1. A new year, a new Better Cities team

    A couple of months ago we started a search to find three new team members for our Better Cities practice: a Product Manager, Web Developer and Sales & Partnership Manager.

    We’ve now signed up our new colleagues and I’m excited to say that Matt Jukes will be joining as Product Manager. He’ll be leading the development and expansion of our Better Cities services and building upon our recent work to launch FixMyStreet 2.0.

    Matt is a familiar name to many people in the UK Civic and Gov Tech sphere — most notably for the transformation work he led over the past couple of years at the ONS (Office of National Statistics). Matt brings with him an excellent pedigree of building and leading teams. What was of particular interest to us was the way that he talks openly and publicly about the projects he’s working on, which sits very well with our approach.

    Stuart Harrison will be joining us in January from the ODI (Open Data Institute) as a new Web Developer on our commercial and Better Cities work. Stuart brings a wealth of public sector experience and is already an avid user of mySociety’s services. We’re very lucky to have snagged him, not least as he brings masses of insight and experience into how Open Data meets the commercial world.

    Finally our new Sales & Partnership Manager Rachel Baker will start in early January (we’ll let you know who they are once we’ve got that all wrapped up shortly). She comes with valuable entrepreneurial and marketing experience from previous startups and will also be working from our growing base around Bristol and Bath.

    Rachel will work with our Local Authority partners in the UK and around the world, on FixMyStreet for Councils which has undergone a substantial revamp over the last few months. And will help us better connect with like-minded partners who might benefit from making use of our services — if this is of interest please get in touch.

    And one departure

    Finally and sadly we also say goodbye to our dear friend and colleague Ben Nickolls.

    Ben has been with us as Head of Services for the past four years, working with me and the commercial team. He has been instrumental in turning around the fortunes of our services team over the past 18 months, giving us a firm basis for the public sector product and service business we are seeking to grow over the next couple of years.

    Now with the groundwork done, Ben is off to pursue his startup ambitions with the wonderful Libraries.io project, which aims to document and provide access to all of the Open Source libraries in the world. This is a hugely ambitious project. We’re very excited for Ben and wish him all the luck — we’ll be watching his progress closely.

    So all change for the new year in our Better Cities practice. There will be lots more to share on our progress in the coming months.


    Image: Helen Alfvegren (CC-by/2.0).

    Post updated 20th December with news that Rachel is joining as our Sales & Partnership Manager.

  2. Three great jobs for our Better Cities projects

    Earlier this year we tweaked our strategy to better align our commercial work with our charitable projects. We’re now looking to hire a couple of experienced and motivated individuals to help us really turn up the heat on this approach.

    Our work at mySociety covers three practice areas; Freedom of Information, Democracy and Better Cities. Each in their own way use different methods to give citizens more influence over those with power. Making it easy to access public information, or easier to understand what decisions mean and their implications for all of us.

    Most of our work to date has been funded through grants and donations, but we believe that we can often make greater impact on a longer term basis where we work on a commercial footing, especially if we can bring in appropriate revenue which would complement our charitable income and help provide a more sustainable future for our organisation.

    To boost the commercial skills we have within our team we are looking for an experienced Product Manager who can help set the strategy for how we position our products, develop the wider markets we operate in, bring in more public sector clients, help serve our current clients and create an environment in which our products can thrive.

    To aid them in this quest we’re looking for a Sales and Partnership Manager to help us identify and engage with community groups, citizen engagement services, local authorities, technology providers and end users who would benefit from working with us to help more citizens to demand better.

    To top it off we urgently need to hire at least one additional Web Developer to our commercial team with at least three years of programming experience in Ruby, Python, and/or Perl.

    For each of these roles we’re looking for experience of working with or within local authorities or the wider public sector and civil society. They’ll be comfortable speaking with a broad range of people within local and central government, and their service providers, and will understand the needs of their end users – generally local residents. Importantly they’ll be comfortable working within a geographically distributed development team.

    Help us learn and improve

    The aim our Better Cities practice is to help people exert a little more control within their local communities – especially people who have never previously tried to make any such difference,  or members of marginalised groups who might believe they have little chance of success in getting things changed. In particular we want to learn more about how best to deliver local community level services and to understand the complex needs of those currently under-represented by local government and public services.

    Whilst we have over 10 years experience of delivering local services via FixMyStreet.com, we want to understand if such services actually give agency to those who lack it most to affect and impact their local communities, and if so in what way? Does this lead to further civic engagement and participation, if so how? If not can we adapt our approach to make this more likely? And where we currently fall short of representing these needs within our current services, what measures can we take to adapt existing services, or what new services might we create in their place?

    As we continue to learn we’ll further build upon the FixMyStreet principles of issue reporting and resolution to cater for a variety of interesting and practical new use cases,targeting hot button policy areas around housing provision, health, education quality, work and benefits.

    Importantly we’ll succeed if we ensure that our services are well used by a wider diversity of people in a wider spread of regions.

    So if you think you can help us in these goals, have ample experience in creating and leading on the development of digital products and are motivated and energised by working with local communities, government and the public sector we’d very much like to hear from you.

    You can apply here;

    Product Manager – Closing date, 10am Friday 11th November

    Sales and Partnership Manager – Closing date, 10am Friday 11th November

    Web Developer – Closing date, 10am on Wednesday 26th October

    Image courtesy of barynz on Flickr

  3. Recruiting for diversity

    When Mark, mySociety’s CEO, put out our recent request for new board members, he mentioned a specific goal:

    There’s no getting past the fact that our current boards are entirely male. So for both roles we’d like to use this as an opportunity to redress the balance on each board, as well as add more diversity to better reflect the users of our services both in the UK and internationally.

    You’ll have seen from his follow-up blog post announcing the appointments exactly how well we did in this aim.

    But I wanted to explore this subject more deeply. When you explicitly state that you would welcome applications from women, what effect does it have on the gender split of those who come forward?

    What difference does it make to the range of backgrounds that applicants come from, when you say that you’re hoping for more diversity?

    And just what are mySociety actively doing about this aim, beyond sticking what could look very much like a token sentence into a job advert?

    Well, it started off as a short blog post crunching the numbers. And then it got long.

    When posts are too big for a quick skim, we put them on our Medium blog, so that’s where it ended up. Do go and have a look.

    We know we haven’t cracked this one yet — indeed, we know that we barely even have the right vocabulary to talk about it — so comments are welcome.

    Image: Dustin Oliver (cc-by-2.0)

  4. New year, new job? Come and join mySociety

    If the idea of getting up and going to the same old job in 2016 is beginning to seem like an unappealing prospect, then you should know that we are looking for a Systems Administrator.

    Working at mySociety is a bit different from your average job, as we tried to convey in this video. We work mainly from home (or the workspace of your choice), meeting up at regular intervals across the UK. Hours are very flexible. We’re a small, super-friendly bunch of people who like talking tech.

    And then there’s the actual work. It does good in the world. That certainly gets us out of bed in the mornings.

    You can see all the details of the position here. You’ll need experience of Linux server administration, scripting, Puppet and Nagios, and your main duties will be ensuring security and integrity of our servers, maintaining our infrastructure, and basically keeping all the plates spinning nicely.

    If that sounds up your street, everything you need for your application is here.

    And if not, do us a favour, and pass it on.

     

    Image: DonkerDink (CC)

  5. Vacancy: Linux Systems Administrator / DevOps

     

    Sadly, we’ll be saying farewell to our current SysAdmin Ian shortly. We’d like our websites to keep running after his departure, ideally, so we’re recruiting for a replacement.

    A replacement who can keep our servers secure, maintain our back-ups infrastructure, and resolve performance bottlenecks, among other daily challenges.

    If that sounds like you, or someone you know, you can find the full details here.

    What’s it like working for mySociety, you ask? Take a look at this page.

     

    Image: Bob Mical (CC)

  6. Contract Advert: We’re looking for a US Civic Technologies Researcher

    Are you passionate about using digital tools to empower citizens and improve governments? Do you have significant research experience in civic technology or a related field? If so, why not apply for mySociety’s new US Civic Technologies Research contract?

    mySociety have received a generous gift from Microsoft to explore civic tech usage at the sub-national level within the USA. We are therefore looking for a partner (individual(s) or organisation) in the USA to lead on this research for us.

    We are offering a contract for approx 200 days work and a clear research remit. You’d need to be based in, and able to travel within the USA.

    Interested? For further details and to apply, click here.

  7. Hello, I’m mySociety’s new CEO

    Back in March, mySociety’s founder Tom Steinberg, announced that he would step down.

    Today, I’m pleased to announce that later this month I will be taking over the reins as Tom’s successor. I’m Mark Cridge, and I guess I should start by introducing myself.

    I’ve had a diverse 20-year career doing digital things. Most recently I was chief operating officer with the lovely folks at BERG, a London-based technology and design consultancy many of you might know. For the past year I was a senior advisor at Blue State Digital in London, the team responsible for the digital strategy used in President Obama’s electoral campaigns.

    I began my career back in 1996 in a small web design agency in Birmingham, before setting up glue London, a digital advertising agency, going on to become global managing director of Isobar, following glue’s acquisition in 2005. I originally studied Architecture before realising that wasn’t quite my cup of tea, and that the internet held more immediate attractions.

    I’m genuinely excited to take what I’ve learned over my time to date, and to apply it to help build on Tom’s achievements as mySociety’s founder — by creating even more digital tools that make a difference to the lives of citizens in Britain and around the world.

    What I’ll be focusing on

    mySociety’s mission is unchanged: we exist to invent and popularise new digital tools that enable citizens to exert power over institutions and decision makers.

    As CEO I plan to focus on mySociety’s users, partners and volunteers both in the UK and in dozens of countries internationally, where we now conduct the great majority of our work.

    My initial priorities will be to ensure that mySociety’s existing sites keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the world of civic technologies, whilst also thinking through where we can move into new and exciting areas.

    I want to make a new push to ensure that charities, activists and journalists around the world are able to run successful, high profile sites of their own, powered by mySociety’s open source technologies.

    We will also be building up our research team over the next few years, to ensure that we are providing tools and services that have genuine impact, which we ourselves are able to measure.

    All of which will build towards a reaffirmation of mySociety’s place as a key player within the global civic technology movement.

    Making this all possible

    Of course, all of this is possible only thanks to the generous support of our many funders — and needless to say we are always looking for more, if you think you can help then please do let me know. In particular, I will be spending a good deal of time delivering the three-year vision we developed with our friends at the Omidyar Network, with whom we announced a major $3.6m funding partnership earlier this year.

    That said, one of mySociety’s great assets is that we are not entirely reliant on donor funding, so I will also retain our strong focus on helping our commercial clients — from UK local councils and charities to global technology giants — to serve their own users better, by working with mySociety Commercial Services.

    All in all, I am indebted to Tom for leaving mySociety with sound finances and a world-class team of developers, both of which will be invaluable in helping me to take the organisation to the next level over its second decade.

    I am also grateful to Tom and mySociety’s trustees for putting their trust in me. I’ve been an admirer of mySociety, and a user of its sites, for many years. It is a great privilege to be appointed as CEO.

    I will be spending the next few months with the team as we plot and plan the next phase of our development which you can read more about here on this blog in the coming months. So if any of this sounds interesting to you then please get in touch.

    I’d love to hear your thoughts.

    Mark

    And Tom says…

    A big welcome to Mark!

    I am excited that someone with so much digital experience has come along to guide mySociety in our second decade. We’ve always been an unusual social enterprise in that while we have a social mission, we also operate a first class software development and design team in-house. With Mark on board we will retain and grow that digital credibility, whilst focusing ever more deeply on the needs of our international partners, our UK clients, and growing our research capacity so that we know what is (and isn’t) working.

    I am looking forward to spending the next month brain-dumping to Mark, before I slip quietly out the door in early August.

    It’s an exciting time for mySociety, and I hope everyone will join me in celebrating Mark’s arrival!

  8. mySociety Services is expanding: seeking a Sales Consultant

    As mySociety Services continues to develop, we seek a new member to join the team.

    We’re looking for a Sales Consultant who will bring their own experience and give us the capacity to discover and explore new leads. As with all mySociety positions, it’s a work-from-home job, but will be based around the Bath/Bristol areas where several of the mySociety Services team are already situated.

    mySociety’s commercial work supports our charitable projects, so every new project for a client also does good in the wider world.

    Do you know someone who might fit the bill? Send them over to this page where they can see all the details.

    Image: Lauren Mitchell (CC)

  9. mySociety’s Director Tom Steinberg to step down – new leadership position will be advertised soon

    Today, after several months of quiet planning, I’m announcing that I will be stepping down as Director of mySociety, although I will remain in the post for the next few months to ensure a smooth handover. An open call for my successor will be published within the next two weeks.

    Why now? Quite simply because the coming year will be the most stable period, in terms of effecting a leadership transition, that mySociety has ever had. I want to seize the opportunity to hand over before I start to tire of a job that has been the great privilege of my life.

    Thanks to our generous donors and our commercial team’s success we have an unprecedented window of financial security, a terrific team of wide-ranging talents, and a clear three year plan that’s already starting to roll out (I’ll be writing more on this plan, soon). In short, we’ve got a good map, a solid car, and we’ve got enough money for fuel. When could be a better time to change the driver?

    For those of you who are our partners, whether charitable or commercial, and wherever you are in the world: don’t worry – this switch isn’t going to change any of our plans to support you and your use of mySociety’s open source technologies. In fact I expect my successor to double down on serving your needs.

    And what will I, Tom, do next? I really don’t know – I’ve not got a job lined up, and I’d really like some time off to think about it before I make any big decisions.  My main reward – very rare for any founder – is that I get to hand over an organisation that is stable, harmonious, mission-focused and with bags of talent onboard.  I greatly look forward to seeing what mySociety’s amazing staff and volunteers achieve next.

    Update: the job advertisement for the mySociety CEO position can now be seen here.

     

     

  10. We’re hiring

    mySociety team October 2013Would you like to be part of the mySociety team? We’re expanding again – and this time we’re looking for top-notch developers to join us.

    If you’re fluent in Ruby or Python, and JavaScript, and want a job that really make a difference, this could be for you. Successful applicants will join our Alaveteli (Freedom of Information) and Political Tracking teams, working closely with international activists, journalists and reformers, to help them make their projects a success.

    Full details can be seen here, and, if you’re wondering what the culture is like, we’ve tried to give you a taste of that on our working at mySociety page.

    NB: No agencies please.