What problems do you want to solve?

If you are just getting involved in progressive tech, it can be easy to try and dig in to the problems that are most readily visible. Indeed, "scratch your own itch" is common advice to enterprising software developers. So it's easy to want to work on the difficulties that citizens encounter when they try to get involved in the political process, such as difficulties registering to vote, researching candidates, etc. Likewise, it's tempting to try and fix problems in the media landscape, such as inadequate reporting, difficulties contextualizing a political story, etc. These are all important problems to solve, without a doubt! But it's good to dig around a bit and discover other adjacent problems in the political world:

• "Consumer"-side problems: As noted, these are the problems which perhaps most immediately come to mind for many people new to political tech. For example, questions like "where do I vote?", "is X a trustworthy news source?", "what does the new health care mean for me?" are the kinds of questions that occur most readily to technologists who are new to the political space. There are some great opportunities in this space! Beyond the problems of voting and media consumption, there are also some less-obvious problems to solve - e.g., how to contact elected officials and how to run for office.

• Campaign logistical problems: The world of electoral campaigns is a rather fascinating one driven by all manner of problems amenable to a technological solution. Voter contact, fundraising, staff recruitment, and even TV ad purchases are all rather routine processes which can benefit from greater efficiencies and better use of data. This area is perhaps the most active area in the progressive tech space.

• Logistical problems for other organizations: There are a wide variety of progressive organizations outside the world of campaigns, but these tend to get a good deal less attention than electoral campaigns for one reason or another. Advocacy groups and labor unions tend to reuse solutions created for electoral campaigns, and they benefit to the degree that their needs are similar to those of campaigns; but they have seen comparatively little attention to their specific needs. Of particular note, there is very little work done on assisting eleced officials who are progressives carry out their tasks. Whether it's putting together a hearing, counting votes on a piece of legislation, or other mundane tasks of government, there are some really great opportunities for making elected progressives more effective in their jobs.

• Structural problems: these are institutional rules and norms which tend to make progress difficult, or tend to disempower progressives. These include gerrymandering, barriers to voting, the composition of the courts, and even some constitutional structures like the Senate and the Electoral College. Some of these problems are amenable to some pretty fascinating technological solution. For example, there's been some fascinating research on GIS algorithms that can produce fair redistricting maps.

• Movement growth: There is really very little attention paid to the overall health of the progressive movement as a whole. We tend to think about this problem only when it's too late, which is to say when it comes time to vote on a piece of legislation or to hold an election. That's a real shame, because there are numerous ways to create a more progressive political environment, which in turn makes it much easier to elect progressive officials and enact progressive legislation. There's a very wide variety of real-world problems to solve: How do we create more outlets for progressive opinion and news, and how do we help those outlets gain audience share? How do we bring more workers into the labor movement? How do we maintain and expand the vibrant culture of progressive thought in universities, and how do we ensure that a university education is broadly available? How do we represent progressive thought in primary curricula, especially related to the humanities? Many of these problems, particularly those in the news media space, are begging for good technological solutions.