brittney fosbrook's Field Reports

1.5 months out

brittney fosbrook — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:25:16 -0600

hello there ctc vista project. things here at homeless prenatal are going right along-- i'm unofficially the interim technology manager. this means that i have been doing insane amounts of troubleshooting and teaching for both clients and staff. in addition to managing the lab, i have also been working on creating policies and procedures, technology user guides and new website content as well as organizing the file server. most of the guides are in the revisions process, so any suggestions for resources would be greatly appreciated.

since my last post, i have had the opportunity to attend a couple of workshops including: one at the center for digital storytelling with jessica, a drupal dream makeover course, an adobe interactive forms course and soon another photoshop course! if you are interested, i can review and recommend (or not recommend) the courses.

today i had lunch with the lovely morgan sully at my favorite little taco truck in the mission. thank you $3 lunch. being with other vistas is quite nice.

cool documentary that i think digital media folks working with youth might like to see...

brittney fosbrook — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:53:24 -0700

as a vista in the city i am alway looking out for free and interesting events. the public library in san francisco is pretty amazing at showing free films a couple of times per month and last night i had the pleasure of checking out the awesome documentary by Byron Hurt entitled " Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes." The documentary take as in-depth look at masculinity, misogyny, violence and homophobia within mainstream hip hop music and culture. although i thought the analysis could have run a bit deeper, the film makes a point to trace the interconnections of white supremacy, racism, homophobia, sexism and capitalism. and not only that, there are appearances by 50cent, mos def, fat joe and a bunch of other famous artists.

the screening was sponsored by a bunch of youth media production companies in the bay area and many of the audience members were youth affiliated with the said organizations. the film is showing on pbs, tuesday, february 20th so check your local listings. i know that there are screenings of the film around the country. a five minute cut of the documentary is also on youtube.

check it out and happy hump day.

master troubleshooter should be my VISTA title

brittney fosbrook — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:20:40 -0700

i'm not sure if i have talked with anyone about this, but two weeks ago (i cannot believe how much time has gone by already) i went to an drupal extreme makeover. basically, i was feed for two days and taught the ins and outs of drupal. well, i was taught as much as you can learn in a crash course. i was also able to work one-on-one with a drupal expert to start the revision of our extremely outdated helping-sf. it was an amazing experience (& free for our organization too!) in the past two weeks, however, i have had about zero time to work on the website. this drives me crazy. currently, i am teaching class, helping in the technology center, doing general tech support for the office (meaning about 20 phone calls a day) and being a lead interviewer for my new boss (what?!?). i feel as though there is no time to actually work on the projects that i feel i was hired for. my job title would be more accurately stated as "master troubleshooter".

oohh. i hear the phone-- another access database questions i am sure.

when transitional periods become the norm...

brittney fosbrook — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:31:57 -0700

hello from san francisco.

it has been almost 3 weeks since my boss left and there is still no permanent new hire in sight. currently, my ex-boss's niece is filling her position but i think it is only until the end of the year. it is strange to automatically fill such a huge role in the organization. i am now teaching a technology class to the community health workers on staff and going full speed ahead on website reworking. everything is finally settling back down and the only huge obstacle is my lack of proficiency in spanish. when i am the only person in the lab (which does happen often now) and a spanish speaker comes in i feel so useless. my spanish skills, however, are rapidly improving.

it turns out that there is a free "website makeover" happening this weekend that i was invited to. a bunch of drupal experts will be there to help orgs convert their websites over to drupal. this is really exciting to me because i have felt less confident doing it on my own.

also, i attended the sf wifi conference last friday and met a new ctc vista named karl hedstrom at nten. although i thought the conference was a bit of a bust, i did link up with the bay area video coalition (amazing organization), see heather from aspiration tech and a network with couple of other new bay area non-profit technology people.

to top it all off, fellow ctc vista rebecca white and i ate some amazing vegan japanese food in the mission on monday night. although it was pouring down rain, the hot soup and tea totally made my night.

Reworking old websites

brittney fosbrook — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:53:27 -0700

I am currently reworking an old website for HPP, Helping-SF. This website is meant for low-income families and case managers. In it's current form, the website is very disorganized both in terms of content and also in terms of pages and locations. There are numerous broken links, orphaned pages and older versions housed within numerous local locations. Although I have some experience with dreamweaver, I have never moved an existing site to a new location. I am not sure if it would be better to work with the existing local files and reorganize that way or whether I should migrate the site to a local folder and start fresh. Any suggestions?

ALSO, I cannot log into the CTC Vista Project site from my computer in the office, but I can from other computers in the office. I was able to when I first started, but I have not been able to since. Any suggestions on how I can change that? This is the reason for my posting lack in the last couple of weeks.

after two weeks

brittney fosbrook — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:45:44 -0600

I have officially been working with HPP for almost two weeks now. Besides becoming formally oriented with the organization, I have spearheaded a couple of interesting projects. My host organization, formally titled Homeless Prenatal Program although everyone calls it HPP, is made up many smaller departments: Community Health Worker Training, Wellness Program, Substance Abuse, Childcare Center and the Technology Center. I am working in the technology center as a tech specialist. I have also been assigned to being the volunteer coordinator. At this moment there is nothing to formally monitor and organize volunteers.

Everyone in the organization is super friendly; I have even dined out with a couple of the staff members. I’m attributing this smooth adjustment to my boss because she has made a substantial effort to ensure that everyone in the organization knows who I am and what my role will be at HPP. After only two weeks, I already feel like I belong here, staff members go out of their way to say hello to me!

As for my projects, I currently have three different tangents for my own work in addition to the training help and website updates that I supply in the lab. First, I am looking at creating an electronic volunteer management system, that will either be online or through Access. This database will allow HPP to organize their volunteers more effectively. My other project is to create some sort of online portal through some CMS (maybe Drupal, but I am also exploring others) specifically for case managers. We have a website called helping-sf that will be used as a starting point for some organization and content, but I am just beginning the design process. If anyone has any suggestions for training, either online or otherwise, I would love to hear about them. Ideally, HPP would like to be able to expand this resource to the entire San Francisco community if everything goes well in the testing phase. Lastly, I am going to try to strengthen the connections between the numerous community technology centers and vocational services in SF. I am looking into working with the SF WiFi project and other local community technology groups.

Mostly, San Francisco is amazing and there are many cheap and free events all over the city. Check out: funcheapSF for more!

I must go. I have to help with a tech class in Spanish. Oh how I wish I could speak Spanish fluently! I suppose that I am working on it.

welcome to the bloghouse

brittney fosbrook — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:28:47 -0600

i a feeling mighty unreflective, but that is what happens sometimes in new places. however, i am looking forward to moving to san francisco and starting at the homeless prenatal program. after the first day of this training, it excites me that i will have much to learn technologically speaking. welcome to the new blog and hello san francisco (although this picture is a bit of posh SF--it was all that i could find).