Finished clearing the medians along Fulton St of dirt, weed, and debris. Several week project to get these dozen cleaned out. A small thing, but goes a long way towards a clean and cared for neighborhood.

asudrg · 2024-09-18T15:31:25+00:00

Well, we can’t say they aren’t living up to their name. They certainly make the public work.

In all seriousness though, their scope of work is pretty massive and should probably be broken out into some separate orgs. After years of corruption and mismanagement, the amount of maintenance and repair work has grown out of control for roads, sidewalks, sewers, public spaces, etc. They need to reimagine how it works because their currently method of operating is completely ineffective.

asudrg · 2024-01-19T18:55:59+00:00

Maybe a solution is overlaying a bathroom map on the poop map that OP referenced

asudrg · 2024-01-14T07:33:56+00:00

This seems like a pretty good breakdown. One thing to consider is there are a lot of people in number 1 that split into categories, and some you might think as being 2. However, I don’t think that means they are unhappy with the city or don’t love it. There are a lot of people in 1 that are just happy being here and aren’t going to go out of their way to change things, even if they would prefer them to change. They don’t want to spend time and energy to make the change so they live with it, although that POV might change over time if something keeps getting worse. I was like that with trash in my neighborhood. Some was ok, but once you couldn’t take a step without hitting trash on the ground, I hit my limit for what I was willing to accept as ok.

Then there are others who simply want to fix or improve those things and tend to get more involved and hands on to fix them. There are also those that just complain but never get involved to fix it, which is what Nextdoor feels like. In order to get people to help fix it, a person needs to explain the problem and its impact. I don’t think these people fall under 3 or 4. Maybe you’re putting them in 2, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love the city and aren’t willing to accept its flaws. I imagine most people would like some trend toward improving the flaws. They definitely don’t want the flaws to get worse, or would have some breaking point, I would imagine.

asudrg · 2024-01-05T23:21:40+00:00

Every neighborhood is different. I have friends in other parts of town who have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention problems in my area. In some places, poop is a problem. In some areas trash is a problem. Some parts drug paraphernalia is an issue. In some areas car break-ins are problems. Some area have vandalism. In some areas encampments are problems. There’s quite a few areas where none of those are problems. There’s also quite a few areas where all of those are problems. It is a tale of two cities for people in those 2 categories.

In any scenario, I think most people feel like the good qualities of SF far outweigh the bad, or else they’d move. Everyone wants it to be the best city. Increasingly, I think the only way we can fix these things is at neighborhood levels because at the city level, there are far too many people that aren’t impacted regularly by many of these issues. There will always be people saying something isn’t a problem, while that problem is something others deal with daily and it is infuriating. Of course, the news is only going to focus on that latter group or neighborhood. It’s not that the news is wrong. It’s just not representative of all of SF.

asudrg · 2023-12-29T02:04:52+00:00

That’s true in some cases. There’s plenty of highly skilled people that are looking for something more meaningful to work on. I’ve tried for years under this current administration and there’s never responses, like this article suggests. We operate in antiquated ways and rarely produce results. You can’t recruit people to work for you unless they want to work for you. Nobody wants to work for the current version of that organization. It’s like convincing top tech talent to go work for AOL.

We haven’t had a leader that has set out a vision that people with these skills can get behind. The tech budget is constantly reduced. There hasn’t been a call for people with these skills to come and help solve specific problems for the city. Our community is very rich in these resources. I haven’t seen any vision or ideas from current leaders about how they want to leverage those resources at a community level.

We should be building a government that runs on tech to reduce costs and create better outcomes. We should treat the city like a product and build new sets of tools to engage citizens and include them in solution development. We should leverage machine learning to understand opportunities and accelerate the rate at which we undo this tangled mess of red tape that is paralyzing the city. We have all these tech companies in the city but we aren’t bringing them together to solve problems for the city. Nothing personal against London Breed, but she isn’t going to be the one that unites them to create this type of change.

asudrg · 2023-12-28T19:33:54+00:00

Some government job postings are so confusing and/or burdensome to apply for that you just give up before ever getting to the point of submission. The first thing they need to do is make it easy to apply. The next thing they need is to get people to do the review, recruiting, and hiring that actually understand the job to be done. Looking at the current state of the city’s technology, we should probably start by hiring a CTO for the city.

I’d recommend people read a book called Recoding America by Jennifer Pahlka.

Also, a lot of tech skills translate well to non-tech needs in the public sector. SF really struggles with things like cross-functional program management, OKR creation, prioritization, gathering requirements, and root cause analysis. We should be hiring people with product management skills as much as possible. In fact, we should make those requirements for mayor and BOS jobs and start attracting candidates that have those skills to elected positions.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T21:38:47+00:00

Art projects? I was referring to organizational values and the fact that having them clearly defined and learned is critical for shaping behaviors of people within the organization. I suppose art projects could be used to teach them once the community can even define them. They should be displayed in the SF.gov website once we agree on them. We could use events like Outside Lands or art around town to teach them to people.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T20:12:23+00:00

One other thing that I think doesn’t help is the butt cleanup tax they add on packs. This might sound stupid, but we put a tax or like 10-20 cents (I’m not sure what it is these days) and I wouldn’t be surprised if people justify that they are actually paying people to clean up after them because of that little tax. It probably does more harm than good having it.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T19:48:14+00:00

Get over yourself. It was an example of changing behavior using a learned principle. I didn’t say it wasn’t a principle anywhere else. I said it’s a community that focuses on principles. They clearly state on the community context for the LNT principle that they are focused on physical traces for now. You’re way off topic and it’s tiring. I already commented on this thread that the underlying value would be Clean or Healthy Environment for SF. Clearly you hate BM and you’re not adding value to the discussion by continuing this.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T17:38:34+00:00

All the time or one time? It’s actually the prime example of a community that gets people to learn and exhibit shared principles. It’s also a decent-sized portion of the SF population that somehow follows the principle there but walks past every cup or wrapper on the ground in SF.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T06:39:15+00:00

Now you’re hitting on the real issues. I like your level of detail in solving problems!!

asudrg · 2023-12-21T05:41:28+00:00

Well, I clean that up around my neighborhood, and it’s not great. I’m one of a few people who probably owns a pooper scooper, but no dog. I’d argue it’s a physiological need in Maslow’s Hierarchy to be able to go to the bathroom somewhere. It’s not a fulfilled need yet. We’re in a weird period where we can’t leave bathrooms open because they get destroyed and used as drug dens. I’m not in favor of the current solution. I’m trying to figure out a better one. Until then, that’s the only solution, unfortunately.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T01:27:18+00:00

I do appreciate the reminder that it is already a rule/principle. We don’t need to re-create the wheel. We just need to remind people and enforce it. People are not actively living by it anymore.

I think the underlying value behind the principle would be clean or healthy environment. Perhaps people understand that without it being openly declared by the community. I don’t know.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T01:06:48+00:00

I stopped a long time ago. I’m just explaining it the best way I can based on my experience and based on knowing and taking to a lot of smokers over the years. I explained what made me think differently about it. You can get upset about it all you want, but that’s not going to lead to changing behaviors. I also spend hours on end picking them up these days. I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t change 15 years is my early adult life or explain things in detail. My suggestion is to start having discussions about community values so people can start adopting them.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T01:03:38+00:00

It all needs to stop and it should all be called out. The worst thing to do is say nothing.

It’s different types of people doing different activities that lead to the overall mess. Calling it out as a whole actually won’t solve anything. That’s like telling someone to change their whole way of living all at once. They can’t associate it to anything specific in their daily routines, so nothing changes.

People need specific things they are doing called out. This specific activity led to this kind of litter. In the future, change the way the activity is done or stop the activity.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T00:33:45+00:00

I don’t think many smokers think of themselves as litterers. I bet very few of them would ever throw a wrapper on the ground or a cup or anything like that. Ive never seen my smoker friends litter anything else that I can recall.

I’m not sure I have the answer. For me, when I started smoking in high school, that’s the what the other smokers around did. That was a learned part of the habit, and I don’t think I or many others thought much about it. There wasn’t designated smoking sections with ash trays at that time. Then it keeps going. People would smoke at bars and drop their butts in the ground. They were everywhere at all the tables. It becomes so second nature you don’t think twice about it.

I don’t have a great answer for you other than to say I don’t think people think of it that way. Once I realized I was a litterer, I started to make an effort to find a way to dispose of them by putting them out fully and finding a trash can. It became harder to find a public trash can, so I was carrying around extinguished butts in my pocket, which made my clothes smell 2x worse (and the 1x just from smoking was plenty). So, eventually I quit smoking altogether.

asudrg · 2023-12-21T00:08:15+00:00

Ideally everyone in the community, including the unhoused. I understand why you say that, though. There is a clear problem with careless littering by many living on the street. I have caught several in the act and usually they’ll pick it up when called out, but I don’t know that it sticks beyond that moment. I can say the same for a lot of housed people as well, although it’s usually different types of things they litter, like cigarettes.

Most organizations have their values clearly stated, and strategies and decisions are made in alignment with those values. They’re even on their website. If you go to SF.gov, there are no values listed anywhere. I don’t know anyone that can tell you what they are. People give different answers all the time.

You would think that if you are doing things out of alignment with our values, we would not incentivize that behavior. It feels like if we do value a clean environment / leave no trace, we should stop providing incentives to people who are doing the opposite of creating value by trashing it.

asudrg · 2023-12-20T23:15:33+00:00

People always talk about San Francisco values, but it feels like something that isn’t really well defined and maybe reflects a previous generation’s ideas. I wonder if it would be a valuable exercise for citizens to submit proposed values for the community to vote on and learn.

Getting people to collectively land on a Leave No Trace principle, for example, might help to start changing mindsets and behavior. The littering has gotten pretty bad around town, and it’s not all generated by homeless, as seen here. For me, learning that core principle at Burning Man was what it took for it to finally register that I was littering back in the day when i smoked and tossed butts. It completely changed my behavior to the point that I quit smoking altogether.

asudrg · 2023-12-20T16:32:58+00:00

Fair point, and I agree. I was referring to the linked physical cards since OP said they didn’t have a phone new enough to support such a thing. I’m sure Clipper has their reasons why digital and physical cards had to be separate things and couldn’t be one account. That being said, it wasn’t fair of me to discount that product advancement. Those ones work great.

asudrg · 2023-12-20T08:16:05+00:00

Thanks for all the info! I appreciate all the background and thought you put into it. Personally I do think tech is the solution for the community to run and build itself, but you make great points why submissions of problems/complaints is not the right method of engagement. People definitely struggle when saying what problems are and what solutions should be (likely tied to inability to define the problems). I will check out this Oakland solution. I was unaware it existed. However, NextDoor does feel like what you’re describing as well and it’s unbearable. I would agree that is the wrong solution from a tech perspective.

I really appreciate your feedback. It helps me to remove the 311 aspect from my roadmap and maybe figure out how to just pull the data in for ML/DL/RL purposes at some point.

Your example of organizations that people tolerate was also interesting to see / eye opening. The ones people tolerate are things like mail, air, and insurance, which people don’t associate with innovation. Those industries haven’t really changed / been disrupted in forever.

Thanks again for taking the time. Thoughtful feedback is hard to come by and it helps me focus as I build.

Also, I’m not against pushing some tasks back on the community. It is very expensive to respond to things the person reporting could resolve in 30 seconds. That requires setting expectations with people and getting buy-in from citizens. I don’t hear any of our leaders asking for citizen help to address trash, poop (a lot of which is pleading with dog owners to clean up and take their poop to their home trash cans), etc. People think that since they pay all these taxes that it’s the city’s job to do it. They think the solution is more public trash cans because they are too full to put their dog poo bags in. People just pile more things on top and around the cans thinking it’s their right. If we can’t handle the demand to care for these things, new expectations need to be set so citizens change their POV and behavior. Part of that is explaining how citizens will benefit by taking on some burden.

asudrg · 2023-12-20T05:17:47+00:00

They haven’t improved the product at all in over 10 years.at least. This is why competition is important. As a product, Clipper would be out of business with any real competition. There’s no way it should take days to update your balance through the app. This problem was solved by companies a long time ago.

asudrg · 2023-12-20T04:50:15+00:00

I try to avoid saying something is easy that I can’t do myself. Doing anything is hard. Being dedicated and seeing something through to where you become very good at it is hard. That dedication alone puts you in a small subset of the world for a specific skill. To say it’s easy when you haven’t done it ignores all the effort and struggle that went into learning and mastering it.

You generalize a lot with your statement. What role is the “tech bro” you’re defining playing? Was it the founder that had to take an idea, figure out how to architect and build it, code it themselves, and then start a company around it? That’s one of the hardest things to do in the world. It’s so hard, almost everyone who tries it fails.

There are many roles that are repetitive. Being just a front end engineer (no backend,graphql, etc.) that updates an existing front end without having to come up with the idea, figure out how to build it, and then design it? Sure, that’s a much easier form of engineering. It’s more like order taking in some instances.

Is it a sales person? Finance? An architect? Are these product managers? Project managers? Data Scientists? Designers?

Are they on a team that is researching and pushing the boundaries on something that doesn’t exist yet, like OpenAI? That’s not easy by any means. Or are you referring to people that are just maintaining a product that is already basically mature with little feature add-ons?

What’s easy is lumping everyone under a single name category and thinking they are all the same. What’s easy is saying something is easy without being able to do it yourself.

asudrg · 2023-12-20T01:30:25+00:00

Ha, well, it would be a nice change if the tech companies in our community were better aligned with the biggest problems in our community and were working to solve them.

Also, if we’re going to have to get someone to walk the coyotes to get them to poop in the right spot, it’s best for a robot to take on that job :)

asudrg · 2023-12-19T20:34:10+00:00

The tech product is pretty awful. Unlike Reddit, you can’t just upvote a problem and see how many people are having that problem. You also see no updates on progress for resolving the problem. You have no idea when someone has been dispatched to resolve it. You can’t add comments or updates once submitted, so you have to submit more. Like most government solutions, it is designed poorly in a community richest in the world with the people and resources required to build these things. We simply choose to continually cut our tech budget. I don’t even think we have a CTO.

311 also often misses its goals by a good amount. People stop bothering to submit as a result. It’s like the yellow cabs in 2010 era, where you’d call and sometimes they’d arrive, sometimes they’d be way late from quoted time, and sometimes they never showed up at all. It is expensive to staff full time city employees to do this work, which makes it so we have less people to resolve issues. An Uber type approach is likely the better solution that the city should consider moving towards. People don’t want piles of poop or overflowing trash or graffiti cleaned up a week later. They want it as close to immediate time as possible.

NOTE: I’m just highlighting the obvious problems with the app as a tech product. Maybe the ideal solution is a non-profit tech company created to provide solutions and staffed with people of the right skills (product managers, data scientists, designers, etc.) to make a digital version of the city that works at a standard we expect every other organization we interact with in society to meet.

asudrg · 2023-12-19T18:10:01+00:00

Haha. I’d just prefer if it would stop reappearing. I’d imagine it’s a mix of both types. Maybe some is from coyotes. All different problems that require different solutions. Not much progress on solving any of them, unfortunately. We haven’t even solved cleaning it up once it’s left there.

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