Thread by @patio11

Here is what VaccinateCA.com wants to get done today, Day 11, to help Californians arrange the covid-19 vaccine for themselves or their loved ones.

* We are going to call hundreds of pharmacies across California, talk to the pharmacist, and write down what they tell us.

* We are going to publish that information to a single website, including (where appropriate) the links and instructions we heard from the pharmacist for scheduling appointments.

* We're putting a way to quickly go from our search results to Google Maps so that vaccine searchers can prioritize which location they call based on e.g. their mobility capabilities, availability of transport, convenience to places they know, etc.

* We're writing an internal policy to guide our team in how to process information of varying quality.

As an example: we never publish a Yes to the site w/o confirmation from a responsible medical professional. (e.g. A tip doesn't count until we call the pharmacy to confirm.)

* We began writing a strategy document to inform how we think of call staffing and the relative advantages of our in-house team, call centers, and other ways to scalably make phone calls.

Our first call center has been in the works since Friday. We have been iterating rapidly with them on requirements for passing data back and forth.

We presently anticipate that they will begin making calls when the pharmacies open on Monday. We will receive results in real-time.

This guy, who used to work in a call center, is flabbergasted that you can get real time notes from them, given that once-a-day used to be the absolute best possible without spending an absurd amount of money.

When I expressed surprise that real-time updates were on the table the call center folks said, and this is an approximate quote, "Oh we can show you how to use Google Sheets. It's like Excel. Do you know Excel?"