Hi suma friends,

We have some exciting news to share with you all! As we gear up for the farmers market season, we're thrilled to announce that we'll be hiring suma users to assist at the markets. Check out the details below and feel free to share this opportunity with a friend! Save the date- April 25th, we’re inviting ya’ll to join us for the work session for Portland Broadband Mapping. We also have some updates on our app user testing sessions.

Thanks for being here and keeping up with us,

Jacqueline

Hiring suma users:

We’re excited to announce that this season we are adding some folks to the suma staff to join us at the St. John Farmers Market on Saturdays and the King Market on Sundays. To continue our effort of building opportunities for frontline community- we’ll be exclusively hiring folks who are suma users!
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About 4-8 new staff will be brought on for the market season to assist us at the booth. Since sending out our job posting to our users, we’ve gotten enthusiastic responses and inquiries. It makes us glad that our users are looking forward to the opportunity to join the team, as we are looking forward to working with them as well. The deadline to apply is Friday April 12, so if you know of any interested parties, let them know! Visit our link tree for more information and to access the application: https://linktr.ee/mysuma​​
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We’ll update on the progress as the market gets closer, but in the meantime if you would like to support our hiring goals you can visit our sponsorship form to make a donation:

​https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EhRnr_VxFCfHsP-k_G_INNSEtFSpOhkoNplvpOBt0oI/edit?usp=sharing​

Digital Equity Plan

NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) has approved Oregon’s Digital Equity Plan! We’ll keep ya’ll up to date about when grants will be available and any other updates the Oregon Broadband Office releases.

Internet Access Mapping

Suma participated in the City of Portland’s Broadband Mapping Study event in March. Community organizations had the opportunity to learn about how the City has been compiling broadband access data.

Community was asked: 1. Do these maps tell a complete picture? And 2. What else is missing from the story? The energy was high as folks reported back what their lived experience in community and critiques of the presented information. The conclusion was clear: that quantitative data is not enough to tell the full story of where Portland stands with digital equity, and that qualitative data and determinants are essential to properly tell our story.
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We strongly encourage folks to participate in the second session on Thursday April 25th, 12pm at the Rosewood Initiative (either virtually or in person) 14127 SE Stark St, Portland, OR 97233. Free lunch!

User testing

Two weeks ago we began our 1-1 app user testing sessions with some of our users. We still have some more to go, but so far the sessions have been incredibly insightful. We’re very appreciative to have folks who are willing to go through the learning process with us and give us feedback.
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We’ll be incorporating the feedback we get from the testing sessions to make improvements to the app in the future. Although we are always looking for ways to improve the app, there were some seasoned members who let us know our new updates have made navigating the app easier, which we were excited to hear!