I’ll be renewing the domain for this site later today which gives me time to reflect on what I’ve done, what I wanted to accomplish and where I want to go from here.
As to what I’ve done, the biggest accomplishment is that I’m writing this. Stick-with-it-ness when it comes to buying domains and having ideas isn’t my strong suit. But a couple of people told me there was value in what I was doing and I continued to have interest in the mechanics of the city so I kept pushing forward. Asking questions. Asking for data. Asking about process. Processes are slowly changing. Data is starting to become available. Questions still sometimes go unanswered but I know they were heard. Site related, I blogged some during the budget process and learned a lot. Not sure where the new agenda platform was going to land, I held off on how I was recapping meetings. Since its launch, I have settled on broader previews and re-caps with links to the agenda and video. I’ve have consistently posted those along with weekly email.
What I wanted to accomplish was to provide a clearing house of information to help my fellow Tampanians understand the mechanics of our city government and encourage them to advocate on the issues they are passionate about. That’s still my goal. One of the more engaging things I built was the land use map (which is currently broken. More about that later.) I’ve spent a lot of time working with other data sources for some maps I have on a roadmap for polishing up and publishing.
Where I want to go is away from WordPress. It’s just too much for what and how I develop. I want to focus on building tools and writing, not fiddling with WordPress. I’l do that professionally, not for a personal project. I have a solid vision for a design. Both from a content stand point and visually. Over the holiday break I will finally swap out the underlying code and implement the new design. The Land Use map is the page that gets the most use, so will be my top priority. I’ll be rewriting that from scratch using the latest version of Mapbox JS sdk. The goal will be for a formal relaunch for the next City Council agenda preview.
I’m excited about having a clear idea of what I want to do and how I want to do it. In addition to implementing the aforementioned changes, I don’t want to get ahead of myself but I mentioned data becoming available. I am working on a new map and tool based on some data that I have been working on most of the year. I hope for it to help everyone better visualize where and what changes are being proposed from a land development perspective as well as provide a more accessible and searchable way of viewing those applications.
Ultimately however I want to continue to work towards the goals I set forth with. I have some ideas for some “101” type pages to further the goal of understanding the mechanics of how the city functions. I believe no matter what issues you are passionate about, all roads lead through understanding how things work in the city. I want to help develop that map.
