What can you do with 48 hour and over 120 volunteers. I will tell you what we did. We helped out over 25 charity with variety technical projects. Projects that would normally not get done because of lack of budget and lack of skill but desperately needed none the less.
This weekend was the second annual New England givecamp. A weekend dedicated to helping out charities with technical projects. These projects range from designing web sites to building out content management systems. In addition to getting technical help there are seminars designed to help charities make the most of the technology they are getting. This weekend there were sessions on content management, engaging social media, and others to help these organizations grow in a highly technological world.
First I would like to thank all the sponsors of providing the means to fuel all the activities this weekend. What does it take to keep developers developing…..a lot of support so again thanks.
Next I would like to thank Jim O’Neil and Kelley Muir for organizing the event. It may not have seemed it to you but to us it was very well organized. Leaps and bounds over last year. Which means next years should be spectacular…..no pressure!
The one thing you need to realize is that the word camp is in the title and camped we did. A number of the volunteers camped out here at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center, affectionately known as NERD! Thank you Microsoft for letting us have run of your beautiful facility for the weekend. There was plenty of room for people to pull up a piece of the floor, grab a couch and pitch a tent……wait pitch a tent? That’s right some people even pitch tents!
As I stated before it takes a lot of food to keep an Army of Techies moving. The food this year did not disappoint! We had chowdah from Legals, sandwiches for Cosi and pizza from Naked.
And when there was too much food what did givecamp do? Give it away, of course, to a local shelter:
“took #givecamp leftovers, fruit, chips to CASPAR in Cambridge – shelter housing 100 tonight. Another way #negc2011 makes a difference.” @jimoneil
So here we sit, the morning of the final day. Tech teams have 5 hours to get their projects done. They are frantically racing to deliver quality projects to their charities. The key word is quality. The goal is to handover all the work to the charities so they can build upon a foundation laid out by their tech teams.
So until next year I leave you give camp with this quote
“Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.” Dr. Sidney Freedman (M.A.S.H.)
And I would add
Get out of your office and do something nice!
Dave's Two Cents 