I spent the weekend at Code for America’s Brigade Congress event where we enjoyed programming related to running the volunteer program that Code for America administers. We covered a large swath of topics from fundraising to diversity. After helping run a brigade for over a year I have come to realize that brigades face two types of problems: figuring out how to do something, and then executing on doing it.

For the most part the biggest barrier to more success we face at Code for Boston is not on the how side, but on the execution side. This problem can be divided into two parts: lack of desire and lack of time. The first problem is difficult to solve. Either you need to modify the activity to make it fun, or make not doing it so painful for a person that they choose to do so it despite not wanting to. The second part is easy to solve because you just have to choose to not do something else. Unfortunately it is also hard to solve if you cannot or do not want to stop doing those other things. The only other solution is to make it take less time.