May 29, 2023
Reflecting on 8 Years of Partnership: OpenOakland and the Public Ethics Commission

On April 4, 2023, Suzanne Doran (Acting Executive Director of the PEC), Michael Ubell and Colin King-Bailey (Open Disclosure project team) shared insights from their years of collaboration. This blog post is a summary of the discussion with video clips from the event!

May 20, 2022
RADAR Program Exploration: Learnings from a Discovery Phase

Last year, several OpenOakland members kicked off a discovery phase for a potential service delivery program to serve local nonprofits. We were looking for ways to reduce project overhead while centering the specific needs of local community groups. Inspired by BetaNYC’s Research and Data Assistance Request (RADAR) initiative, we wondered if something similar might work here in Oakland. Despite wrapping up our discovery phase early due to pandemic life, we wanted to capture our initial learnings...

May 17, 2022
Restructuring OpenOakland

As of May 17, membership unanimously voted yes to empower the Steering Committee to enter Lean Ops mode and focus on restructuring the brigade for greater inclusiveness. Our Lean Ops (lean operations) mode is intended to strip operational tasks down to the very barebones needed to accomplish two core goals...

May 9, 2022
Open through 5/17: Special Member-wide Leadership Vote

Per our bylaws, we are committed to a democratically-controlled brigade that ensures all members have a direct voice in how we operate. With no elected leadership currently on the Steering Committee, this vote offers members a voice in our next steps...

April 3, 2022
Leadership Transition Status: March Steering Committee Recap

OpenOakland is unable to hold an election for brigade leadership, per our bylaws, due to a lack of leadership nominees. The Steering Committee has been working on a contingency plan to address short-term operational needs and long-term structural improvements. We will be putting these to a member-wide vote in the coming weeks...

March 12, 2022
Exploring Structural Change: Feb. Steering Committee Recap

February’s Steering Committee meeting continued to focus on building trust among the group to encourage better communication, and explored upcoming leadership needs in the face of waning engagement...

February 11, 2022
Steering Committee Recap: Dec-Jan

We're a little late with recaps thanks to the end-of-year holidaze. Some unfortunate Twitter trolling upped the urgency in resolving some existing project account management challenges but we identified a path forward that appears feasible to all. We made some exciting progress as we continue to commit to collaborative culture building and brigade strategy, so read on for some community training opportunities...

February 8, 2022
Help Oakland Build Better Tech: Join the 2022 OpenOakland Steering Committee

Our all-volunteer collective runs on people power. We’re a nonprofit but unlike most nonprofits, our leadership is elected by OpenOakland’s general membership each year. We’ve gone through a lot of reflection and refocusing over the last couple of years and are so excited to welcome in a new team of Oaklanders to guide our vision as we bridge community and technology for a thriving and equitable Oakland...

December 15, 2021
Sharing Gratitude

OpenOakland welcomed nearly 150 volunteers over the course of 2021! We're blown away by the dedication of so many, despite the tumult and challenges of the year. Earlier this month, we took a moment to pause and invite our brigade to recognize each others' perseverance, contributions and commitment to this community we're all building together. Here's what our volunteers had to share with each other...

December 13, 2021
Moving the Leadership Election Cycle (Nov. Steering Committee Recap)

Last month, our Steering Committee focused on governance, approving changes to OpenOakland’s elections cycle and committing to efforts that we hope will make brigade participation more accessible and representative...

October 21, 2021
Progress on OpenOakland’s Priority Areas

Progress may feel slow to many of us, even invisible sometimes. But we’ve actually made some meaningful changes this year as a result of establishing brigade priorities...

October 4, 2021
September Steering Committee Recap

We had a light crowd at this month’s Steering Committee meeting last Tuesday but still managed to cover a lot of ground...

September 12, 2021
OpenOakland's Priority Areas

How do we ensure that all members have a voice and those voices are not only heard but are able to shape decision-making? Earlier this year, OpenOakland defined a set of priority areas based on existing member feedback...

August 23, 2021
August Steering Committee Recap

We had a light crowd at this month’s Steering Committee meeting last Tuesday but still managed to cover a lot of ground...

July 28, 2021
July Steering Committee Recap

Accountability came up more than once at this month’s Steering Committee meeting, as we discussed two core action items: hiring professional expertise to support culture change and reviving our former Civic User Testing program to ensure impacted audiences are more directly involved in developing and validating our project work...

July 10, 2021
Voices: Sean Martinez of OpenOakland

OpenOakland’s volunteer Treasurer/Recorder talks to us about the unique perspective his intersectionality brings to the brigade, the role of empathy in policy making, and the challenges—and joy—of learning and growing from a diverse community...

June 19, 2021
June Steering Committee Recap

Lots of great discussion about new project ideas, synthesizing member feedback, returning to in-person meetups, and more...

January 9, 2021
OpenOakland Condemns the Anti-Democratic Insurrection

OpenOakland unequivocally condemns the actions of those who’ve attempted to undermine our democracy...