> But take it from me, someone who has volunteered for civic tech organizations and have participated in ground work for political campaigns. The most positive impact you could possibly make is money.
I don't really agree. Perhaps we're incredibly lucky as a civic tech non-profit, but our limiting factor generally isn't money. It's skilled people who can take responsibility and deliver. So if OP is an experienced developer who is willing to look a bit beyond just code, but still bring serious tech skill and experience to the table, I'd like to talk to them.
Why not mention the company you're working for? You're missing an opportunity here for others to see your post and find out about the positions you have open? Although I'm replying late, maybe there are others like me who open tabs and read them a few days later
Once you offer enough money you will attract the talent. And if you can't afford to offer competitive salaries, then you're back to your-problem-is-lack-of-money.
I kinda see these parts as part of (non-dev-technical) design and designers differ in the degree to which they own these
- visual design towards a design system - abstract system of "this kind of thing looks like this so that the user can see it's this kind of thing and it looks good"
- information architecture - actual things we have on the site or page or app or system, and how we organise them so that they make sense and match the user mental model
- ux design - the use of the above two to sure it both looks good, and people find stuff, and are able to use stuff
- copywriting - hopefully happens somewhere in there
I've just watched the linked video. It was pretty good; thanks for sharing.
My first impression is that Information Architecture feels like it blurs the line between UX and marketing, and a company with a non-tech/design marketing person could do well to involve them in IA work.
It feels like there's a lot of overlap with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture for UI with what's a core activity when doing software architecture e.g. finding the right abstractions, schemas, object hierarchies, groupings and naming conventions that are going to be intuitive to other user/developers.
Indeed. I think it's important to bear in mind that it's ok for the abstractions to differ, and for the view to translate between the abstractions inside the system and the abstractions or concepts presented to the user. But it's certainly the same exercise.
If we see coding as an exercise in describing the system in a way the computer can execute but most importantly, other developers can understand and maintain, developers are simply another persona, and a card sort between developers would elicit the abstractions and names we should strongly consider using for things in the code. Same methods as information architecture for users.
Guitar amplifiers are often quite high gain, and the cables sometimes get kind of dirty or bits of adhesive on the connections which can act as a diode. You can also get corrsion on the spring contacts of the input jack.
When the ground shield is not making good contact the cable itself can make a better receiving antenna, and you sometimes hear a station when all the elements align. Lots of guitar pickups are ferritic coils too. But there usually has to be a strong station nearby broadcasting at the lucky frequency.
Wasn't able to read the article but for me the two major portables were the automotive and the handheld.
Car radios were AM for decades before FM got popular. Originally there weren't that many stations across the country so there was less interference, but car radios were really top-shelf items so they could be sensitive enough, to pick up weaker nearby signals as well as sometimes hear powerful stations a hundred miles away or more.
By the 1960's they were even more modern, more sensitive, and expensively made, but the financing made it only a few dollars more on the car payment. If you didn't have a sensitive reciever, driving across the country was lots of radio silence.
Take a look at a 1966 Mustang with its factory AM radio. These were very sensitive recievers with a very extensible antenna, the taller the better for AM because you're working around buildings and geography to pick up from far away pretty much relative to line-of-sight.
This wasn't a directional antenna so it didn't matter what direction the car was going, what mattered was the station's power and the obstacles between you and it.
With hand-held or portable household radios having the internal ferritic AM antenna, these are highly directional so you have to carefully position the radio for best reception and often reposition the radio when changing to a different AM station.
For FM radios added to '60's cars you would retract the antenna down to a couple inches less than an American yard to match wavelengths better, these were not directional either. Eventually there were lots of aftermarket affordable AM/FM tape players after FM took off, not as many people listened to AM and these recievers had an AM section that was usually not so great electronically. With the antenna all the way up it still wouldn't pick up what the factory AM radio could do.
Once the dipoles embedded in the windshields came along, you then had more directional reception and it was tuned for FM by design, so AM gets even less love.
The modern vehicles which do have a conventional fender-mounted whip antenna are usually non-extensible and fixed at the short height that's best for FM.
If not, a little vamity badge doesn't represent much as a value proposition.