Today’s Thought Splash: Giving Back with GiveCamp!

This weekend I participated in the GiveCamp event as a volunteer developer.  For me GiveCamp was the opportunity to help local charities while coding, learning new platforms, eating all the free Domino’s Pizza and Subway I wanted, geeking out with local geeks, and getting some cool swag!

Give Camp St. Louis 2011

Give Camp St. Louis 2011

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations. Since its inception in 2007, the GiveCamp program has provided benefits to over 150 charities, with a value of developer and designer time exceeding $1,000,000 in services! — GiveCamp.org

There were 15 cities participating this weekend and St. Louis was one of them.  Everything kicked off Friday at 6pm at the CAIT facility in Clayton.  CAIT was generous enough to open their facility for the whole the weekend.  We had access to internet and any software they had at our disposal.  We closed out with demos of the solutions that were implemented over the weekend at around 5:30pm on Sunday.

Here is a list of some of the charities we helped:

  • Emmaus Homes – provides homes and programming for individuals with developmental disabilities.
  • Provident STL – provides a community of care that creates hope, builds self-reliance and drives social impact.
  • United Way STL – works to elevate the quality of life for thousands of people in the ST. Louis area.
  • The Crisis Food Center – alleviate hunger and provide food for those in need.
  • Jewish Family & Children Services – provides assistance to people of all ages from all economic circumstances.

Even though this event was sponsored by Microsoft, solutions were implemented on both open source and proprietary platforms, which was really cool.

Here are some of the platforms used to deliver solutions:

  • Joomla – Open Source PHP Content Management System (CMS)
  • Drupal – Open Source PHP Content Management System (CMS)
  • Kentico – ASP.NET Content Management System (CMS)
  • Silverlight - Powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline
  • Microsoft Access Forms – Database and Forms builder
  • DotNetNuke – Open Source ASP.NET Web Content Management System

Bottom line the charities were all very appreciative of the solutions that were provided. (Thanks to Chris at Emmaus House for the tasty chocolate chip cookies!)  Many volunteers were so dedicated that no one could prove if they ever left the facility at all this weekend!

Thanks to all the sponsors: Microsoft, Domino’s Pizza, Telerik, Component One, O’reilly, assembla, and discountasp.net.

Also, a special thanks to Kevin Grossnicklaus of ArchitectNow for organizing and leading the St. Louis GiveCamp event.   I had a blast and hope that next’s year event is bigger and better!

Today’s Thought Splash: Giving Back with GiveCamp!