Coders For Charities

Check out our new video, showing our 2009 event...

(If you are using Internet Explorer 7+ and see only a white box below, click here to view the video page directly).

Many thanks to everyone who helped produce the video during the weekend, including Nick Schale of KCVideoCore.org who brought in the following crew (many of whom used their own equipment): Derek Berdine, Debi Rose, Johnny Sewell, Buck Sommerkamp, Caleb Vetter, and Cory Vetter.

We're up and running with Coders4Charities 2009! Dozens of developers and designers are here throughout the weekend working hard to develop and/or improve web sites for these Kansas City non-profits:

• Cass County Jobs Club
• Midwest Foster Care and Adoption
• We Care Ministries
• Mid-America Freedom Band
• Bria T. Chism Foundation
• Kansas Family Advisory Network
• FOCUS North America
• Ad Hoc Group Against Crime

Specifications were developed last night (Friday), and today everyone is hunkered down in classrooms at Centriq Training Center working on sites and applications for these groups. Chik-Fil-A at Ward Parkway Mall provided us with an awesome lunch, and the Rock Band room is cranking up for those of us who need to take a break.

The KC VideoCore Adobe user group is documenting the weekend for a forthcoming web site piece. You can check out our Flickr Photo Stream as we post pics throughout the weekend.

Our numerous sponsors have provided us with food, giveaways, and support as we crank out the work. Thanks to everyone who's participating this weekend. We'll feed you more information as the projects unfold!

January 27, 2009

Dozens of Kansas City area web developers, designers, and business analysts will engage with local non-profit organizations for a weekend of "giving back" to their communities

The second annual Coders 4 Charities weekend is scheduled for Friday, April 24 through Sunday, April 26, 2009 at Centriq Training in Kansas City, Missouri. The weekend pairs up teams of web developers, designers and analysts with representatives of local charities who receive "extreme makeovers" of web sites or full online applications for their use in just 48 hours.

In the spring of 2008, five area non-profit organizations received complete online solutions or "revamps" from nearly 30 developers and designers in the Kansas City area between Friday night and Sunday afternoon.

Volunteer programmers and designers will work intensely at all hours throughout the weekend, fueled by a steady stream of catered meals and energy drinks from local sponsors, taking occasional breaks to play "Rock Band" in a room set up especially for that purpose, taking time to convene in conference rooms with whiteboards to plan strategy with charity representatives.

Charities often do not have the funds to implement a new website, intranet or database solution, while software developers may not volunteer for charity work because the needs are not adequately publicized.

"This event is the perfect marriage of these two needs; software developers accepting the challenge to volunteer their weekend to help charities, who in turn better serve our community with useable, visible, web sites. Our teams are not 'locked in' to the building, so they can sleep if they want to," said Doug Butscher, coordinator of the event. "But many 'geeks' like to stay up late and seem to do their best work at all hours of the night -- into the 'wee hours' -- so we provide them the time and facilities to do exactly that. The computer labs are available to team members throughout the weekend, and each team schedules their own developers for different jobs during the 48-hour period."

At the conclusion of the event, the Coders 4 Charities team awards prizes to teams based on the quality and usefulness of the applications they developed. Everyone who participates receives t-shirts and other giveaways from area technical recruiters, software companies, and other business sponsors who provide an enthusiastic, comfortable, creative environment in which to work. Participating charities also receive gifts of the software necessary to continue to maintain and further develop the sites in-house, helping them avoid the expense of purchasing software for their project.

New to this year's event, a volunteer video crew from a Kansas City area video user group will shoot and edit a video documentary on-site during the weekend for presentation at the final awards ceremony. Additionally, Coders 4 Charities will present an online podcast from the event throughout the weekend.

"It will be like a fishbowl for us for 48 hours, but that's a great way to let the community know what good can come when you pair highly-knowledgeable 'geeks' with the organizations who desperately need their talents," Butscher said. "If you add up the total dollar value of services represented in the building over the weekend, it amounts to tens of thousands of dollars' worth of development and creativity -- given freely to the community we serve."

Coders 4 Charities is seeking charitable organizations to provide their wish lists for 2009.

Email info@coders4charities.org if you would like to be part of this event as a programmer, designer, usability expert, SEO specialist, writer, sponsor, or participating  charity.

Follow Coders 4 Charities using any of the following methods:

• Twitter: @C4C
• Facebook Group: Coders 4 Charities
• Web: http://www.coders4charities.org

Watch the video slide show of our 2008 event!
Read the Kansas City Star Press Release

Some geeks are blogging about the event.

Coders For Charities is a 3-day charity event that pairs charities and local software developers. The last event took place April 25-27, 2008 at Centriq Training in Leawood, KS.  Email info@coders4charities.org if you would like to be part of future events!

Coders For Charities is a member of the GiveCamp alliance.

For everyone who helped with the C4C event in some capacity or another, Community Credit is awarding you points on their site for your participation. Below are instructions on how to register and add points to your account.

NOTE: You must get your points added by April 30, 2008 in order for them to count for the month of April. 

Some of the prizes for April are:
Grand Prize: 4-GB Halo 3 Master Chief USB Drive

1st Prize: Palmsize Battle Tanks
2nd Prize: Space Warp Desktop
3rd Prize: Tengu

Click here to see a detailed list of the April prizes on Community Credit.

Community Credit Registration:
If you do not yet have an account with Community Credit, Register for one. Below is the registration page.
If you already have an account, go to the next step.

View Your Points
Once you have signed in (or recently registered), you should see the My Points section. If you don't see it, click on the My Credit link in the top navigation bar. Below is the My Points page.

Adding Points
To add points to your account, click the Add Points link. Depending on your participation, you will be awarded points based on a points schedule. Below is the points schedule for Coders4Charities participation.

To actually add the points, fill out the Add My Community Credit section (pictured below) accordingly:
Category: Volunteering
SubCategory: [select the SubCategory that most closely matches you]
Task Description: enter a brief description of your involvement
Date Earned: 4/27/2008
URL showing credit: this can be a link to http://coders4charities.org, or your charity's new URL, if applicable.

After you submit your points, they will be pending until processed by the Community Credit team. Below is what the Pending Credits look like.

 Many thanks to David Silverlight and Community-Credit.com for offering to reward everyone for their participation!!

About Community Credit
Community Credit was founded by David Silverlight, a Microsoft MVP and an active member of the development community, as a way to reward fellow IT Professionals who have contributed toward the development community. Currently, the rewards for these contributions are simply the satisfaction of helping colleagues in the development community. Now, they can be rewarded by recieving not only geeky gifts like a Swiss Army USB Drives, Caffeinated Hot Sauce or a Binary Wall Clock, but they also recieve a cool plaque to hang on their wall and impress their coworkers.
 

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!

Thank you Clint Edmonson for compiling this video!

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