Thread by @patio11

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.)

* We continued iterating on data accuracy, with manual cleaning efforts, tasking calls to refresh earlier results, automating systems to prevent easy-to-make mistakes from appearing in public prior to being +1ed in a review queue, firming up guidance to our callers, etc.

Back again tomorrow for Day 18.

Every day matters. Every dose matters.

(It's worth mentioning that not all of us are working every day. The project has to operate every day. The project has to be in a relentless sprint against the epidemic. The project cannot rest for an hour.

The people working on the project? Sorry corona; humans can coordinate.)

"So what else did you do with your weekend?"

I may have recorded a sea shanty about the project strategy.

Culture and morale building are part of the job description, right?

(Maaaaybe I'll post it someday after clearing it up a bit. Maybe.)

Also Lillian helped me learn abacus

Unsolicited recommendation: if you're trying to teach a child arithmetic GET AN ABACUS OH MY GOODNESS; it's so, so ridiculously useful for building the connection between the algorithm of e.g. subtraction and what is actually happening in the world.