Over the weekend of April 29 through May 1st, representatives of 28 non-profit organizations and 120 area technologists (developers, designers, project managers, social media experts, and others) gathered for a weekend hackathon at the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) Center in Cambridge MA.  About 40 of the participants even spent both nights at NERD, with several tents pitched right on the conference center floor!

Over the course of the event, small teams of volunteers worked on a variety of projects for the participating non-profit organizations: websites, databases, logo designs, and other tasks.  This year we extended the scope of the event a bit, with Adam Weiss producing a video for one of the non-profit organizations as his contribution, and Alex Roberts donated her photographic talents by taking headshots of the non-profit representatives for use in on-line and print materials.

In addition to project works, key volunteers hosted presentations and discussions focused on challenges non-profits have in incorporating technology and new media in their efforts.  Thanks specifically to the following for their well-received workshops:

• Margot Bloomstein  (effective content strategy)
• Doug Vanderweide (using WordPress)
• Jay Sun (beta launch of The Goodness)
• Adam Weiss (getting started with video)
• JoAnn Lefebvre (leveraging social media)

The weekend wasn’t all work and no play by any means.  Friday night, volunteer Michael de la Maza manned the popcorn machine, and on Saturday the evening snack was ‘make-your-own-sundaes.’  And of course it wouldn’t be ‘camp’ without crafts!  Another highlight of the event  is the “Free Stuff” table – through the generosity of O’Reilly Media there were over a hundred books and t-shirts for the taking, and still more books from O’Reilly, Manning, and Wrox served as a reference library throughout the weekend before they were claimed by the techies in attendance.  Many participants also took advantage of the nice weather to explore the Kendall Square area in order to recharge their batteries and get the creative juices reflowing.

The contributions at New England GiveCamp didn’t stop with the project work though.  Leftovers from the Saturday meal as well as several cartons of fruit and other snacks were brought to the Albany Street shelter of the Cambridge and Somerville Program for Alcoholism and Drug Rehabilitation (CASPAR), and a last minute food drive (inspired by the Project Bread Walk for Hunger taking place on May 1st) netted over 100 items which were donated to the Acton Food Pantry.

By the end of the weekend, an estimated $170,000 of pro bono services were donated to the 28 non-profit organizations in attendance. Some of the comments left by the attendees on the event banner help convey the scope and impact of this event:

life changing experience

thank you from the bottom of my heart

brilliant, inspiring, and otherwise magnificent

totally fabulous

best weekend ever

And for some more in-depth perspective from a few participants at New England GiveCamp, check out the following:

• Greetings from New England GiveCamp – Dave M. Davis
• Hacking for a Cause – Charles Baakel
• GiveCamp New England 2011 – Matt Sheppard
• New England GiveCamp 2011: What a Weekend! – Doug Vanderweide
• Coding for Charity – New England GiveCamp – Cambridge Community Television

Planning has already begun for New England GiveCamp 2012; many of the alumni have already come up with great suggestions for next year.  And less than six hours after closing out New England GiveCamp 2011, a new non-profit organization contacted us for participation in next year’s event!  Be sure to follow @NEGiveCamp on Twitter and “like’ us on Facebook to keep tabs on the 2012 edition!

Lastly, I must mention that this event wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible support of the staff at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center and the financial and in-kind donations of the more than three-dozen organizations listed below, whom we hope will be long term supporters of this signature event in the New England technical community.

Team leaders have already been notified and in contact with their assigned organizations, and you should be hearing from them shortly as well.

Keep in mind that there may be minor changes needed to address unexpected needs for skill sets or no-shows, so remain flexible!  Expect a (hopefully) short readjustment period after our kick-off meeting Friday night to potentially tweak things.

And, again, if you’ve found you can no longer attend GiveCamp, please let us know ASAP at negc2011@hotmail.com so we can make these assignments as final as possible before people start getting to work Friday night!

Look for an e-mail in your in-box early tomorrow with some additional logistical details for the weekend.

You’re in for one of the most tiring, intense, fun, and most importantly - meaningful – weekends you’ve ever experienced!  See you Friday!

Registration begins at 5:30 on Friday evening, and there will be pizza and salad there for dinner when you arrive.  The event takes place on the first floor conference center (which is one floor up from the lobby); the guard desk will have the names of those attending and direct you appropriately.   If you are staying the night, feel free to bring up your sleeping bag, etc. when you arrive, we’ll have a place to stow everything.

If you are driving, you may park in the garage at 1 Memorial Drive, the entrance to which is accessible only westbound on Memorial Drive (see map).  Garage parking is free to all attendees throughout the weekend!

If you are using public transportation, the Kendall Square (Red Line) T-station is about two blocks away from the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) Center.

Around 6:30 we’ll start with orientation, have each of the non-profits say a few words, and have a guest speaker get us kicked off formally.  I expect folks to arrive throughout the event, so don’t fret if you can’t be there precisely at 6:30.   By the end of the evening you’ll have had a chance to meet with your project team, map out your plan for the weekend, and get to work!

All of Saturday will be focused on project work. There will be a number of workshops throughout the day on various topics that we hope will be of particular interest to the non-profit organizations in attendance, and it gives everyone a chance to step away and take a breather.

Through Sunday noon, you’ll have time to continue working on your projects.  We’ll break for lunch, and then have an hour or two to finish things up.  Around 2:30, we’ll start our closing program, in which each organization does a short overview of what they’ve accomplished over the weekend.  Those of you there last year will recall how moving this part of the weekend was.  The event should be over by about 5 p.m.

See you all in a few days!

If you are one of the non-profit representatives attending , you’ve already been talking with Kelley and should have received a couple of e-mails from me just last night.  If not, let me know ASAP.

If you signed up as a volunteer in a non-technical capacity, you likewise should have heard from me in the last day or two regarding various tasks we need to fill at GiveCamp.

If you signed up as a volunteer for a project team, you might be wondering… what next?!

Kelley has been busy laying out the project technical needs, matching them up first with a technical lead (you may recall we asked who might want to lead a project upon registration), and the next step is creating the teams based on the skills profiles you filled out.   It’s kind of like a geek draft, and we hope to have that all finalized shortly.  The goal is to publish the team lists on Tuesday and have your team’s project lead (if time and schedules permit) initiate a quick get-to-know-you-and-the-non-profit call/e-mail before the event on Friday.

Keep in mind one of the mantras is that “What happens at GiveCamp stays at GiveCamp,” meaning that the vast bulk of your effort is that weekend, so as a volunteer don’t feel like you’re somehow behind at this point.   I know that’s a tough thing to accept for most of the type “A” personalities that are attracted to events like to this, but we are right on schedule.

I will now invoke my request of a post a week or so ago: if you find you can no longer attend the event, please e-mail us so we can get an accurate count for meals, snacks, and drinks.

If you’re on the waiting list, well you shouldn’t be! The waiting list was cleared about a week ago, and I’ve be releasing new requests as they come in.  There are a number of those on the waitlist though who have not chimed in to claim their ticket – with the result that Eventbrite does not allow us to reopen the volunteer tickets until the pending waitlist requests expire.  If you were on the waiting list and didn’t get an e-mail asking you to sign up ’fer real,’ let me know, and I’ll rectify immediately.

If you’ve just found out about GiveCamp (where the heck have you been?!) and want in,  there are a few spots still available – despite the waitlist designation (an Eventbrite annoyance). Just register for the waitlist, and I will free up the ticket fairly quickly OR let you know that we are ‘not only merely full, but really most sincerely full.’

Oh, and if you have a specific bent toward SEO and social media strategy, you’ll go to the front of the line (well, if there were a line).

As always, e-mail us at negc2011@hotmail.com if you’ve got any questions on the event, logistics, whatever.  Look for another update at least by Tuesday.

Bunk at NERD.  At last count about 40 people were planning to.  There’s plenty of floor space, and some folks event pitched tents last year – indoors.  There isn’t a segregated sleeping area though, so you may have to stake out a spot away from the all-nighters!  There are showers on site.

There are a number of hotels in the area, but this is Cambridge and Boston, so inexpensive they aren’t.   NERD is located at 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge and about a block from the Kendall Square T-station, so you may find that a hotel further out coupled with using the T a decent compromise.

Microsoft does have negotiated rates with several of the hotels in the area; however, the rates I was quoted were more expensive than what I was able to find on various travel sites -  go figure!  That said, here are some of the hotels that visitors to NERD have used in the past and the best standard rate I was able to find today via KAYAK.com (one of New England GiveCamp’s sponsors!)  Many do offer a AAA rate that gives about a 10% or more discount.  Each of these hotels is in Cambridge and a mile or less from NERD (they are ordered by distance below, closest first)

Boston Marriott Cambridge, 50 Broadway, (617) 494-6000, $199

Kendall Hotel, 350 Main Street, (617) 577-1300, $201

Residence Inn Boston Cambridge, 6 Cambridge Center,  (617) 349-0700, $199

Royal Sonesta, 40 Edwin Land Blvd., (617) 806-4200, $144 ($199 on hotel’s site)

Hotel Marlowe, 25 Edwin Land Blvd., (617) 868-8000, $166 ($199 on hotel’s site)

If you happen to find an exceptionally good deal somewhere else, consider letting fellow volunteers know by tweeting it with the #negc2011 hash tag (after  your reservation is booked and confirmed, of course!)

Science Club for Girls, Cambridge MA

The Garrett Pressley Autism Resource Center, Mattapan MA

College Application Education Project, Lynn MA

Primary Source, Watertown MA

Emerge, Cambridge MA

Children’s Charter Trauma Clinic, Waltham MA

Catching Joy, Waban MA

Hill View Montessori Charter Public School, Haverhill MA

Morrill Memorial Library, Norwood MA

Smallbean, Cambridge MA

RESPOND, Inc., Somerville MA

Free Geek Providence, Providence RI

Solarvisionaries.org

Newton Tanzania Collaborative, Inc. (NTC), Newton MA

Community Action Program Belknap-Merrimack Counties, Inc., NH

West Bay Residential Services Inc., Warwick RI

Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD), Lebanon NH

Earthen Vessels, Inc., Dorchester MA

Alex’s Team Foundation, Inc., Andover MA

Root Cause, Social Impact Research Division, Cambridge MA

Project Warehouse, Cambridge MA

World Music/CRASHarts, Cambridge MA

Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals, South Windham ME

Community Works, Boston MA

Community Mediation, Inc., New Haven CT

Boston Womens Fund, Boston MA

GuardSupport.org, Beverly MA

The Refuge of Hope, Boston MA

Much more information coming very soon!

In terms of the on-site experience, the event is shaping up well.  Some of you may have seen the growing list of sponsors, so I thought I’d share with you some of the details as they are being finalized.

• Dinner Friday is courtesy of Dominos, and I’m hoping for a combination of pizza, wings, and pasta
• Panera is supplying bagels for Saturday breakfast (and we’ll supplement with fruit and spreads of course)
• Naked Pizza will be handling our Sunday lunch (check them out at http://nakedpizza.biz)
• Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is coming through in a big way again by providing coffee throughout the weekend, and the Keurig will be a raffle prize at the end of the weekend!
• There will be free parking at the 1 Memorial Drive facility for all volunteers!!  (Please update your Eventbrite registration if you think you’ll be driving, so we can have a rough count)
• Shower facilities will be available on site (we’ll have a required waiver form you’ll need to fill out at registration).
• We have LOTS of give aways, including an XBOX/Kinect bundle at the end of the event, and numerous ad hoc drawings throught the weekend (geek and non-geek friendly items!)
• I have spent about 5 hours at O’Reilly’s office cleaning out books on a wide variety of topics – look for an extensive selection of “FREE” books for the taking at the event.

If you’ve got any questions on the event, please don’t hesitate to contact us at negc2011@hotmail.com.

Clear Your Divs

Clear Your Divs