02 Patrick Mcdonnell

This is Government

Welcome back, everyone! It’s good to have you. In this episode, recorded a few months ago, I talk with Patrick McDonnell, Project Manager and Service Designer in the City of Austin’s Innovation Office. As with Jessica in the previous episode, Patrick and I met as Code for America fellows in 2016. Unlike most of the people in the fellowship who had a background in technology, Patrick brought to the table years of experience in urbanism and city planning – which we explore in detail during our conversation. Like most of my conversations with Patrick even off-mic, this one is full of neat little stories and tangents. We loosely follow the course of Patrick’s career in urbanism, making stops to look at how people are prototyping new ideas in cities, how urban areas change as they grow in size and population, and why public employees should share their stories with the public through social media. Patrick tells the story better than I do, though – so let’s jump right in. - - - Since Patrick and I talked, his temporary position with the City of Austin has ended. He has moved on to a permanent position in the city of Anchorage, Alaska as a Design Strategist on the Innovation Team. Patrick, thanks again for both this conversation, and for putting me up on your couch and giving me a great tour of Austin when I visited. Anyone visiting Anchorage should definitely get in touch – nobody gives city tours like Patrick can. As we talked about, Patrick is to be found pretty much anywhere online @patrickm02l – and that includes his newest platform of choice, Anchor, where he’s broadcasting his own almost daily updates as short audio snippets. Download Anchor on the App Store, and tune into Patrick there. This episode is the last of two pilot episodes for this podcast. I’d like to share more stories of great people doing good work in the public sector – and I’d love to know what you think about it so far. If you like what you hear, please send a quick tweet to me @thisisgvmnt (that’s abbreviated to @thisisgvmnt), or an email to [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you. Once again – I’m Grayson Wright, and This is Government. Thanks for listening.