Code for BTV: Micah Mutrux Spotlight
From left to right: Micah Mutrux, Jim Lockridge, Nick Floersch and Katrina Meyers
A profile by Tom Shimmield
The most important trait in a provider, regardless of what kind, is the desire by them to be in touch with the people they provide for. I don’t think that’s a particularly bold statement, seeing as in an ideal world any kind of provider of services would be in touch with their customer’s needs. But what’s really important here is the want to be in touch, the want to accommodate their consumer base. I bring this up at the beginning of this read because it exemplifies the character of the man that this post is about. He’s the kind of guy you want on your team, the person who establishes communication and keeps it running, who uses his talents and passion to help the everyman in need and strives only to keep it up. Now I’m sure you’re wondering: “who is this guy describing? A really outgoing salesman or Superman?” The answer is neither. I am describing Micah Mutrux, the Project Delivery Lead of Code for BTV.
For a quick summary, Code for BTV is a volunteer group (much like all other Code for America Brigades) that works to bring together volunteer/civic coders, designers, members of the community and other organizations in order to create simple but effective technological services for the people who need them. As far as Big Heavy World goes, it’s been there since BTV began. Former brigade captains Bradley Holt and Jason Pelletier established Code for BTV in 2013 alongside Big Heavy’s own Jim Lockridge. A few short years later, once Holt and Pelletier had taken a step back from leadership positions, Big Heavy World grew ever bigger and heavier as it took Code for BTV under its wing, infusing it with a new boost of leadership, energy and spirit. It was around this time, coincidentally enough, that Micah showed up.
I first met Micah in the Muddy Waters coffee shop in Burlington, with the prospect of me covering recent and upcoming Code for BTV events and projects (such as ExpungeVT and the GreenUp app). Throughout our conversation, two things became abundantly clear to me: 1) how much Micah cared about the human element in writing at large, and 2) how much he cared about the individual projects under his umbrella. He often brought up “the user experience,” and how “it's the users that have to be listened to.” He came across as perhaps one of the most genuine and kind people I’ve known in recent years, and because of that I feel a special obligation to this post to encapsulate and honor who he is as a person.
Before his days with Code for BTV, Micah worked with a similar group known as Random Hacks of Kindness. The similarities are primarily on paper. Both are organizations that bring together volunteer technologists in an effort to create products, which then can be used by the public and community surrounding them. It was there that Micah assisted in making a mobile app for people in Haiti. The app would help to forecast food shortages based on research done on the market prices in local towns near the user, in effect acting as an early warning system for when to stock up.
“It really grabbed me,” Micah said about the app and his career at large. “it was really neat to put these skills to work for a really significant purpose, something that wasn’t going to needs that wouldn't be met, or to companies working in their own interests, necessarily. Around 2013, the former captains started a Code for America Brigade (Code for BTV) in town. Then in 2016, several months after they had stepped back as brigade leaders, Jim Lockridge and Big Heavy World officially took over the Code for BTV entity. And Jim brought Nick [Floersch] and I in to have a conversation about relaunching it. And I’ve been working with it ever since.”
The motivation behind Micah’s work has been clear for as long as I’ve seen and heard of it. He exists off of helping others through that said work, living off of it like a plant lives off the sun. As the Project Delivery Lead, Micah’s functional role is essentially that of a supervisor, charged with overseeing multiple projects from conception to release. He collaborates with the individual designers on said projects, clearing figurative roadblocks and connecting project teams to the tools and skills they need to succeed. His projects and work have always been in effort to better the community and its technological resources at large, and even if it were only through Code for BTV that Micah waved his helping hand, it would be notable enough for its own post. The fact that his line of thinking for the betterment of people around him goes as far back as his career is ultimately the most telling piece of information I can offer up. It speaks to the core of who Micah is and why he does this work.
However, whilst Micah’s personality and projects will always be a part of Code for BTV, Code for BTV will not always be a part of Micah. This year marks the end of a nearly half-decade journey as the mantle of Project Delivery Lead for BTV will be passed down to another. It’s a decision that Micah views as: “something I’ve been thinking about for a little while.” As he puts it, it’s a wide array of different opportunities coming together for him at once. What he cites as the “most tangible” of his future endeavors is a fellowship with the Aspen Institute’s Tech Policy Hub in San Francisco. Micah described it as yet another opportunity to put his skills and passion to work, but this time with the angle of being involved in the formal policy surrounding tech, not just the tech itself. Details are still blurry, as everyone still figures out how to maneuver these projects and events through the current COVID crisis, but the thought of Micah being involved with the policies governing the technology he makes has far too much potential to ignore.
In terms of his career at large, and namely the future of said career, Micah unsurprisingly is continuing to strive to close the gap between himself and the people he makes tech for. In his words: “the big one is that I hope to make a certain change from one hundred percent development and software engineering into a more user-focused role. Working with the brigade, I’ve tried very hard to encourage myself and everybody there that we’re always focusing our effort on something driven by people using it. The user-centric approach to solutions is very important to the brigade to actually making people’s lives better. If you’re not keeping an eye on that, you’re looking to produce tools to solve problems that nobody actually has. So for me, along these lines, I’m looking to make a career switch over from pure software development to something that puts me in closer contact with the consumers of the software.”
It’s initially understandable why some may view Micah’s leaving in a negative light. After all, if he is such an asset to the team, and if he cares so much about the consumers, then why go? On this note, it’s important to illustrate that this isn’t a true ending. This is not the endgame of Micah’s career. He’s not going into retirement or burning his BTV bridges, nor is he shelving his ideas or talents. This is not the end of the book, it’s merely another chapter. There is not a single doubt in my mind that five years, ten years, twenty years down the road and even beyond that, that Micah will still be helping the everyman wherever technology can, no matter what organization or brigade he’s a part of when he does it.
During our interview, I asked him what his biggest takeaway from Code for BTV will be. I was legitimately curious, unsure whether or not he’d answer that it was something work related that he would always remember, or a specific individual or two who made his time there all the more enjoyable, or really anything. But of course, knowing Micah, his takeaway was more user focused: “I think the biggest one for me will still be the original reason I came into Code for BTV. Honestly it’s very straight forward. The ability to form a group that leverages a huge number of tech volunteers, plus volunteer hours and energy, leveraging that to produce tangible work that directly impacts people’s lives for civic or social good, that’s what I’ve always pushed the brigade to focus on. Just organizing the volunteer energy to produce energy and tools that help the lives of Vermonters.”
Micah’s story expands off from here into realms I have no knowledge of, and until I wheel him in for another interview there’s no telling what he’ll be up to, or who he’ll be helping, or how he’ll be doing it. I have a sneaking suspicion that this won’t be the last time I write about Micah Mutrux, and certainly a part of me hopes that it isn’t. All he leaves behind is the position, and takes with him years of experience and love for his craft. Like I said, this is merely another chapter in his life, of which I’d say we’re only a little through act two. Usually I’d leave it here with a quote from the man himself, but on the note of chapters in one’s life and moving between them, I’d actually like to leave this off with a quote from the western film Rango (2011). In it, the character of Rango is going through his personal journey of conflict and change, and discovers help in the form of The Spirit of the West, a Clint Eastwood stand-in. The Spirit says to Rango: “No man can walk out on his own story.” In the same way, Micah isn’t walking out on any story, he’s merely turning the page. And I, for one, am looking forward to everything coming up next.