The COVID Tracking Project was launched on March 7, 2021, by Kevin Miller, Erin Kissane, Robinson Meyer, Alexis Madrigal, and Jeff Hammerbacher in response to the lack of publicly available COVID-19 testing data. The project started as a temporary measure but became a critical source of information for newsrooms, research projects, and even the White House. A volunteer team managed and updated the site using Contentful, Netlify, Gatsby, and Google Sheets, scaling from 0 to 200 million API calls per day in just three months. The team's modern technology stack enabled them to handle traffic spikes without slowdowns or crashes, making it a saving grace during an otherwise complex project. The COVID Tracking Project is a testament to what people can accomplish with the help of technology.