Wednesday, March 30, 2011

dev4good – developing for a better world

One of the cool things about doing what I do, is the simple fact I can build something from nothing with nothing but an idea and notepad (okay I haven’t hand coded a website form scratch in a few years, but I could if I had to).

Another cool part of my job is the people I work with, the other IT professionals, designers and developers (other people are cool too).

I help run @Devevening (Surrey based developer user group) and a few weeks ago we had another hack night, where developers are given a problem and 2 hours to solve it. Every time we hold these events I am amazed at how much can be done in a very short amount of time (this time was a battleship client that you had to pit against a fellow developers client to see who would win)

I am getting to the point honest…

So I wondered what would happen if you got  a group of developers together for say a weekend, throw in some real world problems (donated by a few charities) and see what amazing stuff could be done.

This idea has grown slightly and I am in the process of setting up the UK’s first ever Developer/Charity hack event, called dev4good, check out the site www.dev4good.net for more details.

We have a venue in London, on the river Thames no less (www.hammersmithriverside.co.uk) which is awesome!

If you think you would enjoy a weekend of coding with developers from all over the UK in possibly the craziest working environment, register for updates and provisional places, follow @devfourgood on twitter for updates.
Anyone from any IT background, any platform can help, designers, IT professionals, hobbyists, get in touch, we need your skills.

If you are a UK charity and think you have a problem that only the “A-team” could help with, let us know.

Obviously all of this is going to cost money, so I am looking for sponsors to help out with food/drink costs. There are no costs for charities, there may be a small registration fee to stop the ‘no-show’ effect for developers, but that’s it.

 

So what do you think, do you have what it takes to help building something cool, that could change someone’s life?

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