students that are gonna be coming in back into the area, and there's sort of a lot of unanswered questions around COVID nineteen. And so we've been focusing on partnering with a lot of the different student led organizations at Pitt and CMU to let them know about the app. So if they wanna share different things that they're noticing around COVID on campus, that they can do that via the app and make sure that people understand what's happening on campus so we can sort of prevent anything, you know, from from escalating if there are concerns.
So we've mentioned COVID a couple of times now with this as being part of the why, talking about using tools to kinda try to rise the challenge of how do we have, like, a normal functioning government or a normal functioning interaction between a leadership figure and their constituents in a time when you know, we can't be in the same room. You know, you can't just go to their office and and talk. As you've been thinking about this, you know, through the course of this work, like, what kind of role do you do you see technologies like this app or or others play in trying to help facilitate these types of interactions?
Yeah. So I think technology is so important, especially because we can't be meeting in person. And so one of the things that's really unique about be the change is that, you know, a lot of there are a lot of existing apps out there. It's sort of like three one one systems that focus on, like, local government, you know, borough level or, you know, sort of city level government. But there aren't apps like this that exist for state level, and so many of the decisions that are taking place in legislative process directly impact us yet. We don't know how to keep track. And so I think that that's one way that we're really sort of unique. And the second thing is the I think the role of technology. So that's sort of like the education component. Right? Using technology to educate people about state government. The other sort of way that I think we're unique is we invite people to share community causes on this app, and we allow them to upvote and downvote the post that have been made by neighbors or people in their community. But we've sort of blocked off commenting and have reserved that essentially for elected officials to sort of move away from this sort of nasty discourse that we might be seeing on other platforms because we don't want to make the focus of the platform about moderating speech or, you know, kicking people off. We want to be able to create a space space where people can actually have their questions answered. And so I think it's it's a very simple idea in many ways. I I don't think that there's anything really that's complex about the app, but I think being able to build something that especially, I'm sure you know, like, building civic tech that's, you know, adoptable by different legislators and people who may not necessarily be too tech savvy. It's really important to create something that's simple but effective and and gets the job done. And so I think that in many ways, that's what be the change represents. That's what we think of in terms of civic tech and and and what we're trying to create with BeamData.
I think it's a really good segue into the the next question I had, and that's the, the challenge and it's around the challenge of building technology that serves, like, a community at large, like, a whole population. You know, one doesn't in the situation of something like this, one doesn't have the ability to kinda pick an audience and design for that audience. As I I think you were alluding to a bit there by, like, you know, you the experience level with technology is gonna be all over the place when you consider the population as a whole. How are we looking to approach the process of creating something that any constituent might try to pick up and use?
Yeah. So for us, I mean, that was largely, like, when we were when we were sort of doing the designing of it, the UI UX, we were really lucky because at that time, we were actually able to do a lot of, like, the market research and have conversations with folks and put the app in front of them and really dilute it to a level where we could simplify it as much as possible. And so I think our design process, we tried to be as community focused as we could. And that was the result. I mean, you you know, you can see that in the sort of app that we've designed now. But moving forward, in terms of thinking about adoption and bringing people of different backgrounds and different groups to actually, like, use the app, for us, the priority really has been focusing on building partnerships with grassroots organizations, people who are living in certain parts of the community that may may not necessarily know how to connect with their state legislators, you know, working with youth groups, for example, to get them to adopt the app so they can talk to their state legislators. That's really been our priority in in terms of thinking about usability. In the future, I mean, so we obviously have to think the the sort of digital divide. That's a question that oftentimes comes up. Not everybody has access to our own, so how will they download the app and use it? We're hoping that once things calm down, hopefully, with COVID, we would be able to partner with, you know, the public library system here and potentially put, sort of, like, be the change, iPads at different libraries so that people wanna connect with their state legislators, they can do that very simply using an iPad. So just kind of thinking creatively around ideas like that, to make sure that the technology is accessible for for everyone in the community and making sure that we're being as inclusive as
possible. I mentioned there's, probably a a fair number of folks out in in our audience that have also find themselves often thinking about those sorts of partnerships and how they relate them to, like, the task they're doing, whether they're working in government, working for, like, a nonprofit, working for an organization. Maybe not too different from yours as trying to, like, partner with some part of the the governmental process. They might be curious to hear, like, what what sort of, like, tactics have you Mhmm. Employed, you know, trying to, one, like, find organizations that
feel appropriate for that sort of thing, and then also to, like, get buy in to have a sort of partnership happen. Yeah. So I think one of the biggest things for us is, you know, even in the the design of the app, the sort of marketing, even the website, we it's quite obvious that we're mission focused. And so at the root of it, we we we stay consistent with our messaging that we truly are focused on getting people connected to their local government. And so when we are reaching out to different partners, that's sort of what we lead with. Right? We oftentimes work with different organizations that are trying to engage youth in different community led projects. And so our approach in that case would be, oh, like, have you thought about taking the community led project that you're doing within your organization and actually letting your elected official know about it. Right? Because when you're doing something that's so enclosed and you're focusing on something, there's a lot of knowledge and insight that usually comes from that process and that project with different mentors coming in and leading the project. So if there's a way for you to very easily log on to an app and share the knowledge points that you've gathered and let your elected official know, I think there's benefit from that, and that's sort of how we've approached it. And that sort of kind of encapsulates the idea that people who live in their communities, people who are interacting with their communities are sort of the experts in their neighborhoods, and they have the valuable knowledge that's necessary sometimes to resolve certain challenges that an elected official may not know how to approach. And so I I at least think that a lot of, elected officials would be open to that sort of feedback loop where they, you know, there's something that they're getting new information and they can act upon that. In terms of, working with student led organizations, on on campus, I think that, again, going back to the situation of COVID nineteen, I think that that's something that we're still trying to figure out how to approach, and there's been a lot of, interest on that note. Because when people do notice things that are related to COVID nineteen, they really don't know where to share that information. So having technology where they could sort of outlet that and and get constructive response as opposed to just tweeting it where anybody could reach in and respond to it. They they've at least told us that it feels more constructive to put it on a platform like this where they can solicit some sort of response.
And speaking of that that sort of community engagement, I did see in a blog post on y'all's website that at some point you've created a community advisory board. And in that post, it mentioned that, part of what the group is for is that they're meant to have visibility into how, the decision making process works to hold it accountable. Can you tell us a bit more about that board and the role you're intending to have it play as as you're going forward?
Yeah. So I mean, for us, one of the primary focuses when we had the idea be the change was to make sure that we're building technology with community, not necessarily for. We didn't wanna build something and then just, like, assume that people would adopt it. And so for us from day one, it's all been about, you know, having conversations with folks and asking them, like, would you use something like this? In what environment would you find this valuable? You know, including them in the UI UX design process, thinking about different features, asking questions back and forth, to see, you know, what they would find value from or whatnot. And even whenever we're doing some testing, I we oftentimes rely on our community advisory board to ask them to test the app to make sure that the usability is sort of intuitive. And so I think that when you when you include people in the process of building an app like Be The Change or any sort of technology, I think that you're also likelier to build trust. And I think that building an app like this that does have a political element to it that, you know, is dealing with civic action, trust is such an important component, and it's not going to happen overnight. That's a long term process that you have to consistently work towards, and you have to make sure that you're threading that and weaving that, in every decision that you take as a company and as you're marketing the app and who you're partnering with. And so we heavily rely on our community advisory board for insights to keep us in check, to point us in the right direction when it comes to potential new partners, thinking about new features, as we grow and expand.
If there's a listener out there that's caring about this concept of a community advisory board and they're like, oh, like, didn't I hadn't thought of that before. That sounds like it'd be really cool for for my project or the thing we're working on. What advice would you give them as they're thinking about that and thinking about things like, how do I pull this group together? What should our interactions be like?
What kind of role should I be striving to have them at? Yeah. So I think for for the way that I sort of approach it and and our team whenever we were brainstorming this, the way we thought about it was we would identify about four or five people in the community that are sort of like the change makers. Right? Like, you hear them. They're trusted community leaders. They're the ones that people usually go to when there's a project or something that needs to be done in the community. And we basically approached them. We were incredibly authentic about what we're trying to do. And sometimes they said yes. Sometimes they said no, but that's okay. And the ones that did say yes, we would have a phone call conversation with them. We would explain what we're trying to do, and we would ask them if they'd be interested in serving on the board. And if they weren't, we would ask them to introduce it to somebody. And so it's through that small snowball method that we were able to build up a group of people that we we knew that were, you know, well versed in the communities and the neighborhoods that they came from. And I think fundamentally, it's something that we're really, really passionate about making sure was that if we onboarded somebody onto the community advisory board, we wanted to make sure that they had knowledge about the community that they were coming from. Right? That they knew the ins and outs of that community, that they weren't outsiders, because we didn't want to we didn't wanna become we didn't wanna be unknowns essentially. So that that building, again, goes back to that trust factor. I think that's really important. And then whenever we did develop our board, we we made sure that we had tight agendas. Right? Really tight. The thirty to forty five minute conversations, very focused because we didn't want people to feel like we're wasting their time. We wanted to make sure that they felt that they were getting something out of it as well in terms of knowledge growth, networking, connecting them to each other if they didn't know each other so that they could also build on their networks. And then, obviously, you know, incentivizing them because of the they're offering their time, whether that's through different gift cards or different programmatic experiences that we curated for them. So it was really important for us to make sure that it was, they were it was mutually beneficial. And And I think that when you're thoughtful and intentional about that, people want to give you their time because they don't feel like they're being sort of used. You know? It feels like they're they're contributing something that's that's impactful, but they're also getting something in return from that.
Now that you're on the other side of the the launch of getting the thing out to the public, I imagine there's quite a bit of the public, you know, kinda get the can can we as a team get this thing done on the timeline we want to? And then, oh, crap. Now it's in the App Store. I hope it goes well. I'm sure a lot of those thoughts are, like, going through. Going through y'all's head as you're doing that. But now that you're past that, are there any, like, lessons learned along the way that you'd be willing to share with our listeners about all that stuff that happened before?
Yeah. So I think the biggest lesson, I'm sure this is probably not this is probably quite conventional, but it's it's the truth is that you're it's never gonna be perfect in time for launch day. You're always going to feel like you've missed something or, you know, this feature is not working correctly or or something. And but I think I'm so happy that we did launch when we did launch because the reality of it is and I've been told I've been given this advice a million times, and I didn't understand what they were telling me until I actually did it, which is that it doesn't matter. You just have to get it out there. And until you get it out there, you will not know how people respond to it. And it's it's, the best advice, the best sort of feedback loop is when people start using it and it's actually in that environment. And then you can start making decisions and responding accordingly to build a product that's the perfect fit and that's something that your your the the the market wants. And so, it's gonna sound very cliche, but I think that's that's for me, that was the biggest thing. And I feel like we we we surmounted it like a mountain in many ways because it's it's, it's invaluable to be able to, like, experience that and go through it because now, you know, when we have to do a second release or when we have to release our Android, we sort of know what to expect now. We know it's not gonna be perfect. The the the sort of emotions will be in control now, and we'll be ready to take the punches and sort of just ride through it and just keep pushing and and and get it done.
So then, with what you just said before about kind of the way you're think you're thinking about, like, lessons learned from the first launch, is there anything you're kinda thinking to yourself, oh, I wanna do this differently as I do the Android launch?
I think, I again, I think that it's just gonna be stop focusing on sort of, like, the minute details and just focus on getting it out. And once it's out and we're, you know, allowing people to kind of interact with it and we're getting the feedback through email, letting us know that this there's this bug or there's that, you just kinda have to become a little bit more, like, unattach yourself to the product in some ways. Like, you it's it's difficult because you spend so much time building it. It's like your baby. Like, you're you know, you want it to be perfect, but you just have to kinda attach from it and put it out there. And once you detach yourself from it, you take that feedback with a lot more appreciation, and it doesn't seem like it's an insult or, like, somebody's calling you out, but rather, like, this is good. Like, we want to embrace this feedback so we can get iterations out and get it done. And so I think that this time around, the emotions won't be as high. I I feel a little bit more detached to it. Like, I'm ready to put it out and just get feedback so we can iterate on it and get the final version, and that's we can actually start focusing on new features and new updates.
You know, and kinda intertwine what you're saying, I'm I'm hearing some stuff that, like, folks that that do the, like, the agile of, like, lowercase a Yeah. That kind of stuff would would kinda, like, really gravitate towards that. Hey. Like, let's get some working software. It doesn't have to be perfect. We just need to get feedback quickly. I imagine, it can it's not it's, like, not only difficult to think to to shift your thinking that way as an individual, because it contributes to a thing, but also and to, like, lead a group of folks or, like, your case, all company that's like that. I don't know. Like, what sort of things are you doing to try to, like, keep all of the moving pieces in track for that methodology?
Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. So I think, for me, like, I I think I really had to work on myself first. Like, convincing myself, like, it's okay. It doesn't need to be perfect. Even though I had a million people telling me in in, you know, in the startup scene in Pittsburgh, I am, you know, lucky to have a lot of friends and mentors in the area. They've told me that a million times, but until you actually internalize it, you really can't lead your team to believe it. But the reality is is that that's the most efficient way to lead a team towards developing a product and putting it out. And so, you know, I I became kind of immune to it at some point. Like, after a week, you know, after maybe, like, four four days of it being in the Apple Store, we were getting emails. Like, oh, this isn't working. This bug uses. I just became immune to it. I was like, that's okay. Like, that's fine. Let's put it in the tracker. Like, you know, we'll address it when we can. And it was funny because my team, I think, that they were pretty surprised by my attitude shift because I was the person that was usually freaking out about it and thinking about it for days and days and days. But sort of, you know, once once you are showing that and reflecting that, I think your team also becomes more kind of confident and comfortable because they don't feel like they're letting you down. And, again, I think that's such an s like, that's such an essential lesson in leadership. Right? Is that when your team is following you and kind of seeing they they sort of mimic in many ways what you're doing. And so it's your responsibility as a founder to kind of keep it together and make sure that you're inspiring them to continue doing the work they're doing because if they feel down and they feel like they didn't perform, that, you know, they put out a buggy app, it's it's hard to overcome that and come back from that. So we need to keep pushing to make sure that we can come back from that and, focusing on the good and having conversations about the positive aspects of what people have said has been really great for our team and keeps us inspired and excited to keep pushing and to to keep, iterating.
No. I I I like what you said there as well about, like, trying to, I think I heard something essentially along lines of, like, trying to, like, build confidence and focus on your team by, like, having that continued and, phase delivery. That kinda made me think of some stuff that I had going on, like, at my work where we, like, went to shorter sprints so that we could kinda show, like, hey. This this smaller delivery goal happened. So So now that we can build upon that, like, you can get momentum and the folks on your team that can then feel more confident to Yeah. To, you know, make the contributions that you want them to. Right? Yes. I am absolutely 100% behind that idea. I'm learning to embrace that.
I think that incrementalism is a phenomenal way of life. I think that if we could take things in tiny bits, and incrementally move towards them, I think that it helps us build a stronger foundation for whatever we're trying to build, whether it's a product, whether it's a company at large, or even an idea. Having a strong foundation, making sure that you feel comfortable where you are and you are, you know, you believe in it. I think it's so important because at the end of the day, once you build something, you also have to sell it. So it's it's important to take the time and process what you're building, to make sure that you feel confident about it, and that's not gonna happen overnight. I I you know, after you start looking at an app, you know, for, like, six months, you begin to hate it. Like, it's because it's just looking at it so many times. And so, it it takes time to kind of adapt and build something that you're comfortable with, and then, ultimately, that's what you go out and sell.
And I I wanna thank you again for, you know, taking the time out of your day to join us here on Civic Tech Chat. Before we depart, though, there's always this lovely time at the end where, we try to, like, get the concluding thoughts together that folks will then kinda, like, take away from this conversation. So for you and this conversation we've had today, what would you like folks to take away?
Well, so I think for me, the biggest sort of takeaway throughout this entire process of building Beam Data, Be The Change, running for office, I think that the the sort of ultimate factor is that the idea for Be the Change was largely motivated by my run for office and having those conversations in my community. And it was sort of taking that leap and pushing away the doubts, in my head, and and committing to testing out this idea that really led me to where I am right now. And so and I and I really genuinely think that we need more of that. You know? People who start companies and start ideas or start ups in general from small moments like that and holding on to those moments and reflecting on those moments. And I so I think today's conversation was largely about that. Right? Reflecting on who you are as a person, your commitment to community or whatever it is, and innovating innovating using that purpose and then building something from it. And so if you're thinking about something like that, I, you know, encourage you to take that leap of faith and, you know, push forward and and do it. Brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on the program and sharing your insights and, your passion for this project. Absolutely. Thank you for the invitation. This is wonderful.
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