Now more than ever, we need cross-sector collaboration to solve the complex civic problems that affect our region. That’s exactly the mission of our Ion Program, which is now in its second year and has facilitated a fresh batch of community-oriented projects. Earlier this year, eighteen new Collaborators from tech, government, and community-based organizations joined the ranks of their Cohort 1 predecessors to improve the livability, accessibility, and economy of the Seattle metro area.

Each Cohort 2 team had three months and no budget to create a prototype and find an organization that would back them, and all had accomplished this by the time of our final presentation on August 29 at Impact Hub. What they achieved within such tight parameters – not to mention while facing the challenges that often arise when people of vastly different professional backgrounds work together – was no small feat.

WTIA spoke with each team about the goals, strategies, and takeaways of each of their projects.

Livability

The Livability team sought to build and rebuild links across communities to fight isolation, lack of empathy, and a politically manipulable populace. To achieve this, they chose to facilitate a discussion around how to quickly deepen the experience of community. “One of the things that really sealed that was when [Collaborator Ryan Biava] mentioned that technology has evolved so much in the recent past that we’ve created weak links in our society,” said tech business consultant Dr. Lorraine Yu, who managed the project. “We don’t connect anymore in the way we have traditionally. How do we re-strengthen our links with society that have been eroded by technology?”

The team brought together various community leaders to tackle these questions and come up with best practices they could share with their respective communities post-discussion. A few of the many lessons gleaned from the discussion were as follows: deep, meaningful connection is slow moving, so perseverance in putting yourself out there is key to gaining credibility and trust; both large and small actions have the ability to build instant trust; and anticipating others’ needs and getting their consent to meet them is much more effective than giving them what you want to give them.  

Discussion participants included organizers, activists, artists, and placemakers. “Something else we were trying to accentuate was that you can learn from organizations that aren’t exactly like your own,” Yu said. “You can learn from diversity, and we had a pretty diverse group.”

Accessibility

The Accessibility team chose to provide access to job information to those who were underrepresented or underemployed in the Seattle area. The team had originally planned on teaching coding to people staying in homeless shelters, but after realizing that particular project would be difficult to follow through on, they shifted their focus to the formerly incarcerated. “The sustainability aspect drove us to the prison population,” said project manager Praveen Dani, a senior systems analyst at F5 Networks, Inc. He explained that it would be easier for this project to live on once the ion team disbanded, which was a requirement for each of the three teams’ projects.

The team held a series of informational panel discussions and coding demos at the Department of Corrections to an audience of formerly incarcerated individuals. Tech volunteers and educational partners Bellevue College, Code Fellows, Unloop, WTIA Apprenti were involved in the series.

After the first event, the team surveyed attendees to gage their current ideas about the tech industry. They found that many attendees hadn’t thought that working in tech was an option for them and hadn’t been aware of the resources they could access to give them a leg up in the industry. Many attendees also expressed a desire to hear from more people like Unloop graduates who had taken a non-traditional route to their tech careers. The Department of Corrections plans to carry the torch and organize this series again in the future, using a template provided by the Accessibility team.

Dani believed that the different skillsets his team members brought to the table was crucial to the success of their project. “If it’s one specific industry…there isn’t much of an interactive collaboration,” he said. “Since we had people from all these sectors with different strengths, we could ask how these different industries worked.”

Economic Growth

The goal of the Economic Growth team was to create positive engagement between the community and tech companies. After toying with a few ideas, they eventually chose to focus on understand the communication tools used at various companies to promote volunteering so that Seattle Works, a volunteer-matching organization, can engage more effectively with their employees and create champions for volunteerism.

Some might not see the immediate connection between economic growth and volunteerism, but according to executive director of Seattle Works and an Ion Collaborator alum Ben Reuler there are multiple reasons to link the two. “With so many new people coming to our region with no roots, network, or history here, it’s important they feel a sense of accountability,” he said. “Also, more people than ever are looking to their employers for ways to engage in the community.”

The team studied the community service practices of large, established companies, medium-sized companies, and small startups, and came up with six key findings which Seattle Works will adopt into their practices.

Reuler said some of the findings gave him ‘aha’ moments. “One of them was that we put these labels on volunteers, like they’re corporate volunteers or individual volunteers, but the reality is they can be both,” he said. “So one of the suggestions was to better capture data about which companies our entire base of volunteers were at so we could do more targeted communication to volunteers within that company,” he said.

Reuler expressed his gratitude for the team’s work. “As a small organization, we’re deeply appreciative of the opportunity to engage a remarkable cohort of professionals, community members, and social change makers to help inform us without needing a lot of time on our end,” he said.