Coding for Charity
ChrisKoenig
Chris Koenig is a Senior Developer Evangelist and the originator of the GiveCamp concept. He continues to spread the GiveCamp message to event organizers and volunteers all over the world. You can reach him at givecamp@live.com or chris.koenig@microsoft.com.
Homepage: http://chriskoenig.net
Posts by ChrisKoenig
More Info on the National Day of GiveCamp
Sep 1st
I’ve got some more information on the National Day of GiveCamp! If you are interested in organizing a GiveCamp in your area: then send an email to usgcamp@microsoft.com with the following information:
- City, State
- Organizer’s Name
- Organizer’s Contact Phone Number
- Organizer’s Email Address
- Organizer’s Blog URL
- Venue Space Needed? (Yes or No)
THE DEADLINE FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE NATIONAL PROGRAM IS SEPTEMBER 13, 2010 – so get your submissions in today!
Indy GiveCamp is now ONLINE!
Aug 29th
I’m very excited to announce that the 1st Annual Indy GiveCamp is scheduled for Nov 5-7, 2010 at MID
MID
9800 Association Ct.
Indianapolis, Indiana 46280
Make sure to get over to http://indygivecamp.org and sign up today!
Microsoft Helping to Launch National Day of GiveCamp
Aug 26th
Although I work at Microsoft, I have no control over how they spend their money. It was therefore really nice to hear that the “powers that be” in Microsoft Corporate have really grown to LOVE the GiveCamp idea, and are now working to make sure everyone knows about it.
At GiveCamp.org, we’ve been really fortunate to see the idea of Developers Helping Charities through GiveCamp grow astronomically all over the US and now into other parts of the world! Those that have been involved in organizing events know that it takes a lot of time, dedication, resources and patience to get everything organized and laid out for a successful event. Pulling all of this together is a non-trivial task, and takes a concerted effort from many volunteers to make it work. In an effort to make the organizer’s job easier, Microsoft is stepping up to the plate in a big way with something we’re calling the National Day of GiveCamp. Scheduled for January 14-16, 2011, to coincide with the MLK National Holiday, the National Day of GiveCamp will be a single day where GiveCamp events will be run simultaneously in multiple cities all over the US.
The key part of Microsoft’s contribution is around solving the 2 biggest hurdles to new GiveCamp events – location and sponsorships. To that end, Microsoft is working with venue sponsors New Horizons and Devry Institute to provide accessible facilities in your hometown so that you don’t have to worry about locating a venue. They’re also working with a number of food and beverage sponsors to help take care of feeding the campers as well as keeping them well caffeinated during the long weekend of coding. Microsoft is also offering up some free GiveCamp branded t-shirts to commemorate this special day.
There are already a number of GiveCamps lined up to participate in this special event including Dallas (Dallas GiveCamp) Springdale (NWA GiveCamp), Albany (TechValley GiveCamp), Nashville (Nashville GiveCamp) and Seattle (Seattle GiveCamp). If you live in an area that doesn’t have a GiveCamp already, or would like to make your event part of our National Day of GiveCamp, just drop me a line at givecamp@live.com and we’ll get you hooked up!
I can’t wait to see all of this happen, and I’m really excited about being part of such an amazing event! Stay tuned to http://givecamp.org for more details as they evolve!
Project Phoenix–MSDN for Charity Developers
Aug 23rd
I just learned about a really exciting new program called Project Phoenix which aims to provide a Microsoft MSDN Visual Studio Ultimate subscription to eligible developers that take on a software project for a qualifying non-profit. As we do LOTS of those at the various GiveCamp events, this is definitely something that our volunteers will want to know about.
Here’s some additional information provided by Arnie Rowland, the Coordinator for Project Phoenix:
Unemployed or underemployed developers are invited to propose a software project for a non-profit agency, school, or church. You may qualify for a package of the latest software, tools, and training resources to help you improve your skills, get up to date with current technologies, gain practical experience, potentially earn a recommendation for your efforts, and in general, enjoy the feeling of accomplishing something useful for others. Details here.
So far, there have been over 27,000 unique reads (both direct blog reads and RSS feeds) to my blogs about Project Phoenix. It’s been written about in Good Morning Silicon Valley, Redmond Developer News, Visual Studio Magazine, and the Microsoft MVP Program blog. There was a Channel 9/Ping webcast that chatted up Project Phoenix. There have been over a thousand tweets about the project –even Mary Jo Foley has tweeted about Project Phoenix. There has been over 20 other blogs written about the project. Several of the other Sponsors have written up Project Phoenix in newsletters that have been, or are in the process of being, distributed to hundreds of thousands of folks.
Arnie also pointed me at several blog posts he’s written that mention
- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/arnie_rowland/archive/2010/07/02/there-will-be-no-free-lunch-just-great-feelings-of-accomplishment.aspx
- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/arnie_rowland/archive/2010/07/12/while-you-don-t-get-a-free-lunch-you-will-get-your-just-deserts.aspx
- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/arnie_rowland/archive/2010/07/30/like-a-phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes.aspx
For those of you planning GiveCamp events, please share this information with your volunteers and suggest that they visit these sites to nominate themselves or their project:
- An eligible developer may submit project proposal information here.
- An eligible non-profit may submit a project proposal here.
Two New GiveCamp Events!
Aug 9th
The Tech Valley GiveCamp in upstate New York and the Northwest Arkansas GiveCamp have both confirmed for January 14-16, 2011. Check out their websites for more information. This is going to be an AMAZING YEAR for GiveCamp!
New England GiveCamp Announced!
Jan 24th
Just heard from Jim O’Neilabout a New England GiveCamp being scheduled for June 11-13 at NERD in Cambridge, MA! For those of you in the New England area, please help us spread the word about this amazing event and help them get things rolling! Once they have a web site up, I’ll update this site to reflect the new URL.
We Are Microsoft 2010
Jan 22nd
Dallas, TX – We are pleased to announce another successful We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge Weekend this past weekend. 130 volunteers and developers from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Florida met at the fantastic BravoTECH offices in Dallas to build web applications for 20 charities. Some of the charities and many of the developers returned from past years to participate in this weekend’s event. Toi Wright, organizer of the event, did a fantastic job (as usual) of herding her team of business analysts, volunteers, charities and sponsors into a well oiled, application development machine.
Here are some interesting statistics from the event:
|
|
More pictures, videos and tweets can be found on our site at the #WAM2010 archive page.
All in all, the feedback was very positive from the developers, event staff, volunteers and the charities. We’re really looking forward to putting on another one next year!
Two More GiveCamps Announced!
Jan 22nd
OH on Twitter today, the Lansing GiveCamp and the Kansas City Coders4Charities event are both scheduled for March 26, 2010. You can learn more about these events on their respective websites: http://lansinggivecamp.org and http://coders4charities.org. This will be the second year for the Lansing group, and the third year for the Coders4Charities group.
We Are Microsoft Event Videos
Jan 19th
I’m still working up a nice blog post about the recent We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge event here in Dallas, but I wanted to share this post ASAP considering all the AMAZING work that Shawn Weisfeld put into it. The full list of videos he produced can be found at http://www.drowningintechnicaldebt.com/ShawnWeisfeld/archive/2010/01/18/we-are-microsoft-aka-givecamp-dallas-2010-recordings.aspx. Shawn’s captured video from just about EVERYTHING that went on last weekend – everything from the kickoff video to the closing ceremonies, and all the training in between. Thanks a BILLION Shawn for doing all this!
Also, Toi has started putting together a listing of all the blogs, photo galleries, and more up on the We Are Microsoft web site at http://www.wearemicrosoft.com/Blog/011910.aspx. I’m working on something similar for the GiveCamp.org site to go along with the eventual blog post that I make later this week. If you have a post, video, recording, or other thing that you’d like to contribute to either (or both), send me a note and let me know. I’ll make sure that Toi gets it so that she can update her event site, and I’ll include it in my post at GiveCamp.org.
GiveCamp featured on CodeCast
Jan 7th
CodeCast Episode 62: GiveCamp with Chris Koenig
In this episode of CodeCast, Ken Levy (@kenlevy) interviews Chris Koenig (@chriskoenig), a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft in the Dallas, Texas office. This is an in-depth discussion about the history, status, and roadmap for GiveCamp events in various cities. GiveCamp was an idea hatched by Chris a few years ago, and now there are many GiveCamp events organized around the country with expansion plans this year. GiveCamp is a weekend long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. Some events focus on a specific technology like Microsoft .NET using Visual Studio or Expression Web. But using other technologies is often a possibility such as using Graffiti, Sitefinity, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Joomla, mojoPortal, Drupal, etc. The custom software created at GiveCamp could be a new website, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, Facebook page, a rich client or even a mobile application. This episode of CodeCast is educational for any developers or organizers considering volunteering to participate in and benefit from an upcoming GiveCamp event.
