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. Thank you both for joining us on Civic Tech Chat this time. Could you each introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?

Hi. I'm Lena Patel. I'm part of the Code for Australia community. I am, was previously part of the team, the core team or the base team that was, running the organization in Australia for a couple of years and, have since moved out of that and I'm part of the broader, civic tech community here in Australia. Similar to now, I'm not a developer. I sit more on the design side of things. And so my work these days is as a professional facilitator, and also as a collaboration designer, which is about, how, a group of people can work better together. So those are the sorts of things that I was doing whilst part of the Code for Australia, team. And similar to now, remain connected to the global civic tech, community through Code for All. And I'm based in, Melbourne, Australia.

For each of you, what would you say is your personal why? You know, that thing that deep down that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do.

That's that's, excellent, now, and it's so useful to be reminded of people's, physical, reality. Australia is not beset by as many natural disasters as Japanese generally Japan, sorry, generally is. However, we're yeah. We're all being affected by climate change in pretty major ways now. My personal why, I describe my mission as being to alleviate needless workplace suffering and to bring more kindness into the world one team at a time. So, that mission kind of places me and my work, within workplaces, and the I guess, where the site or the location of my work is in teams. So, whether that's, you know, a small team in an operational type area or a leadership team that's leading an organization, my theory or my hypothesis is that team is the smallest unit at which we can practice being human with each other. And for those of us who spend so who are fortunate enough to have, work in our lives, we spend a lot more time there than possibly in many other, social groups that we're or groups of people that we're part of. So I figure if I can put some effort into how to make, that moment in people's lives more human, I imagine that kinda ripples out into the rest of their lives. So that's why I get out of bed every morning.

Are there any pieces of media, whether it's a podcast, something that's in print, video, or something else entirely that y'all would recommend for our listeners to check out?

I would, recommend, Dense Discovery, which is a newsletter. It's published out currently out of, Melbourne, and, the human behind that, Kai, is also the publisher of a magazine called Offscreen Magazine, which is a print only tech magazine, which is just such a treat. So Density Discovery as a weekly newsletter is just a very deeply thought, take on tech. And what I really like about that newsletter is it sort of gets you to question perhaps the the more kinda ethical aspects of whatever it is that you're undertaking. And I and I enjoy it because it's quite an opinionated newsletter, and I've I enjoy, people having a position on you know, for those of us working in tech and design, I I enjoy when people have a have a position or have an opinion. The other one I would point people's attention to is Future Crunch, which, I believe also comes out of Australia. Future Crunch is kind of it's in the name. It's future oriented. What I really like about what Future Crunch are doing is, again, it's a very conscious, thoughtful approach to thinking about the future, and it is actually, for the most part, very hopeful. So you you just have to kind of it doesn't take much to step online or out your front door, and there's waves of negativity in, our current reporting and our current use of social media. So to have these people, writing in a in a hopeful tone about the possibility of technology is, a really great thing. So it's it's a good thing to have in your information diet.

I suppose now we can go ahead and shift to our main topic for today, and that is the initiative that, both of you are rather familiar with called tech for non tech with code for all. Like with our personal introductions, I think it would be good for us to start with the concept of why. So what do y'all think is the why for this program, and how would you describe then what it is at a high level for folks? Tech for non tech is a day long,

training program that, different organizations can run. And when participants come, it's essentially around, bridging the, gap between technical and nontechnical people in terms of web development. So at the moment, the the content of it is around how the Internet is made, essentially, would be the summary. So, what are the basic building blocks of the Internet as we know it, and then, how do people build on that, and then how to work well with developers. Now in terms of the why, what we an interesting thing we've discovered about Tech Fun On Tech is that it's a bit like I don't know. I feel like there's a useful analogy here, but, like, it's a bit like a I don't know. It's like a bit of a tin of paint. Right? And you can use that paint on all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. It's a it's a very multipurpose, training day. So the why actually reflects a need in the location where it's being run. So when it started off, it, was dreamt up by, some folk at Inspiral Dev Academy in New Zealand. And the problem they were trying to solve was they were graduating people from their boot camp, so from the, Dev Academy boot camp. And, an interesting thing about their boot camp was that they were, specifically, skilling would be developers with what what I would call emotional intelligence and a sense of, like, your work is essentially with humans, and you need to know how to be human with the other humans in order to be a really good developer. So the problem that they were trying to solve is that they were graduating these kind of emotionally aware developers, but they were landing in workplaces that were not developer ready. So then tech for non tech was to make workplaces developer ready, and that was in service of their boot camp, grad graduates. When I brought it across to Australia in collaboration with Dev Academy, the wife and me was that we were running fellowship programs, and you can go to the code for Australia website to to find out what a fellowship program was. And we were encountering the same thing. So we were bringing in these employing these really talented web developers and so developers and designers who had zero experience in government, and that was one of the kind of requirements was that you you you hadn't had experience with the bureaucracy to come and work in a bureaucracy and bring that wonderful magic and fresh pair of eyes. And, again, we were finding, of course, the government departments that Code for Australia partnered with, they had never worked with developers before, and that was kind of part of the magic that the people had never worked in government, and the government had never worked with, this new way of thinking. Well, new for them, not not new in the world. So my motivation with Tech for NonTech was to to create a slightly softer landing for these incredible humans we had recruited to come and join us on, this this fun adventure. And I do believe it made a difference for, folk who arrived and with their, colleagues in government had participated in tech for non tech, it made for a slightly softer landing and a bit more understanding on a day to day basis. So that was our motivation. I think, I think it's a different thing now when you, hand it across to so our colleagues in, South Africa, open up South Africa, they had a completely different motivation, which, and I know I'm speaking for them, but as I understood it, was around, putting within reach of, civic organizations, civic civil society organizations putting within their reach the possibility of, using web technology to further their aims. So it was very much around, like, educating, empowering, civil society and, activists, which is a completely different scene to the one that Code for Australia works in. So again, serves the same purpose and sort of there's a bridging thing, but it's bridging for a completely different reason.

Next, I I would be curious to get into some of, like, your, y'all's both of your personal experience kinda with the program. As I imagine, y'all have maybe either the same or maybe differing experiences around, like, facilitating something like this. What has that been like for y'all, and are there any, like, preferred practices that you've picked up along the way as you've learned?

people. What's interesting for me being now kind of on the other side of a of an exchange where, for the first year or two, I was the person to whom the thing was being handed over to. And so it's interesting being now one of the people who has handed it on to others. One thing that could be useful to know that sort of explains, the shape of tech for non tech is that, both the, the folk in Inspiral Dev Academy, so Ants, Cabral, and Kate Beecroft, and the others, whose names I forget who are involved with it, and then, myself. We are all facilitators, in terms of our work. What that means is that we are paying a lot of attention and possibly a little bit more attention, which is what keeps us in a job, to what the experience of a gathering is like. So what does it mean to host people? What does it mean to create a, safe learning space so that, grown ups, feel comfortable, saying they don't know? What does it mean to make it okay to not know? You know, when you're thinking about something like, how the Internet works, right, it's been around it's been around for a while. And and as a professional who may have scaled the ladders of whatever organization, you know, you might you may have a level of seniority in your organization. And and to realize that you don't actually know how this, like, very like, this ubiquitous thing works and this everyday thing that you interact with, there can be a lot of, mixed feelings about that. And so that's the kind of jumble of feelings that are are present in each person when they walk into the room, because in a way, they're signaling, I I have no idea what this thing is, and I actually don't know how it works. And by the way, I've been commissioning tech projects for ages, and we've spent, you know, tons of money on stuff. And, like, to say that you don't know is is actually quite a big thing to ask of people. So as facilitators, we're totally primed for creating a learning environment where, there's, playfulness and there's an openness and there's a curiosity to kinda say, well, it's a shame nobody sat you down and taught you how the Internet works because I don't think such a thing exists. Right? There's no such class. I don't know how you would have worked it out by yourself. So it's okay. We'll we'll this is just a really rapid class. This is like a very quick class on history of the Internet, how it came to be, the very basic building blocks. And then from there, we've essentially provided them a scaffold with or a mental model that they can then hang new information on. So the one of the highest value things that I think people leave with is a scaffold that any new information that they read, they can kind of place it on on a on a sort of a, a frame that, we've we've hopefully shared with them. So the playfulness, is really around, moving people into a space of learning and moving people into a place of curiosity so that they leave empowered to continue their learning and find their own answers in the future.

It seems that one of the ways the the class tries to connect these ideas, and, Eileen, I think you're alluding to this a little bit, is through the use of analogs, whether it's, you know, the use of post notes on a board or in one case that I read about the assembling of a LEGO model. What sort of things do folks tend to to learn from those sorts of activities?

The thing that is that that most helps is anything that bridges a person's current understanding to the new concept that you are, sharing with them. So the the heart of what Tech for NonTech is helping people to come up with language or ways of describing a technical phenomena or a technical thing in language that they, in everyday language that they understand. So in, western, culture where English is a dominant language, analogies is, you know, are are a method of doing that. So when you get somebody to create an analogy about a technical concept, that is one way to to bridge. The other way and also just because I use Lego in my work as part of my work, getting people to build a model of something. So that's a kind of a form of an analogy, but you kinda just get them to, like, materialize, the thing. My chosen, thing is Lego, and so that's what I handed over to other people. But other people may choose to use any materials that's, you know, part of what they like to to work with. And so, again, you're you're inviting people to come at new knowledge by building their own bridge to it. So we don't stand up there and I mean, there are some definitions that are given there, some explanation of of stuff, but we really ask people to own and take responsibility for their learning, and to okay. So what do you think this thing means? Or how would you describe this thing? And then we use that as a learning opportunity that, you know, we would say, okay. The way we would tweak that is this way, or the way we would tweak that particular comparison is this way. You don't know what people think until you ask them. Right? Until they they express it. So we get them to express it, when you're when you're talking about, dominant English language places through analogy or through through model making, Lego being a very handy thing to make models? I think it's different in Japan.

There was a a medium post that I I saw about tech for non tech. And in it, it's mentioned that one of the five reasons that the program is important is that it's, and to quote, a great model to exchange knowledge, which is developed in local communities. This seems to fit well with the kind of common ideal across a lot of civic technicians where they talk about, like, building as a partnership, learning from local expertise. Can we talk a bit about what that looks like for this sort of program and each of your perspectives?

The kind of biggest learning I had from participating in the exchange was that I I took it on from people who were you know, the people kinda who created it who come from a very strong facilitation basis in their work, and they happen to work in and around tech. Similar situation that I'm in. And, also, New Zealand and Australia culturally are not massively different. Right? So we could just lift and drop the thing, very, easily. And so you can imagine that another person who had a strong facilitation background and whose work practice really involved, attending to what the experience is like for the humans and who sits in and around tech could easily and and and is in a Western, context where, you know, like, in dominant English language, tech for non tech would just be a a a lift and drop. However, when you take it to somewhere like South Africa and take it to somewhere like Japan, Japan, South Africa, and Australia are all culturally quite different. So whilst we all work in and around tech and we're all part of the civic tech community, the cultures in which we come from and which we are offering this course will it will necessarily have to adapt. So it's fascinating to me that, analogies, like, I would never have known that this concept of an analogy isn't immediately translatable into Japanese culture. But the the the idea was that, well, what it aims to do so in our case, it's like it's a bridging mechanism. So, we found, we added onto it LEGO like, LEGO was something I added into tech for non tech, and it's hilarious to see that that's kinda carried on. So that's wonderful, but then analogy has adapted into, Ogedeeti instead. And in, South Africa, I'm sure there's an there's a there's an adaptation that has occurred, that makes it suitable for that, location and for well, not location, for that culture and and their culture of learning. And, you know, in in one interesting thing is that in Australia, when you're we can be very self deprecating, so we can kind of be putting ourselves down a little bit when we're, you know, suppose you know, we could be the experts in the room, but we will quite often be, sort of self deprecating in that. And that's a characteristic, our colleague, Ben and myself share a little bit. Whereas, I remember we were chatting with, Nao and he was saying, you can't like, you have to be the expert, otherwise people won't listen to you. So when you're at the front of the room, you have to really kind of stand in your expertise, otherwise you won't get people's respect. And we're like, we know. Nobody will listen to us if we're like that in Australia. So there's sort of cultural differences around how somebody at the front of a room is regarded and what it means to reveal to your colleagues that you don't know something. And all those little, little, little moments around the experience means that the the experience of Techronom Tech just shifts, to accommodate for that, cultural difference.

So as we know, ultimately, your organizations were able to, procure a grant to, like, help support this program. And I believe we've mentioned a bit how, like, some level of this is kind of this idea of, like, a business model that is being shared. And, what I wonder is what sort of impact does access to resourcing like that have to how you think about a program like this and and how it ultimately ends up being run?

This is absolutely a business model question, and I love that you're asking this. And I'm going to, zoom us out a little bit out of civic tech. Another really, really big part about tech for non tech, which really held my fascination and, was, the possibility that we could have a business like, what does it mean to have a scalable business model that can be localized? And what does it mean to, offer, an income stream to your colleagues around the world? But an income stream that once you hand it over, there is absolutely nothing you can do for that opportunity to bring money in. It now sits entirely in somebody else's hands and what they make off it. Part of the handover was consideration about what is the receiving organization's capacity to do something with this. Right? We're gonna invest it it it took we did about six there were six ninety minute weekly calls before the handover, then three of us flew halfway around the world, and we're in a location for a week where we delivered the course three times. Three times? Yeah. Where there was, like, we, we the ones who knew how to do it delivered it, and we were observed, and then the people observing then took it on and delivered it. And then there was, like you know, so it was a it was quite a busy week, and then come back and then do some follow-up calls. That that's actually quite an investment of time on a whole heap of people's efforts and and life. And so you'd want to know before going into that that that whoever's picking it up can actually do something with it. And so I think it's, you know, part of that question is funding, and part of that is, the organizational's capacity. So if you think of funding as a proxy for having the headspace to do something, then, yeah, sure. Funding does matter. I mean, Code for Australia was able to do it because we're a viable business. And we did track how much time we were spending on, on it, and we priced it so that it, so that our costs were covered and that we made a margin. And we also had an agreement that a certain percentage of everyone's ticket sales goes into a central pool. That particular ideal, I'm not sure how that's, I'm not so sure how that's played out, now that it's with lots of other organizations, but certainly between us and Dev Academy, we had a central pool. So we were giving a portion of the ticket sales back to Dev Academy to cover new content being developed. So the idea was that, the thing would be self funding in a way. So everybody puts a chip off their ticket sales into a central pool and then that central pool pays for new content and maintaining the you know, making slide decks look better and things like that. So if Code for Australia hadn't been financially viable, you know, if we were, like, busy scrambling for grants and busy running things so that we get more grants and money and keeping our funders happy, we just would not have had the head space to to to bring the creativity that's needed to to launch a a whole new service offering or a whole new thing. Likewise, I guess, you know, a useful observation that there was a set of things true for code for Japan and a set of things true for code for OpenUp South Africa, and the reality of both of these organizations means that the the TechFanonTech has taken, you know, has not been as fast in one and has has blossomed in the other. So maybe that's a funding question, but I think it's it's, like, more broader, like, capacity. Like, now I believe has a very demanding full time job. He's not he he's not just doing code for Japan stuff. So, you know, in a way, Nao and myself, we both had jobs, and that meant that we're able to be a bit more creative about the stuff we do outside of that.

So, eventually, of course, your two organizations that had ended up, like and and South Africa's organization ended up all kind of doing an actual exchange. I do wanna spend a little bit of time talking about that act in and of itself. So can we dig into, like, what what's all involved in trying to do the actual exchange and, like, that transfer of knowledge, that that sort of activity?

Making the exchange happen, first of all, needed, the support of the leadership of, each of those organizations, because it would mean a significant, it mean a significant investment of time on their people's part. So, yeah, just a a shout out to the the people at, Open Up, South Africa and Code for Japan and Code for Australia for, you know, enabling the people to participate in the exchange. What else was needed, and and this was, I guess, a really big part of the ethos of the Tech for NonTech extending the global network, which is something that, Inspiral Dev Academy and and I had chatted about was, first and foremost, it's about a values alignment. So because, as I mentioned before, because tech for non tech can actually be it's a very general purpose training program. And because it can be offered in all sorts of different contexts, what we were interested in is handing it over to people who we felt would would do good with it, which is a very arbitrary thing as to, you know, whose version of good. And so, in order to kind of say, yes. I I hand this over to you and I feel you'll do do good with it, that's entirely around values alignment. So being part of the code for all network, there's a bunch of stuff that's already been worked out. Right? Those organizations wouldn't be in the code for all network had a bunch of other things not happened. So that kind of values aspect of it fit really well. So that's kinda the the sort of, like, the the background work, and it's almost like the background work was the bigger work that needed to happen. Once you agree that, it's then just, like, scheduling calls, sitting on Zoom for, like, hours and hours and hours, booking flights, being in a place. And there was a whole kind of process we, plotted out together as to asking our, partner organizations, what do you need? What, like, what would you help what would help you feel okay to take this back to your context? Going to, South Africa, you know, was really great. Our colleague, Ben, and now myself, we're all in one house in Cape Town, very walking, you know, walking distance to where Coda Bridge, I think, the space that, open up, operate out of, which is this fantastic space literally under a bridge. Really, really cool workspace. And then they hosted us for the week. And the first day, you know, on a five day schedule, we kind of arrived and, you know, hook into the Wi Fi and eat their snacks and get to see what they're working on. And then the second day, we, delivered the content. So, Ben and I from Code for Australia delivered the content to a group that they had already previously organized. What we didn't realize is that it was a group in a regional area, so we we were all in a van from, like, 5AM till 10PM, like, driving out, running a full day, and then driving back. So, you know, being in a van is a great knowledge transfer space As is being in a I mean, being in a house was its own thing. We had some really fantastic chats, you know, before and after and just, like, hanging out. Being in a van is a whole other thing because then there's, like, all of us in there, and and there's some there was something really excellent about that that we learned about each other and about each other's culture and, whilst driving through this incredible landscape. Came back, did a retro regather, blah blah blah, and then it switched over to, Codefield, Japan and opened up South Africa to then run the a thing to a group that, again, OpenUp had, had had, assembled or invited. And then the Friday was kind of part retro, part celebration, part just all hang out. So there was, some really wonderful moments of friendship, and I feel like that was just, like, the spirit of civic tech, like, coming to life. Like, the way we hung out being from completely different cultures, completely different countries, completely different work backgrounds that we could kinda come together, share this thing, create something, and then take it back. And we remain even though I haven't seen now on a Zoom call for a year, we're, you know, we're on Slack together and we both blogged about this as well, We now remain in relation to each other. So, it's not it's not a transactional relationship where he paid for something and then I gave him something and then that's it. We say bye. It's like it's a very relational, the process was very much around building relationships, and the lines are always open. So in five years' time, these you know, when they're running tech for non tech in whatever form and have question about something, that those lines will just always be open.

As our conversation draws to its conclusion here, one of the things that we like to do on civic tech chat is to give some space at the end here for the guest or in this case, guests, the two of you, to monologue a bit and kinda give us an idea of what you'd like, us, the listeners, to be thinking about as we leave the talk. So for each of you, what would those concluding thoughts be?

I really liked what, what you said before now around, friendship. And sometimes, for those of us working in in tech, I'll speak for myself that, being able to to name, these kinda more human aspects of of, of being a human, does not come easily. So I really appreciate you you, I think I wanted to say friendship, and then I, you know, I was like, oh, I might be overstating the relationship if I say that. But, yeah, just, I think at a, you know, we're at this, like, incredible moment in time. Right? Those of us working in tech and design, holy moly. Like, what a time to be alive and to be in this field and and, you know, all the, like, collection of privileges that have arrived us here. And and and, of course, you know, your individual effort. But I you know, there's there's this interesting reality we we exist in where the consequences of some of the tech that a bunch of us have been involved in building has had a result of atomizing and disintegrating collectives. Right? So the the you know, when you know, I'm I'm sort of probably stating the obvious here around the ways in which human community and and and relations have become atomized and how our concerns have become kind of very personalized rather than, generally community minded. And the ways in which there's there's so many ways in which, interactions, have been reduced to transactions. And so the this is sort of just this, like, irony of this wonderful place we are in as technologists, you know, including design and the, undeniable, effect that deploying our talents has on humanity. And so I think it's in that context that tech for non tech sort of popped up as one of many possibilities. It's not the only thing doing this, but it's sort of one of many possibilities, which is about bringing people into relation with each other. So, the handover, as we've both spoken about, was, a very relational experience. So, like, going over was very relational even the way it was set up and the fact that this happened in the code for all network. Again, that's a highly real relational space. Something about that kinda gives me hope. So, something about the the possibility that, within open source communities, we can come into relation through the technology we're making or through the things we're creating is is a really energizing and a thing that fills me with hope. And, you know, the the the irony with Tech one on Tech is that it, by its nature, cannot go viral. Like, it can only move at human pace, and humans humans don't move at, you know, virality or, is not is not a is not a feature of humanity. Like, we we can't you can't scale tech for non tech. So there's something stubbornly slow about it that I really like. Yeah. It's just never gonna scale on the shape of those things that scale because, humans just, like, physically cannot move that fast, and we cannot learn that fast. So having this thing that is just stubbornly slow and slows things down, and it takes a day because that's how long it takes for a person to get from a to b on a concept they've not encountered before. So, yeah, those would be my my closing thoughts.

Lina, now I I wanna thank you both for taking the time out of your day to come on Civic Tech Chat. I very much enjoyed this conversation, and I have no doubt that the listeners out there will take tremendous value out of what we've heard today.

Thanks for having us on, Ryan. Really appreciate the opportunity to,

to reflect. Thank you. Thank you very much. You can follow us on Twitter using the handle at civic tech chat. Visit us on the web at civic tech chat, or subscribe to us for content updates wherever it is you download your podcasts.