"You sure you don't have to be in California to call a pharmacy there?"
When we were knocking out sources of risk on day zero, one was "Can you get a pharmacist on the phone and will they tell you anything?"
We have phones in Tokyo.
2 minutes later: "Yep and yep. Press on."
We're working as quickly as we can on accelerating efforts ex-California as well. It's Day 16 and it has been a pretty full two weeks, but distributing the methods and shortening feedback loops for others is very much an Internet-y way of problem solving.
Lots in flight.
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Per arrangement with Manish over DMs, I have the baton.
Here's what VaccinateCA.com did today to help Californians find the coronavirus vaccine.
* We called several hundred pharmacies, talked to the pharmacists there, and wrote down what they said. (Peak calls to date.)
* We continued working on QA for our Spanish and simplified Chinese multilingualizations, which should be launching Very Soon Now (TM).
* We did scoping work for expanding materially from pharmacies and Super Sites to the other institution types that could receive vaccines.
* We appointed a COO and a head of communication strategy, to help our staff and volunteers understand where to go to get authoritative answers on direction. ("Staff" internally means something like "maintainer" in OSS does; a core contributor we trust with ownership, etc.)
Here is what VaccinateCA.com did today on Day 13, to help Californians access reliable information about the coronavirus vaccine so that they can make better informed choices for themselves and anyone they arrange care for:
* We called several hundred pharmacies across the state of California, and wrote down what they said.
* We continued doing QA work with our call center, to align expectations regarding notetaking such that information is displayed on the website in a consistent fashion.
* We briefly published mistaken information. It suggested the coronavirus vaccine was widely available at a pharmacy where it was factually not, resulting in a large number of phone calls to that pharmacy.
In “Is this really my life now?”, and I swear as my honor as a gentleman this just happened:
I ducked into a beef bowl place to have a quick bite while answering some high-urgency communications.
I bought my usual, with their new tablet app. It cost 580 yen, which is ~$6.
The shift manager, on seeing the order come in, came over and said “Sir, you appear to have created an order entirely equivalent to the lunch set, which is available from 11 AM, and which costs 500 yen.”
“That’s OK. *turns back to email*”
“That is NOT OK, sir. I will fix this.”
And thus begins an absolute comedy of errors where the Japanese salaryman in me knows what is happening, the American CEO in me is ruthlessly prioritizing neither the 80 yen nor explaining things to manager, and the shift manager involves corporate to override their new POS.
Because we're fighting a huge credibility gap, as amateurs working on a critically important problem whose work must past review by experts to be effective.
One solution:
Explain what we plan to do. Do it.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
I am Mr. Nice Fluffy Bunny with respect to my comms strategy, as only a dangerous professional with a folder labeled Overwhelming Timestamped Evidence can be.
I think I sort of regret writing "amateurs" already given that while that is probably a perception we'll hit sometimes, with respect to the *part of the problem* we are working on, we are... how to phrase this...
VaccinateCA.com made these improvements on Day 12 to help Californians quickly locate information medical professionals provided about how to get in line to get the coronavirus vaccines they're eligible for.
* We made hundreds of calls to pharmacies across the state.
* For the first time, we brought a call center online. They called *five times as many* pharmacies as we did today, because they are professionals and they are very, very good at what they do.
We are reviewing their written notes prior to publishing them, to align on styles/etc.
* We completed a prototype of multilingualization for our website. Multilingualization means that the UI would be in a language maximally convenient to the user, but the content would continue to be in (in this case) English.
We are QAing translations to Spanish and Chinese now.
Here's what VaccinateCA.com got done today, Day 11. (Technically speaking I know day is over in California but work hasn't stopped in Tokyo yet.)
* We made several hundred calls (near our peak to date) to pharmacists across California, and wrote down what they said.
* We added 60 net new locations with the vaccine, plus the instructions their dispensing pharmacists indicated would allow one to get an appointment and any eligibility criteria required. This brings us to about 320 we know of.
* We re-called many places to check for changes.
* We did major work on a Brand Identity Toolkit, so that the experience of using our project is consistent across the site and the other various presences we will soon have. We'll be cutting over to the new branding over the next few days.