How to get involved in progressive tech

Now is a perfect time to build software for progressive causes. If you know how to build software, and you'd like to see our country and our world move in a more progressive direction - then this guide will show you how to do both at the same time. It's not just for programmers: anyone with good skills in social media, product management, design and usability, data science, devops, or IT can find something interesting to work on here. There is a huge ecosystem of technology which serves progressive causes, which we call progressive tech.

This guide is designed to help you navigate your way through the world of progressive tech. It's organized around some of the questions you'll want to ask yourself as you think about your involvement: why should you get involved? how much time can you devote? and so on. We wrap up with a series of next steps you should think about.

About this guide

This guide is meant to help anyone with technology skills and an interest in progressive politics bring those two passions together in a cottage industry I call "progressive tech." The intended audience includes software engineers, product managers, devops and IT experts - in short, the whole range of skills involved in making software. On top of that, social media experts, data scientists, technology startup founders and sales people - anyone with those skills, and many others besides, can use this guide to find a place in the world of progressive tech. Data scientists in particular should take note of another excellent guide maintained by Annie Wang - So You Want to Work in Progressive Analytics....

The guide is written by one person, Shai Sachs, without any involvement, support, endorsement, or other relationships with organizations in the progressive tech space. I spent quite a few years in progressive tech - working in various capacities at NGP VAN, and managing the API for the last four or so years during my time there. So the guide is more-or-less entirely a product of my own quirky observations and thoughts about the space. I've had some great suggestions and critiques from a few friends, but any mistakes or omissions are on me. Take it with a grain of salt, or more! But by all means enjoy it and feel free to contribute by sending me a pull request!