Community partnerships and a coloring app

Most of this series is about compliance and paperwork. This post is about the part of the job I enjoy most.

A follow-up email that sounded like us

My assistant manager and I met with someone from a local organization about a grant her group might sponsor: adding art to our bus stop shelters. Public art at a bus stop tells a neighborhood that somebody cares about it.

It is an early conversation and nothing is promised. But I wanted the follow-up email to do two things: show how excited we were, and make clear that my assistant manager and I come as a team.

I told Claude exactly that. The draft it wrote was warm without being gushing, signed by both of us, and listed three specific things we could help with: grant writing, connections and planning. It also reminded me to add the organization's name and to copy my colleague. Small things, and the kind I forget when I am writing in a hurry.

A coloring and story app for riders

The other project is one I built: a coloring and story app for community outreach. Kids color a printed bus, and the app makes their own bus the hero of a story. The full write-up is Color a bus, then watch it save the day.

It is not complicated software. But a transit system has very little to hand a child, and now we do. With AI doing the typing, it was within reach.

Why this belongs in the series

People assume AI at work means cutting costs. For me it has mostly meant having time for things that were never going to make the list. Nobody budgets hours for a coloring app. When the hours it takes shrink enough, you can just do it.

Where it falls short

Enthusiasm in an email has to be real. The AI can match a tone I describe. It cannot supply the feeling. If I had not actually been excited about those shelters, the email would have read as hollow.

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Part of the series 27 ways I actually use AI. Claude drafted this post from the record of our work together.