Coders For Charities

For those of you who were not able to attend, and who may not have heard about this event prior to it's taking place, it was a phenomenal experience. The event managed to help out 5 charities, with needs ranging from a re-vamp to an existing site, to a secure intranet for exchanging information, to a site built from the ground up.
The teams gave it their all, and they came up with some excellent implementations. It is always good to see a bunch of geeks, who are used to working in their familiar environments, thrust into unfamiliar territory... with brand new requirements... and a short deadline.
In addition, it was wonderful to meet the representatives of the 5 charities, and really get to know what it is they do within their organizations. These amazing people do amazing things every day, and it was the least we could do to repay them for all of their hard work. Unfortunately, this hard work often includes administrative work, like maintaining an ancient web site, all in an effort to keep the community apprised of their valuable work.

We at C4C hope that this event was able to ease the administrative burden that these 5 charities take on as part of their good works. If only a few hours a week are saved, we still feel that this was a huge success.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without a lot of people helping out.

Coordinators:

First, thanks to the people who helped pull this event off: Jeff Julian, John Alexander, and Doug Butscher. These three guys were running around, trying to make sure all of the loose ends were tied up throughout the weekend. They were even spotted stepping into the development arena to help out when needed.

Volunteers:

Jacque Willis at Centriq. Wow. Without Jacque, this event would have fallen apart at the seams. From allowing us into the building, to providing pastries and fruit platters in the morning, to struggling with the Centriq alarm system at 11:00 PM every night, to her mad drumming Rock Band skills, to helping us serve the food, help clean up after the meals, and keeping the fridge stocked with sodas... Jacque was instrumental in pulling this off. Thank you Jacque! And many thanks to Centriq Training for allowing us their facility this weekend! We hope that we left their offices cleaner than we found them.  

Clint Edmonson, Microsoft Architect Evangelist, showed up and brought with him 20 copies of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, along with copies of Office 2007 and Sharepoint Designer. Clint provided a tremendous amount of support for this event, and he even volunteered to step up as photographer for the weekend, compiling a beautiful video slide show of the entire weekend.

Jerod Crump, Chief Operating Officer with AJI/Software volunteered his weekend to come and support this event. Jerod was a jack-of-all trades, supporting the teams in any way needed, and keeping us entertained in the wee hours. Jerod's help is very much appreciated.

Developers:

There was a total of 25 developers who helped out at the event, each of whom contributed substantially to the implementations. Each developer applied their unique style and skill sets to create a well-blended product for each charity. In the order in which they are listed on the Team Assignments page, the developers are: Lee Brandt, Becky Isserman, Blake Theiss, Joe Loux, Timothy Wright, Steven Hildreth, Jill Kirkpatrick, Joseph Cook, Jim Heavey, Kevin Shaffer, Patrick Herrington, David Rogers, Buck Sommerkamp, Alex Sommerkamp, Cody Inman, Rashid Hoda, Tim Hibbard, Hong Chen, James Clemons, Yuriy Lyeshchenko, Shawn Mannen, Jason Atcheson, Jacob Dubin, Joe Seaman, and Mary Stayton

Charities:

C4C was able to help 5 charities at the event. Each charity brought it's own unique set of requirements. Every charity brought their passion for their organization. It was a humbling experience to be in the presence of people who give back to their community each and every day. It goes without saying that this event could not have taken place without the participation of these non-profit organizations.
Each charity is listed below, along with links to the event write-ups, existing and new web sites.

• Boy Scouts Troop 813
  • Event Write-up
• Berean Bible Church
  • Event write-up
• Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA)
  • Event write-up
  • Existing (and soon to-be-new) web site
• Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR)
  • Event write-up
  • Existing (and soon to-be-new) web site
• Task Force Omega of Missouri, Inc.
  • Event write-up
  • Existing web site
  • New web site

 Sponsors:

What's an event without food, soda, and swag? Nothing! We were very fortunate to be able to partner with several Kansas City businesses, who saw the need to support an event like this, and graciously stepped forward to offer whatever support they could. There were times during the event that our sponsors came in to bring food and soda... even homemade cookies. Because the developers and charities were so enveloped in their work, the presence of the sponsors was not always known. Their help is tremendously appreciated, and we are proud and appreciative to list them below:

Jeff Julian and John Alexander of AJI/Software have graciously hosted the C4C site, as well as buying delicious d'Bronx pizza for lunch on Sunday afternoon.

Centriq Training opened their doors for us for the entire weekend of the event. In addition, they provided fresh fruit and pastries on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Many thanks to Jacque Willis and all the folks at Centriq for hosting our event!


Clint Edmonson, Microsoft Architect Evangelist provided 20 copies of Visual Studio, several copies MS Office and SharePoint Designer for the charities to take home with them after the event. Also, we have managed to score some fleece vests (limited quantity), some Mix '07 tees, and some VS 2008 tees.


TEKsystems paid for the custom screen printed geeky C4C shirts on all of our backs for the weekend! Katy Delmez even brought some homemade cookies to the event!



TriCom bought our soda and water. A lot of it. As if that weren't enough, they brought in an amazing Mr. Goodcents lunch buffet on Saturday afternoon.


Modis IT got the weekend started by bringing in a delicious lasagna dinner with all the sides from Jasper's. We filled the fridge with leftovers, and many developers (that means you, Buck) were caught sneaking back to the fridge for leftovers.


Matt Denney with Tradebot Systems provided everyone in attendance with high-quality bags for carrying home all of their swag. We had a few extras, and they were quickly snatched up.


David Silverlight with Community Credit hooked up the winning team (Boy Scouts Troop) with pocket Guitar Hero games, and a Simpson's Checkers Game. These items were a hit. Thanks again to Community Credit!

Midwest Consulting Group stepped up at the last minute and offered to pick up a chinese food spread for Saturday night. Jacque Willis chipped in as well to help offset the cost of dinner. Many thanks to Lee Brandt, Midwest Consulting, and Jacque for helping out with the event!!
 

Thank you!

We were fortunate to be able to help Boy Scouts Troop 813 with a website implementation this week at Coders4Charities. They needed a way to present information to their Boy Scouts and leadership, as well as provide sensitive information via a secure login. Knowing that time was of the essence, and after a quick requirements meeting with the Troop Scoutmaster, Tim Whited, the team decided on a Windows SharePoint Services based solution that provided the following functionality: 

Troop Information:

-Meeting location and time
-Contact for further information
-Chartered organization Information
-Calendar - detail for two months plus key dates further out
-Details about upcoming major events 

Forms download:
-Troop Handbook (Parent's Manual)
-Troop Newsletter  

Troop history (scrapbook)
- activities with photos
- "Stupid Things" a collection of those events that are remembered forever and form the troop's folklore
-List of troop ribbons

Page of links to Scout sites  

In addition, a secured portion of the website was created for the following information:
-Advancement records including partials
-Patrol Leaders Council
-Patrol roster and adult leaders
-List of Eagle Scouts with photos
-OA members

In addition to all of this, the team used Silverlight to create a slide show with music to highlight the troop! 

The Troop was blown away during the demo and was very grateful to the Team.  The site won the competition for the weekend

  The team members for this charity were: Blake Thiess, Lee Brandt, Becky Isserman, Tim Wright and Joe Loux.

The Berean Bible Church of Olathe, KS approached Coders4Charities with the need for a membership tracking application for up-to-date information on the members of the church.  Adam Claxton, a deacon of the church, attended the event to get the team the adequate requirements they needed to build this application.  This team was made up of a hobbyist, 2 Java developers, a C++ guy, and one .NET guy.   The team made lots of strides to get the project done and many of the members had never touched ASP.NET or .NET Framework.

The project was based in ASP.NET 3.5 and the entire data layer was designed to use LINQ for SQL.  The application was built from the ground up and had many reporting features added and Google Maps integration for the membership directory.  Overall, this implementation was a phenomenal success, both for the team who received a lot of .NET experience they did not have before, and the church who can use this system to replace their current paper-based systems.

Team members:

• Jill Kirkpatrick
• Kevin Shaffer
• Steven Hildreth
• Joe Heavey
• Joe Cook

Task Force Omega of Missouri participated in the Coders4Charities event this weekend. Previously, they had a MySpace page, and they were looking for a site of their own. Their team was able to build a site from scratch using Microsoft .NET technologies, and fully integrate with PayPal for online donations. They were able to go live Sunday night, and you can see their new site here. While speaking with Ann "Tigg" Moloski, President, she indicated that they were extremely happy with the implementation, and thrilled that we were able to accomodate their needs. Many thanks to the implementation team for helping Task Force Omega of Missouri continue their excellent work!

Team Members:

• Shawn Mannen
• Jason Atcheson
• Jacob Dubin
• Joe Seaman
• Mary Stayton

MPR was another non-profit that Coders4Charities helped this weekend. V and Rob Chesser are the two representatives that came to the event, and we appreciate the amount of time they committed to the implementation of their project.
V is the President of MPR, and webmaster of their existing site, and she spends a considerable amount of time managing the content on the site. At the event, they decided to go with a DotNetNuke solution, with GoDaddy hosting, because of the flexibility that DotNetNuke provides.
V mentioned that they are happy with the implementation, that there is still a bit of work to be done, and that she needs to invest the time to become proficient with the DotNetNuke administrative interface. Overall, this implementation was a success, and MPR will continue to add and maintain content to their new site using DotNetNuke. All the team members should be congratulated on the substantial effort applied to this implementation!

Team members:

• Tim Hibbard
• Hong Chen
• James Clemons
• Yuriy Lyeshchenko

The Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA) was one of the charities that Coders4Charities helped this weekend. MOCSA already has a great web site, and they needed a way to better track visitors on their site. The result was a completely re-vamped site, with one heck of a killer flash animation, provided by Buck Sommerkamp. Special thanks to Leanne Calhoon at MOCSA for all she does within her organization!! 

The team members were:

• Patrick Herrington
• David Rogers
• Buck Sommerkamp
• Alex Sommerkamp
• Cody Inman
• Rashid Hoda

This is the press release that was distributed to all of the media outlets in the Kansas City area.
You will need Adobe Reader to view this document.

Charity Name: Boy Scout Troop 813
Needs: A basic website to announce activities, give information, and promote Scouting. We would like to be able to update it remotely by authorized users. We must follow BSA guidelines to ensure we protect the identity of our Scouts.

Team Lead: Lee Brandt
Team Members:

• Becky Isserman
• Blake Theiss
• Joe Loux
• Timothy Wright

Charity Name: Berean Bible Church
Needs: The Berean Bible Church would like to have a membership tracking web application built to be able to keep an up-to-date list of members and regular attendees of the church and relevant information about each member. 

Team Lead: Steven Hildreth
Team Members:

• Jill Kirkpatrick
• Joseph Cook
• Jim Heavey
• Kevin Shaffer

Charity Name: Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault (MOCSA)
Needs: MOCSA would like their web site to be enhanced. They will benefit from a CMS such as Graffiti CMS or DotNetNuke.

Team Lead: Patrick Herrington
Team Members:

• David Rogers
• Buck Sommerkamp
• Alex Sommerkamp 
• Cody Inman
• Rashid Hoda

Charity Name: Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR)
Needs: Needs: MPR would like a new look for their web, more professional-looking, and easy maintenance. They will benefit from a CMS such as Graffiti CMS or DotNetNuke.

Team Lead: Tim Hibbard
Team Members:

• Hong Chen 
• James Clemons
• Yuriy Lyeshchenko

Charity Name: Task Force Omega of Missouri, Inc.
Needs: New web site. They currently have a MySpace page. Need to support eCommerce functionality for online donations.

Team Lead: Shawn Mannen
Team Members:

• Jason Atcheson
• Jacob Dubin
• Joe Seaman
• Mary Stayton

Many thanks to The Dick Dale Morning Show on 96.5 The Buzz in Kansas City for offering his support of our event! Dick put us in contact with Missouri Pit Bull Rescue (MPR), and it sounds like they are on board with Coders 4 Charities.