Everyone in the auditorium knew when she stood up that this was going to be an interesting weekend. Sister Mary, dressed in a stark white Habit, stood out from the crowd of faded jeans, Converse low-tops and silk screened Tee shirts with ironic catch phrases like some lost Lawrence Welk fan at a Neko Case concert. But what she told the audience, how passionately she expressed her excitement for what was in essence just a new website, was nothing new by then. They had heard the same that night from a dozen other local charities and non-profits participating in GiveCamp 2009. Each charity started the weekend thanking the programmers and developers and designers for donating the next 48 hours of their lives to creating something for their own personal cause. So unaccustomed to this kind of appreciation for their unique gifts in this world, the audience of software and computer experts were overwhelmed to tears more than once. At least I was overwhelmed to tears at the opening ceremony, cresting at the pique of the emotional wave with Sister Mary shouting thanks to God that ‘The Geeks Are Coming!’
GiveCamp.org is as simple an idea as it is brilliant. Lawyers give away their valuable time to those in need Pro Bono and doctor’s donate their expertise in free clinics in poor neighborhoods the world over. As computers and the languages that make them run have evolved in complexity, those that truly understand them have been awkwardly elevated to a similar class of professionalism, complete with wildly expensive hourly rates. These rates typically outpace even the broadest of charity donation bases, and come from areas first to be cut when donations slow and budgets get tight. The community’s response to this need was GiveCamp, a highly organize, large scale free clinic to distribute injections of software for those most in need. Software companies donate their products to the charities, hosting companies give away space on their servers and the community provides their experience and skills, free of charge, to work on one project per charity over a shotgun 48 hour weekend.
This was my first Give Camp, held in Ann Arbor, MI and conducted in concert with sites in columbus and Knoxville. Eighteen local Michigan charities were selected and paired up with teams of programmers to deliver some software solution or website that the charity needed in their organization. I understood before even arriving on Friday that this was a kind of ‘giving back to the community’ wholly unique to computer people. You see, we are famously known for our bursts of manic focus and obscene late night work schedules, so GiveCamp feeds these tendencies by being an all-day all-night team relay race to the finish line. You and your charity must complete as much as you can in all 48 hours you are given. Like a Reality TV show, Give Camp creates its own little universe where sleep is for the weak, coffee is the ambrosia of the gods, and newly introduced teammates become strong, fast friends as the obstacles mount and the enormity of the goal looms in the distance.
We were not in competition against each other, only against the clock and our own palatable desire to solve the charities programming puzzle and make them happy. The local Boy Scouts, for example, were paired with my self and my teammate to create a campsite reservation site. This hugely time consuming, mind-numbingly redundant task is one that any other company or organization with an internal IT staff would have automated before the fax machine warmed up. For us, for two days, this problem was our whole world
To an outside observer Give Camp can look like an ant colony tipped on its side. Sixty programmers and organizers running through the halls of a borrowed community college building at 3 in the morning solving each other’s problems. ‘Don’t get Stuck!’ one would shout, answered with ‘Don’t work past Stupid!’ It may not quite be exciting enough for an Aaron Sorkin drama, but it was probably more entertaining to watch than Michael Bay’s latest production. In the small of the night, truly amazing things can and do happen.
It was Sunday, fifteen minutes before closing ceremony, when my team officially crossed the finish line and delivered our app to the client. You can see it here. Honestly what I saw when I handed the code to James, local Boy Scout administrator and our weekend contact, was all the things left we could have done. What he saw, however, was all that it did that otherwise they would have to do themselves. At the closing ceremony it was the same story for all the groups. The Charities had a weekend with a team of talented programmers and what they came into the auditorium with made a huge difference in their organizations. After another hour of speeches and applause and thanks with maybe some more crying, each developer returned home to fall soundly asleep before 8pm, maybe for the first time in their lives.
Give Camp is one of those richly rewarding experience that is the exclusive domain of the geeks. We own this space, it is ours and it is up to us to make Give Camp 2010 even better. Go to GiveCamp.org and sign up now.
Technorati tags: givecamp, code, programming, agile development, business, charities,charity programming
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