Travis Southard
Sunday, August 17, 2025: 4:00 pm (Tobin 201/202): Projects are notoriously hard for developers to manage even with project managers, budget limits, and deadlines. Often in hacking and civic tech, we are our own PMs, funders, and timekeepers, which means projects can simultaneously have no budget and unlimited budget. Since a community is not paying for a particular feature, they have no "I think we've reached where we want to stop spending" moment, so when is something done? It doesn't cost our coworkers to ask for more features, so when are they asking too much? Travis will talk about his experiences as a professional nonprofit legal aid developer and as a volunteer project lead to explore what's helped him when working with nebulous conditions around specific requirements.