#community profiles

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 346

July 14, 2023

Final day of our final FEMA Corps project. We were in the conference room with the project leads again. We added finishing touches to whatever we could until we were told to stop working at around 11:00. Our project leads thanked us for our work and presented each of us with a brief speech and hand-painted/decorated paper plates related to our roles and specialties during the project. We provided feedback on future plans for the dashboards and were offered cake (and non-painted plates to eat it on).

Our teams got much further than anticipated this round, as the community profiles weren’t expected to be this far along until at least 2025. We were only expected to finish gathering data for Oregon, but we also got over 95% of Idaho, Washington, and Alaska data gathered, plus two mostly-functional Power BI dashboards put up. I’d say we all made an effective team.

We were let out at around 12:30 and picked up lunch and headed back to the hotels. I figured I’d go downtown again since the workday was short and we didn’t have many weekend plans. It’s been a busy day.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 345

July 13, 2023

We all sat in the office conference room for most of the day as we worked on wrapping up the community profiles. I did a bunch of stuff, which I can’t quite remember, and finished up the majority of documentation for how the Excel sheets and Power BI modeling worked. We now have most of the Alaska dashboard up now, though there is no way we’re going to finish before we leave. I searched for more jobs after work.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 343

July 11, 2023

Left an hour later than usual to tune into a regional FEMA town hall. I could say a fair bit about it, but I’m tired. If I recall correctly, the main news is that the progress flag is being kept up year-round in this region, people are now having to work in person 4 days per pay period (2 days/week), and Region X is launching an annual equity summit. There was also some discussion on locality pay, which is based on how much similar non-federal positions earn locally. Supposedly Seattle had the greatest rise in locality pay out of the region, or perhaps even the country, in the past couple years. We were each handed a FEMA Region X COVID response coin as we exited the room.

We spent the rest of the day at the office trying to finish up our latest projects. I’m working more on cleaning the Alaska data and making sure the location information matches up across the sheets. I also met with a Corps member to record a video explaining how the modeling and spreadsheet worked for the Lower 48 Power BI dashboard.

We left work early to get free Slurpees from 7/11 and later stopped at the mall food court to pick up dinner. I spent a couple hours back at the hotel working on the virtual independent service project.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 342

July 10, 2023

More cleaning data, this time for the Alaska spreadsheet. This one should go faster. Worked more on the remote independent service project in the evening.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 339

July 7, 2023

The community profiles dashboard for the lower 48 states is looking pretty much good to go, minus a few tweaks that are best left to someone with more experience. I continued documenting how the visualization is set up and reviewed the Alaska spreadsheet for the remainder of the workday.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 338

July 6, 2023

The teams had to scramble to leave the office and grab COVID tests after lunch since someone else tested positive. We might be working from the hotel for a few more days than expected.

[that-fema-corps-blog]

Day 337

July 5, 2023

Moderately normal workday. Had a data visualization meeting to discuss what we’re supposed to get done in the next couple weeks and worked on documenting the modeling. We also learned that we likely will not have kitchen access once we get back to campus, which could be an issue.