How to Pitch a Problem at Civic Tech WR

• Purpose: bring a real community problem, find collaborators, and leave with clear next steps.

• Format: 3-minute pitch + 2-minute Q&A

• Who is allowed to pitch: Beginners, students, public-sector folks, nonprofits, and curious neighbours — everyone is welcome.

Your 3-minute pitch outline

1. What is it? (the problem you'd like to solve)

   • Focus on problem > solution. Prioritize the problem context (not your solution idea). That helps us apply design thinking and invites diverse solutions.

   • It’s also okay if you want to test an idea or “hack a solution” together or focus on gaining and practicing a skill (for example, I would like to learn React and temporal workflows this season) —- just anchor it in the problem and who’s affected.

2. Who is affected by this problem?

   Name the people or groups, and where they are (e.g., “seniors in Kitchener who rely on buses after 9pm”).

3. What exists today?

   How are users solving or mitigatating the problem today? Tools, programs, workarounds, policies, or past attempts (and their gaps).

4. Why now?

   What’s changed or urgent about the problem? Any time-bound opportunity or risk?

5. What help do you need from the community?

   Data, introductions, volunteers with certain skills, user interviews, etc.

6. What are you bringing to the table? (giving back to CTWR)

   Time, domain knowledge, user access, data, story, test space, feedback cadence, or sponsorship.

Q&A (2 minutes)

• Expect clarifying questions about scope, users, constraints, and success criteria.
• If you don’t know, say so—that’s great input for discovery.

After the pitch: breakout session (same day)

We’ll form a small group around your problem to workshop and plan. Use this flow:

Week One: Breakout Session (same week as pitch)

• Discuss the pitch

  Ask more questions. Get deeper into understanding the problem & need.

• Cluster insights

  Categories the information you discovered about the problem. Put facts and observations on sticky notes (physical or digital) and group into themes. End with a few sub-problems.

Next Steps: Next Few Weeks

Week Two: Mini Hackathon

• Prioritize 1–3 themes or sub-problems

  Choose 1-3 sub-problems to prioritize working on. Quick vote using impact vs. effort or community value vs. feasibility.

• What would success look like?

  Simple outcomes or signals (e.g., fewer missed appointments; faster sign-ups; clearer info). It's okay if you don't know (if you don't know, then we recommend talking to users to find out).

• Brainstorm freely

  Spend 5–7 minutes of silent idea-generation, then share. Go for quantity, not polish or quality. For example "we'll bring polar bears to scare politicans into action on Climate Change" is totally acceptable idea at this stage.

• Choose a solution to test

  Choose 1–2 ideas. Define the smallest testable prototype (MVP) for the hack night.

• Plan the prototype

  Who’s doing what by when? What data/access is needed? How will we measure success?

Weeks Three to Eleven: Work on Project

• Test → learn → iterate

  Do quick user checks. You can ask the community for critique and feedback, or user test directly with the right users. Capture learnings and plan the next loop. Then repeat