Over 2,000 developers in 21 cities from New York to New Delhi will join forces this weekend in a 48-hour marathon coding event designed to program apps and solutions to solve global problems and help major charities.
Disaster relief, climate change, conservation, energy and learning will be some of the subjects covered, with leading charities such as UNICEF UK, Macmillan, Friends of the Earth, International Medical Corps and Amnesty International all involved.
The #hack4good event has been set up by Geeklist, the San Francisco social networking site for developers.
Cities taking part include New York, London, Kathmandu, Minsk, Toronto, Tel Aviv and of course, San Francisco. New Delhi looks set to be the most well-attended event with over 200 registered hackers, while San Francisco at over 160 and Paris at over 150 are close by.
Plied with pizza and soft drinks, the coders, designers and information architects will be working from Friday night to Sunday to solve serious problems like disaster communication, learning issues, hunger, earthquake emergency solutions and other problems facing major charities dealing with big issues.
Reuben Katz, founder and CEO of Geeklist, said:
“Every aspect of our lives is touched somehow by software engineering – whether it’s the media we read or the fruit we eat – and there’s huge potential to work globally to better manage the problems we face. Solutions have to solve actual problems, be they logistical, communicative or data-oriented. But we plan to unite NGOs, charities and organisations that deal with humanitarian issues, disaster and environmental relief and think there is real scope to affect change.”
Ami Shpiro, founder of Innovation Warehouse, said:
“Our business is forged on investing in future talent of the tech industry, so seeing so many rising stars use their workspace to focus on helping solve global issues is wonderful. This will hopefully be the first of many such events and over time, there’ll be an incredible story to tell around the great ideas that are developed.”
Katz also wants to create a permanent community of experts who can be on hand during global disasters to help solve problems in real time. The company is launching The Geeklist Corps of Developers (found at geekli.st/corps) – creating the worlds first and largest Corps of tech leaders, trained and prepared to be the First Technical Responders to problems, disaster relief initiatives, humanitarian relief and wildlife relief solutions – all to be hosted in the to be announced Geeklist Git Repositories for free. (http://git.geekli.st)
Katz added:
“The vision is to unite the worlds software developers and tech industry leaders to find technical solutions to the worlds greatest social challenges. A place where software engineers and hackers, UI/UX designers, product developers and managers, founders, leaders, thinkers and civic minded companies can be called upon at the drop of a hat to respond to emergencies both immediate and long-term humanitarian and environmental. A way to hack a better world.”
Dan Cunningham, user experience designer and entrepreneur organizing the London event, said:
“Technology is our greatest problem-solving tool, capable of connecting us globally, putting information at the hands of everyone equally, and empowering individuals and communities to become self-resilient. Only about 30% of the global population are using the internet right now. We’re very excited about what can be done as the next 4.5 billion people come online.”
Geeklist has developed a rewards policy, which allows only for equal rewards to participants and no monetary rewards. “Volunteering at a soup kitchen you would not expect a Starbucks Gift Card for doing it… you do it for the social giving. This is no different.” Even still, Global tech firms Google, Rackspace, Deezer, Actuate/Birt, Pivotal Labs, Mandrill, Bountysource, 50onRed, Gandi.net and many others, have stepped in to offer rewards to everyone who participates.
Some suggested developments could include:
- Building tools for disaster and emergency response scenarios, like Person Finder and Crisis Map, built by the Crisis Response Team at Google, who are supporting #hack4good globally
- Harnessing open data sets to focus public and non-profit efforts where they will have the greatest impact and effectiveness
- Innovative ways to connect supporters of causes with the people they are helping
- Lowering the barrier to entry of technology for smaller non-profits by making tools that are cheap and simple to use
- Improving community resilience with systems that allow greater local autonomy and community cohesiveness
- Spreading access to information and insight so people can make better informed decisions on issues that affect them, whether health, education, cultural or economic
- Building mobile-friendly and accessible tools to achieve universal access to service and tools offered by public and non-profit organizations
- Combining local and global problem-solving abilities to overcome environmental and conservation challenges
- Creating new local and global networks for civic action
Nick Stanton, Digital Communications Officer at International Medical Corps UK, is enthusiastic about where this could lead:
“At International Medical Corps UK the vast majority of our work and resource goes into delivering programmes in the field. This is why we’re thrilled to be part of #Hack4Good and so grateful to the developers for giving their time and energy to all the good causes involved. The skills and experiences that developers can bring to good causes, especially in emergencies, are vast.”