Priority #1 is making sure it works in California; we'll need to sustain volunteer attention for days/weeks, etc, while working kinks out of the system.
Broadly we will probably publish the "recipe" (rather little code involved!) and encourage other teams to clone it; getting dozens of trusted, capable, committed volunteers relied heavily on professional networks in the Bay Area, and our networks might not be dense enough to replicate that for e.g. Michigan.
Makes sense, especially the part about the "recipe" being more about organizational capacity than code.
Do you think it's important for volunteers to live in the region that they're trying to report on? Concretely, could a network based in the Bay Area make reports about availability in Michigan?
I might be able to get a sufficient group in Massachusetts, but the state hasn't approved general availability yet, despite CDC guidance.
Recipe-wise, this is a copy of the main database structure that we're using. Sharing in case it's helpful for other people spinning up similar things in other states: https://airtable.com/shrb5QLQ2DGSoau2l
No strong feelings; I'm in Japan, rather than California, but combination of local knowledge for e.g. which state resources to scrape plus some local affinity for maintaining volunteer enthusiasm seemed useful.
Broadly we will probably publish the "recipe" (rather little code involved!) and encourage other teams to clone it; getting dozens of trusted, capable, committed volunteers relied heavily on professional networks in the Bay Area, and our networks might not be dense enough to replicate that for e.g. Michigan.