Organizing is an underrated superpower

Over the past couple of months I have become increasingly worried about the transit industry's ability to respond to the AI boom. Mainly because the majority of transit agencies just aren't set up for success based on the current state of their own house.

At TransportationCamp DC this year there was a packed room with young professionals and college students that were eager to learn some tidbit that would push them to land their first job in transit. There was a panel of what used to be young professionals (all around my age) sitting on stage taking questions from the audience. A lot of the answers were not glamorous. Many of them were asking whether pursuing an urban planning degree or focusing more on statistics and mathematics would make them more competitive candidates.

While on one hand I love the community that has been built around data science and planning and how it all ties back to the open nature of our transit schedule schemas. On the other, it really does give the false impression that everything in transit can be precisely measured.

Much like in many other industries, that back-of-house data is… not great. We are not in the business of creating big data lakes, but rather keeping buses running and riders… riding.

While I think I could write a whole paper on the perceived work that is done at a transit agency by the public and advocates, the real work is done by combing through emails, talking to drivers, hanging out at transit centers, and being in meetings that could have been emails — while sifting through email threads that should have been meetings.

If I had been invited to talk on that stage I think the biggest piece of advice I can give is being able to keep a team organized. I've beaten this horse to death at this point about the importance of institutional knowledge and that transit is about knowing the community. But for someone wanting to jump in as an advocate and take it on professionally, you are going to need to show your value to the team.

Without a doubt your team is being limited by the way that you are storing files. Whether you are running everything on-site, SharePoint, or you are someone who uses email as cloud storage, your system is nowhere near ready for what is coming. Even if you are a productivity nerd like me using the PARA method to store and organize everything, you are not ready for what is coming.

We are stuck in the past thinking about how we need to set up our files so they work for humans, but we need to be focusing on how AI can best organize files for humans to search for knowledge. This requires tagging files to transform a share drive into a searchable knowledge base.

I recently wrote about how GTFS has failed and how we need to keep pushing this spec forward, and this type of structure goes hand in hand with the way that the new world could accelerate efficiencies — not through operational performance, but through improvements to traditional office work, planning and knowledge transfer from human to AI to human.

Right now people are stressed out trying to maintain their self worth in a new and demoralizing economy. Even as I write this, I wonder if it makes a difference, or if anyone will stop scrolling long enough to pay attention to my niche blog that isn't aiming to outrage anyone.

You want to blow people's minds at your next meeting.

Come prepared, keep people focused, and be able to find the files you spend half the meeting trying to find.

The next revolution is going to be just as much about building organizational systems rooted in traditional project management fundamentals.

We are stuck in the past thinking about how we need to set up our files so they work for humans, but we need to be focusing on how AI can best organize files for humans to search for knowledge. This requires tagging of files to transform the humble share drive into a knowledge base.

I recently wrote about how GTFS has failed and how we need to keep pushing this spec forward and I think that this type of structure goes hand in hand with the way that the new world could accelerate efficiencies not through operational performance, but for traditional office work, planning and knowledge transfer from human to AI to human.

Right now people are stressed out trying to maintain their self worth in an new and belittling economy. Even as I am writing this by hand I wonder if it really makes a difference to write this by hand or if anyone will stop scrolling long enough to pay attention to my niche blog that isn’t aiming to outrage anyone.

You want to blow peoples mind at your next meeting.

Come prepared, keep people focused and be able to find the files you spend half the meeting to find

The next revolution is going to be just as much about organizing systems that work built on traditional project management.