We recently announced our sponsorship of GiveCampUK - a fantastic event taking place towards the end of October which will gather an array of IT folk to take on the technology wish lists of local non-profit and charity organisations
GiveCamp came to my attention through a short talk from Paul Stack at this year’s Developer Developer Developer South West day. He highlighted the huge amount of time and effort that has gone into making the program a success in the US; helping deliver over $1 million of developer time and resources for free. Over 150 charities and not-for-profits have benefited within the four years the scheme has been running.
I felt the event would be as rewarding for the developers as it would be for charities and quickly requested that a team be considered to take part in the inaugural event.
I’m glad to say that a team of five from our Web Development and Application Support teams will be taking part! We’re a keen team with a wide range of experience in dealing with .NET and Open Source solutions, CMS development and a host of other related technologies. The team has worked on a wealth of high-profile projects including DfE, NHS 24, NHS Direct, JISC, Victim Support and many others.
The event kicks off with a gathering of developers and charities, discussing plans and ideas over dinner before getting down to business. The limited time frame to develop a solution means team work and high spirits are paramount. To keep those spirits high we will be joining several others, pitching tents and camping out! It is GiveCamp after all.
We will be tweeting videos, images and probably some mumbled text (when sleep deprivation kicks in) to chronicle the weekends events under the hashtags #teameduserv and #givecampuk. Hopefully we’ll get some time to grab a few words with Paul himself and a few others taking part.
Each team member will be tweeting under their own account and may also be blogging both before, during and after the event. You’ll be able to follow the noise at:
- Kieran @kieranties / kieranties.com
- Mike @mikeedwards83 / experimentsincode.com
- David @peelybird
- Jon @jon_p_david
- Ellie @realityisbuggy
Of course, it’ll also be worth checking out the offical GiveCampUK twitter stream and blog as well as the Eduserv twitter stream for further updates.