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Vol. I — The Manifesto

We write code that fixes culverts,
not conversion funnels.

— Marcus Thibodeau, Senior Infrastructure Engineer  ·  rebuilt the water distribution system for Harlan County, KY, summer 2025

Convene is where engineers who've spent careers making numbers move faster decide to make water move instead. We build open-source civic tools for towns that can't afford consultants. We show up on weekends with laptops and load calculators. We are not a startup.

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Convene QuarterlyIssue 07February 202647 Active Members23 Municipalities Served
Chapter I — The Work

A bridge load calculator, open-sourced for 34 Appalachian counties that couldn't afford one.

Steel bridge over a mountain creek in Appalachia, early morning fog rising from the valley below
Developer reviewing structural engineering data on a laptop at a wooden table with hand-drawn notes beside it
Structural engineer measuring a concrete bridge beam with a tape measure, wearing a hard hat

The Piney Fork Bridge had been posted at 8 tons since 1987. The county engineer who posted it is retired. The sign is faded. And every October, a loaded grain truck crosses it anyway — because the detour is 40 miles and the driver has been doing it for thirty years.

Elena Vasquez spent a Saturday in June with a transit level and a borrowed copy of AASHTO tables. She built a load calculator in Python that any county engineer could run on a $200 laptop. She put it on GitHub. Thirty-four counties have forked it.

The tool doesn't replace a licensed inspection. It flags which bridges need one urgently — so a county with a $12,000 annual infrastructure budget can triage. That's the whole point. Not replacing expertise. Extending its reach.

"The gap isn't knowledge. It's bandwidth. We give small counties the bandwidth they never had."

— Elena Vasquez, Convene Member since 2024

Open Source Project

appalachia-bridge-calc

Python · 34 forks · 12 contributors · MIT License

34Counties
847Bridges Assessed
View on GitHub →
Chapter II — The Numbers

What accumulates when engineers spend their weekends on something that matters.

0

Volunteer Hours

logged since founding in 2022

0

Municipalities

served across 11 states

0

Bridges Assessed

using open-source tooling

0

Active Members

engineers, devs, civil servants

Project Categories

  • Stormwater & Drainage34%
  • Bridge Assessment28%
  • Water Distribution22%
  • Road Condition Mapping10%
  • Open Data Portals6%

States Served

KYWVTNVANCOHPAINARMSAL

Every state above has at least one municipality where Convene members have contributed billable-quality engineering work at no cost to the public entity. The total estimated value of donated professional services since 2022 exceeds $1.2 million.

Chapter III — The People

Member profiles. Written in second person, because it might be about you.

Middle-aged man with gray-streaked hair in a plaid shirt standing in front of a creek, looking thoughtful
Member since2023

Marcus Thibodeau

Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Formerly: Principal Engineer, Google·Harlan County, KY

You spent fifteen years at a FAANG optimizing latency for search results. Now you spend your Saturdays reviewing stormwater runoff models for a town of 900 people in eastern Kentucky. The models aren't glamorous. The town doesn't have a Slack. But when the creek stopped flooding the elementary school last spring, the principal sent you a handwritten note.

Current project: rebuilt the water distribution model for a town of 900

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Young South Asian woman in a light blue shirt smiling at her laptop, sitting at a coffee shop with notebooks nearby
Member since2025

Priya Subramaniam

Early-Career Developer
Software Engineer, Stripe·Breathitt County, KY

You graduated two years ago. Your sprint velocity is excellent. Your code is clean. But somewhere around your fourteenth A/B test of a checkout button, you started wondering if this is what you wanted to be good at. Then someone forwarded you the Convene newsletter. You built a road condition reporting portal for a county with 13,000 people and a $0 GIS budget. It went live in six weeks.

Current project: built an open data portal for road condition reporting

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Convene accepts applications on a rolling basis. We look for engineers with at least three years of professional experience who can commit four hours per month. No equity. No salary. Just the work.

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3 builds awaiting funding right now. Letcher County, McDowell County, Owsley County.

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