Technology As If People Mattered
summary
Argues that effective tech starts by matching existing processes: replaces naive mobile app rush with paper-first workflows, adds small automated pieces on top, and preserves fallbacks so outages don’t break operations. Cites million plus volunteers on a campaign where a full mobile rollout would have wasted training time and unreliable internet, and a commerce case handling tens of thousands of orders that scales from paper to Google Docs to targeted automation. Emphasizes appropriate technology and evolutionary complexity.
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chapters (31)
- 0:00Intro
- 2:11Braintree A PayPal Company
- 2:24only matters
- 2:37stole the title of this talk
- 2:47e.f. schumacher
- 3:04appropriate technology
- 3:38fly in excavator
- 4:04couple stories
- 4:24first director of engineering of a campaign
- 4:38throw tech at it
- 5:06non- engineers
- 5:18speed up processing data
- 5:31giving people context
- 5:50"expert" in technology
- 6:09things | ignored
- 6:29average total volunteer time
- 7:05what we could build instead
- 7:23for the user
- 7:45slower tech actually faster
- 7:59build on the existing process
- 8:19awesome side effect
- 8:29fall backs by default
- 8:47Point Of Sale
- 8:57process from the past
- 9:08power outage
- 9:36threadless
- 10:07started with no tech
- 10:20paper is easy to scale
- 10:35focused on the actual problem
- 10:51about using tech to help
- 11:02when a shovel is needed
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