12 Favorite Quotes from Code for America Summit

I was fortunate to attend the Code for America Summit last week in San Francisco. It was great to meet 450+ leaders from innovative cities, start-ups, and organizations.

As I was listening to the talks (note: you can watch them on YouTube now), a number of key quotes stood out to me.

As such, here’s my 12 favorite quotes from Code for America Summit:

1) “If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together”

2) “Work on stuff that matters”

3) “Simple, elegant, secure”

4) “Future of open data is in government efficiency”

5) “Building a barn is like building community, the dividends pay off in the future”

6) “Advice: Do the stuff only you (government) can do. Get others to do stuff they can do for you.”

7) “It’s not what you do first that matters. It’s what you do next.”

8) “Lean Startup is a change of strategy with same overall vision”

9) “It’s not so much fixing procurement, its ending fear-based buying.”

10) “Its not complicated, its just hard.”

11) “Find your wiggle room & experiment!”

12) “Deliver. Deliver often.”

Photo attribution – Flickr Code for America

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Lisa Tauser

I’m normally not a fan of quotes because so many times they’re taken out of context so to fits a particular situation that isn’t at all similar to the situation where the statement was made. But the quotes Steve shared are quite “meaty” on their own. While I can relate to all of them, number nine resonates with me the most. As a vendor to government agencies, fear-based buying seems to be a prevelent mode of operation … or the “what we have isn’t broken, so let’s just keep what we have” approach … even if what the agency has doesn’t really fit its evolving needs anymore.