If you look to the right sidebar, you’ll see we have a tentative date set for New England GiveCamp 2011!   Given the popularity of NERD for community events, we wanted to book something quickly!  If you’re interested in helping organize this event, let us know.

A bit sooner on the horizon is another GiveCamp in our area!  The Tech Valley GiveCamp is scheduled for January 14-16th, 2011 in Albany, New York.   Visit their site, or contact the event coordinator, Will Platnick.

That Albany event is one of many to be held on that weekend – the National Day of GiveCamp!   By setting aside a designated weekend, we’re hoping to rally additional areas to host their own events, and Microsoft is looking to assist your efforts through securing venue space and sponsorships.  If you are interested in organizing a GiveCamp in your area on that weekend, send an e-mail to usgcamp@microsoft.com by September 13th, 2010 with the following information:

• Your name
• Phone number and e-mail address
• City and state for the GiveCamp
• Whether you need help locating a venue (Yes or No)

We’ve noticed a few of the volunteers had been blogging about the event and non-profits as well have issued newsletters and acknowlegements of the event, so thought it would be good to collect some links here.  Let us know if we’ve missed anyone!

Volunteer blogs and media

New England GiveCamp 2010: What  A Great Experience (Doug Vanderweide)

Giving Back and  Day 1 of New England Give Camp Done!  (Dave Davis)

GiveCamp (Justin Russell)

New England Give Camp – Night/Morning 1 and  New England Give Camp – Night 2 (Carl Bergenhem)

New England Give Camp 2010 (Evelyn Livant)

New England Give Camp 2010 Day 1 and Summary of the Rest of Give Camp (Fred Smith)

GiveCamp – Learning Silverlight and “Coding for Charity” (Kevin Pammett)

New England GiveCamp: “Awesome, simply awesome” (Jim O’Neil)

New England Give Camp 2010 (Karen Spencer)

Boston TweetUp TV shout-out (at 6:37 mark)

2010 GiveCamp – New England Write-Up (Bob Chin)

Sponsor blogs

Giving Back – Web Hosts and Local Non-Profits (William Toll, Navisite)

Non-profit sites

Catching Joy participates in New England Give Camp 2010 (Catching Joy, Inc.)

Smallbean Returns from New England Give Camp (Smallbean, Inc.)

Second Chances ”Latest news and events” (Second Chances, Inc.)

New England GiveCamp: One NERD and multiple IT project success stories (Kristen Caretta, Spare Change News / SearchCIO-Midmarket.com)

Facebook updates

On behalf of Catching Joy, Inc., I want to thank everyone at Give Camp for an incredible weekend of productive work and networking and making friends. Our non-profit organization is grateful for the new website that my team designed and built so that we are better able to do our good work organizing hands-on activitie…s for young children and their families to let them experience the joy of giving. We look forward to helping make next year’s event a success! See www.catchingjoy.org.  (Joy Olaes Surprenant, June 17, 2010)

Many thanks to all the Give Camp volunteers! RESPOND cannot thank you enough for our wonderful, new web site –we plan to roll it out in the next week or two! Thanks for working hard and playing hard! (Darcie DeLuca, June 15, 2010)

Waterbury Youth Services was thrilled to participate in New England GiveCamp alongside so many other wonderful non-profits. It was great to meet Second Chances and hear about the good work you do to help the people in need in your community while at the same time helping to improve the environment.  (Jan Forrest, June 15, 2010)

Great big thanks to everyone for a great weekend and for generously giving of your time and talents to help us non-profits. There are some pictures I took that are posted to Waterbury Youth Services Facebook Page if you would like to check them out. (Jan Forrest, June 14, 2010)

What a great weekend! Thanks so much to our wonderful database project team and all the great volunteers and sponsors from Second Chances, Inc. (Andrea Shapiro, June 14, 2010)

A very special thanks to New England GiveCamp and to all the generous & talented volunteers who spent 3 days working late into the night to provide WYSS and 22 other non-profit agencies with software solutions. (Waterbury Youth Services, June 13, 2010)

I have just spent the weekend at the NE Give Camp and it was amazing! I am so grateful to my team for upgrading my website: Karen Spencer, Justin Sun, Everett Whitehead and Lisa Dekermenjian. Go to www.womenofmeans.org to see their awesome work! (Roseanna Means, June 13, 2010)

Comments left on the GiveCamp banner

Thanks so much for helping us save lives.

What an amazing experience.  I can’t thank everyone enough.

Great cause, great people.

What an incredible weekend.

Awesome, simply awesome.

Lives changed this weekend. Thank you!

Twitter Stream (archived from June 9-17th)

It’s hard to top that quote left by one of the non-profit representatives on the New England GiveCamp 2010 banner.

Get some well needed rest and take time to congratulate yourselves – volunteers and non-profits – for a tremendous job well done. While things are fresh on your mind, record your ideas at UserVoice.

Below is the text of the third of a series of e-mail updates sent out leading up to the big event on June 11th. If you have signed up for GiveCamp, you should have received this same note at the e-mail address you specified when registering. If you did not please contact us at negc2010@hotmail.com, as soon as possible so we can ensure your registration status.

Wow, it’s Wednesday already! New England GiveCamp starts this Friday, June 11, at the New England Research and Development Center (NERD), at 1 Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA. Here’s another update to address some of the questions we’ve been receiving as the date approaches.

Can you help out before the event?

Ok, well none of you actually asked this, but the answer is still Yes! We’ve opened up a new ticket type at http://newenglandgivecamp.eventbrite.com for pre-event setup. If you’re in the area early or have some time from 2 p.m. on, we’d love some help (half-dozen folks or so) getting things set up for the weekend.

What time does it start?

We’ll have registration from 5 to 6 p.m. Friday evening and start the program at 6. Pizza and salad have been ordered for 5:30, so come hungry!

How do I get there?

The address is 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA, and we’re meeting on the 1st Floor Conference Center (think European 1st floor, it’s one level up on the elevator). View the Bing Maps one-click directions.

Driving

If you are travelling East on Memorial Drive (the Charles River is on your right) you’ll want to take the Kendall Square exit on your left (Wadsworth Street) BEFORE reaching the building. If you miss this opportunity, you’ll end up on the Longfellow Bridge heading into Boston!

At the end of Wadsworth, turn right onto Main Street

Shortly after, Main Street merges with Broadway to continue as Main.

Travel down Main Street and turn right – back onto Memorial Drive (west-bound) BEFORE the Longfellow Bridge! The building immediately on your right houses the New England Research and Development (NERD) Center.

Turn right just after the building into the driveway leading to the parking garage (free parking is provided for GiveCamp attendees). If the garage door is closed, approach slowly and it will automatically open for you.

Retain your parking garage ticket, and take the elevator up to the lobby.

MBTA

Take the Red Line to the Kendall Square/MIT stop. Exit the station, walking down Main Street toward Boston. NERD is on your right at the corner of Main Street and Memorial Drive, right after a large construction site.

At the Building

Take the elevator to the lobby, where the building receptionist will ask for your name – tell him or her that you are part of GiveCamp at Microsoft – and he or she will direct you to the elevator to the first floor Conference Center.

I haven’t heard from anyone regarding my specific role at GiveCamp.

Most of the technical volunteers have heard from one of the volunteer business analysts or other team leader; however, we’ve had one charity drop out of the weekend, and there have been other volunteers who are likewise not able to attend. As a result, there are a handful of you that don’t have a specific assignment at the moment – this was completely expected. We plan to make adjustments on Friday at the event to account for no-shows and other contingencies. There is plenty of work to go around, and you are still very much needed, we just ask that you remain flexible and do show up on Friday night so we know *you* are not a no-show!Non-technical volunteers signed up for specific shifts during the registration process, and we are using that as a reflection of availability. You’ll be assigned to some subset of those shifts (perhaps all of them); a schedule should come out later today or early tomorrow. If you are not scheduled for a shift and are still available, you’re more than welcome to hang out at NERD.

As always, send a note to negc2010@hotmail.com if you have additional questions. Let’s make this an event to remember!

Regards,

The New England GiveCamp Committee

It’s been fun over the last couple of days as we’ve been slicing and dicing various bit of data from the volunteer registrations to help form the project teams and make other task assignments for New England GiveCamp. In a recent post, we listed the charities at the forefront of this event, so we thought it might be fun to see who you’ll be working with elbow-to-elbow this weekend.

We actually did just hit the 100th volunteer today, and there is a small waitlist which we are very hopeful of accomodating over the next days. Just for fun, here’s some interesting statistics we found perusing the data submitted by those 100 volunteers:

• 54 people are planning to spend the night at NERD. That may change once they find out how hard the floor is! For those of you staying, we have your best interests at heart, and you will receive ear plugs.
• The most represented group in terms of experience are those with 5-10 years under their belt, but we do have seven students joining us as well.
• The Web is apparently not a fad as CSS and JavaScript are the most prevalent technologies among the skill sets represented:
• 45 of you tweet (not including those who do so only in the shower)
• New England GiveCamp is a family affair, and in attendance there are (at least)
  • Two sets of siblings (one pair of sisters and one pair of brothers)
  • Four married couples
  • An intersection of the above yielding a husband, wife, and sister(-in-law)
  • A (very) expectant father, who may or may not have to leave early
• There are a number of talents represented including
  • Fluent speakers of French and Spanish (and possibly English, but no one specifically noted that)
  • Someone who can tie a bowline
  • A number of folks in various stages of denial as to how loud they snore
  • A self-proclaimed lion tamer
  • Two jugglers
  • A dozen photographers – bring those camers, we want plenty of exposure (sorry for the pun) on Flickr, etc.

I’m sure there’s a lot more we’ll all learn about each other over the 48 hours that is New England GiveCamp!

Below is the text of the second of a series of e-mail updates sent out leading up to the big event on June 11th. If you have signed up for GiveCamp, you should have received this same note at the e-mail address you specified when registering. If you did not please contact us at negc2010@hotmail.com, as soon as possible so we can ensure your registration status.

I hope everyone is having (or has had) a restful weekend, because next weekend will be, well, a different story!

You are one of 106 people receiving this e-mail as a volunteer or non-profit representative registered for New England GiveCamp beginning this Friday at 6 p.m.

Since the last update, the 24 non-profit organizations you’ll be helping have been finalized, and the organizational committee has made team assignments to those organizations for the weekend.  If you volunteered in a technical capacity, you should be hearing in the next few days (if you haven’t already) from a member of the GiveCamp committee who will try to facilitate a short call among your team members and non-profit representative before everyone meets face-to-face Friday night.

For those of you volunteering in a non-technical capacity, we’re working through a schedule for the various shifts you’ve signed up for, and you should be hearing more within a day or two.

If you are staying overnight at NERD (and about 50 of you are planning to) be sure to bring a sleeping bag and perhaps a pad or air mattress.  The floors are hard and uncarpeted in many areas.   There are shower facilities on site (about three showers for each gender).

And the best news of all, Standard Parking, the folks that administer the parking garage at NERD have donated parking for the event!  You will be able to park in the garage at no charge, and during the weekend there should be plenty of space for all of you planning to drive.

We will send out another update (or two) in the days coming, including directions to the facility.  Plan on arriving between 5 and 6 p.m. on Friday for registration.  We’ll have pizza and some time for socialization before the event kicks off around 6ish.

If you have any questions about the event, and ESPECIALLY if your schedule is such that you can no longer participate, please let us know at negc2010@hotmail.com.

See you on Friday,
The New England GiveCamp Organizational Committee

The title of this post succinctly sums up the upcoming New England GiveCamp, and below are those two dozen charities that the 99 volunteers at GiveCamp will be helping over the weekend of June 11-13th.

Devens Eco-Efficiency Center, Devens MA

Lawrence Youth Soccer Association, Lawrence MA

Acton Latino Family Network, Acton MA

RESPOND, Inc., Somerville MA

Nobscot Sail & Power Squadron, Natick MA

The Critter Connection, Durham CT

Smallbean Incorporated, Boston MA

Helping Hands Outreach Center, Manchester NH

Adoption and Foster Care Mentoring, Boston MA

Project Laundry List, Concord NH

Manchester Public Library, Manchester NH

Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth, Lebanon NH

Float Left Labs, Manchester NH

Women of Means, Inc., Wellesley MA

Second Chances, Inc., Somerville MA

The Goshen Land Trust, Goshen CT

Waterbury Youth Service System, Inc., Waterbury CT

Timothy Smith Network, Roxbury MA

The Nave Gallery, Somerville MA

Arlington Center for the Arts, Arlington MA

Catching Joy, Inc., Waban MA

Friends of the Concord Free Public Library, Concord MA

Spare Change News, Cambridge MA

EMERGE, Inc., Cambridge MA

Last night was a major milestone for New England GiveCamp. About a dozen volunteers got together at NERD for a three-hour session of matching our 70+ technical volunteers to the two dozen non-profit organizations we’ll be helping at GiveCamp in less than two weeks.

It’s not an easy task to pull together people who don’t know each other and who have varying years of experience in over two dozen technologies into twenty-four teams, but I think the group did an awesome job trying to balance skill set, seniority, and other preferences such as desire to work on a Scrum team or serve as a project leader. For those of you that have signed up to be a volunteer, you’ll be hearing VERY soon about the charity you’ll be helping, and have an opportunity to join a pre-event call with your team and the non-profit representative to get an overview of the project and “virtually” meet your team prior to showing up on Friday night.

We’ll also be putting up a page in the next day or so listing the two-dozen charities the New England GiveCamp will be serving. It’s quite a range both in organization focus and geography, so we’re all pretty excited on the committee as to how this event is unfolding – and hope you are too!

This is the first of a series of updates we’ll be sending out leading up to the big event on June 11th. If you have signed up for GiveCamp, you should have received this same note at the e-mail address you specified when registering. If you did not please contact us at negc2010@hotmail.com, as soon as possible so we can ensure your status.

New England GiveCamp is about two weeks away now, and many of you may be wondering: ‘what’s next’, ‘what project am I working on’, ‘where do I park’, etc.

Well, this is the first of what will likely be several updates over the next two weeks. This one’s a bit long, but will hopefully answer some of the questions you may have. If not, you can email negc2010@hotmail.com at anytime and we’ll respond, generally within an hour or two.

Some of you may have noticed a list of non-profits posted on the http://newenglandgivecamp.org site, and that’s just a subset of the groups you will be helping. About a half-dozen volunteers have been working directly with representatives of over 30 non-profits to hone scope and requirements to ensure that each organization’s project is really viable for the short timeframe at GiveCamp. That process is finishing up now, and those volunteers are meeting next Tuesday to finalize the list and start matching volunteers to the actual projects. We expect there to be about two dozen projects, and are absolutely looking for more volunteers – please spread the word and have folks visit http://newenglandgivecamp.eventbrite.com to sign on.

Toward the end of next week, those of you that have volunteered in a technical capacity should be informed of the charity you will be helping, and your volunteer development team leader should be in contact shortly thereafter to schedule a pre-GiveCamp call (or meeting) with the project team and the non-profit representative. We’re hoping that through this call, people will have a clearer idea of what they’ll be doing at GiveCamp, better understand the non-profit’s mission, and be poised to hit the ground running on the actual development project when they arrive at GiveCamp.

If you have volunteered in a non-technical capacity, there’s not a lot you need to do other than show up at the times you mentioned you could be available. A number of you volunteered for helping setup and even getting together the night before. We definitely will need some setup help, but what and when are still being ironed out, so you should hear from us a few days before on that topic.

In terms of on-site logistics, as you know you are welcome to spend the night at the NERD Center. It’s not the Ritz and the floors are hard, but there are showers on site, and you’re welcome to bring an air mattress, pad, or small cot. All meals will be provided, and Green Mountain Coffee will be there 7×24 to keep everyone well-caffeinated!

For those of you desiring more refined sleeping conditions, the Boston Marriott Cambridge in Kendall Square and the Hyatt Regency-Cambridge are extending the Microsoft rate to attendees of GiveCamp. The Marriott is about a block from the NERD Center and the Hyatt about 2.3 miles away down Memorial Drive. If you are interested in either of these options, please contact the hotel directly and be sure to request the Microsoft rate for New England GiveCamp.

Boston Marriott Cambridge – 617-494-6600 – room rate $220 + tax, includes Internet, self-parking is about $25 per day
Hyatt Regency-Cambridge – (617) 441-6529 or e-mail juzar.shakir@hyatt.com – room rate $139 + tax, includes Internet and reduced parking rate of $21 per day

For those needing to park, as you know free space is at a premium in Cambridge, although less of a challenge on a weekend. The NERD Center does have a parking garage and there is also a 24-hour garage in Kendall Square about 2 or 3 blocks away. We are still working with the garage owners to secure a reduced rate on parking, so hope to have more details (and good news) on that next week.

This is shaping up to be a great event and the spectrum of charities being helped is really amazing. The fact you are all giving up a weekend of your time (in one of the nicest times of the year in New England) is a great testament to the technical community in this area.

Again, please e-mail us at negc2010@hotmail.com with any questions or concerns you may have and especially if your plans have changed and you can no longer commit to the event.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend, and rest up – you’ll need it come June 11th!!

Regards,
The New England GiveCamp Organizational Committee

Over the past couple of weeks, there’s been a team of volunteers that have been busy chatting with the more than 30 non-profit organizations that submitted their projects for consideration for the upcoming GiveCamp!  Although they are still finalizing the specific projects and organizations that will be participating on-site, we wanted to let you know some of those that will be there, so you can appreciate the variety of organizations you’d be helping during GiveCamp weekend.   If you have the weekend free and can donate your time to this event, please consider registering as a technical or non-technical volunteer.

Lawrence Youth Soccer Association, Lawrence MA – an inner city soccer program operating under the auspices of the Lawrence Youth Development Organization looking for a site to reach out to the community for awareness and fund-raising.

Acton Latino Family Network, Acton MA – this organization, focused on connecting Latino immigrant families and providing advocacy for non-English speaking families, is looking for a web site for self-registration, a blog focusing on community concerns, and a listing of relevant community services. 

RESPOND, Inc., Somerville MA – RESPOND is the second oldest domestic violence agency in the nation and provides services to individuals affected by domestic violence – over 5,000 people per year, which they currently track on an Excel spreadsheet.  They are looking to build a more extensive database management system to store this data.

Nobscot Sail & Power Squadrons, Natick MA – This chapter of the United States Power Squadrons is focused on safe boating education and looking to transition their website to a content management system (Drupal) to increase their reach and promotional opportunities.

The Critter Connection, Durham CT – This six-year old organization is focused on guinea pig rescue and looking for an update to its current website to make it easier to expand and maintain.

Helping Hands Outreach Center, Manchester NH – provides a transitional shelter to men in recovery including a 16-room supporting housing program, four rooms of which are designated as “Safe Haven” for those with co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse diagnoses.  They are in need of a website and materials to help communicate their mission and raise funds.

Women of Means, Inc., Boston MA – comprises volunteer doctors and nurses who provide free medical care (over 10,000 annual visits) to women and children living in and using homeless and domestic violence shelters in Boston.  They are looking to update their web presence to better communicate their mission and attract additional donors to their cause.

Waterbury Youth Service System, Inc., Waterbury CT – provides hope and opportunity through programs and services that support families and help children in the Greater Waterbuy region reach their potential and become productive citizens.  The organization is looking for some assistance completing a custom Microsoft Access database to track grants and general ledger information.