Too often, geeks are called upon to leverage their technical expertise (which, to
most non-technical peoples' perspective, is an all-encompassing uni-field, meaning
if you are a DBA, you can fix a printer, and if you are an IT admin, you know how
to create a cool HTML game) on behalf of their friends and family, often without much
in the way of gratitude. But sometimes, you just gotta get your inner charitable self
on, and what's a geek to do then? Doctors have "Doctors Without Boundaries", and lawyers
can always do work "pro bono" for groups like the Innocence Project and so on, but
geeks....? Sure, you could go and join the Peace Corps, but that's hardly going to
really leverage your skills, and Lord knows, there's a ton of places (charities) that
could use a little IT love while you're off in a damp and dismal jungle somewhere.
(Not you, Seattle. You're just damp today. Dismal won't be for another few months,
when it's raining for weeks on end.)
(As if in response, the rain comes down even harder.)
About five or so years ago, a Microsoft employee realized that geeks didn't really
have an outlet for their desires to volunteer and help out in their communities through
the skills they have patiently mastered. So Chris created GiveCamp [1],
an organization dedicated to hosting "GiveCamps" all over the US, bringing volunteer
developers, designers, and other IT professionals together with charities that need
some IT love, whether that's in the form of a new mobile app, some touch-up on the
website, a port from a Microsoft Access app to something even remotely more modern,
or whatever.
Seattle GiveCamp [2] is coming up, October
11-13, at the Microsoft Commons. No technical bias is implied by that--GiveCamp isn't
an evangelism event, it's a "let's help people" event. Bring your Java, PHP, Python,
and yes, maybe even your Perl, and create some good karma for groups that are doing
good things. And for those of you not local to Seattle, there's lots of other GiveCamps
being planned all over the country--consider volunteering at one nearby.
Enterprise consulting, mentoring or instruction. Java, C++, .NET or XML services.
1-day or multi-day workshops available. Contact
me for details [3].