On October 25th, I did my first volunteer shift for the Covid Tracking Project. I helped them with data entries for their afternoon shift. While I had observed a shift a day earlier and also had some practice of what to do, I was still feeling a bit nervous. I took my time reading the instructions and kept tabs on slack the whole time in order to not miss any messages that come my way.
We started with check-ins, which is always fun and then the Shift Lead (Sonya Bahar) asked us to start. I did a total of seven states that included CT, GA, IL, MP, NC, PR and WA. North Carolina perhaps was the most difficult one, because it used Long Formulas that I hadn’t done before. I followed instructions to the exact point and managed to get the correct number. Even though I was worried initially, I didn’t realize I was zooming past states while doing them. Amanda was right, it was really fun!
A lot of the states don’t update on weekends, that’s always stated in the process notes. But you still have to double check and report that they weren’t updated. Similarly for MP, I had observed a shift earlier and found out that they hadn’t been updating their numbers for some time and during my shift, it was the same case, we had to note that down on Slack so someone can keep tabs on it.
I did have an interesting incident where I was updating numbers for Washington and right after I had finished, they updated their numbers on the dashboard. Amanda was super helpful and explained that this happens sometimes and less likely now that they have the “check next” feature but still sometimes this can happen.
I found the Slack coordination to be really helpful because if I faced any problem, I would post it in Slack and immediately get guidance from Double Checkers and the Shift Lead. It is amazing how the Covid Tracking Project has managed to define every single thing to the point that a newcomer can understand exactly where to go to find data just by following instructions. At first, it may seem complicated but it was actually interesting and also fun.
While working with all of these talented individuals, I felt like a part of the team. They were so encouraging and appreciative during the shift and always took out the time to explain the errors made and how to correct them. It felt very welcoming and I would love to volunteer for another shift because of this experience. This time I’d want to try my hand at more complicated states too.