#developers for good

Hey Devs for Good!

Congratulations; It’s been five years!

Developers for Good came about exactly 5 years ago in October 2009, when our founder joined Catchafire’s alpha pilot and grew fascinated by skills-based volunteering. We launched in January 2010, and had our first meetup in February in a bar that used to be a bank vault in downtown Manhattan. It’s been an incredible journey!

  We've shown a side to NYC that many didn't realize existed: tech professionals happy to share their knowledge and passion with great causes, no strings attached. We've seen ideas germinate and teams form, and we've helped hundreds of organizations of all stages develop tech for good. We’ve seen our social good friends at The OpEd Project, Code for America, TurboVote, EDesign Lab, Seeds, SavvyRoo (formerly SwayWhat), Empirical/Quill, and so many other organizations grow and thrive.

  We've visited the offices of many social impact technology companies, including Amplify, DonorsChoose, Skillshare, Purpose, and ThoughtWorks. During our meetups, we've networked, previewed TED talks, attended hackathons and conferences, prototyped, fixed bugs, and joined the Hour of Code. We've taught kids to code through CoderDojo NYC, ScriptEd, Technovation, and Black Girls Code, and we’ve mentored high school students through iMentor.

  What’s New: We’re focusing on Open Source

The next chapter of Developers for Good is to fully join CodeMontage -- all of our community efforts will be focused on open source, social good projects going forward. CodeMontage was born out of lessons learned from Developers for Good projects, after all, and we want to focus all of our community and company efforts on what has the biggest potential for social impact. We believe open source is the most effective way to build social good software, primarily because open projects are easier to get started with and allow coders to build their portfolios while helping a cause.

  What this means for Social Good Organization & Project Leaders

Going forward, this focus means we’ll require any organizations looking for volunteer developers to publish their needs in an open source way -- we recommend through GitHub. We’ll also work to make open source setup easier for nonprofits and social enterprises, and to help project leaders engage with events and coder communities around the world.

  What’s Next: We’re hitting the road

In practice, this means we’ll rename the meetup to Coders for Good to make the association with CodeMontage clear. Additionally, the CodeMontage team is working hard to make building technology for good easier, more impactful, and more inclusive of people from all backgrounds. We recommend registering on CodeMontage to keep in the loop on opportunities to code for good as we expand beyond the NYC community.

  tl:dr; Congratulations; It's been *five years*! We're merging into CodeMontage & focusing our #codeforgood efforts on #opensource.

  Want to help spread the word? Click to tweet Congratulations!

  We look forward to coding for good and continuing to change the world with all of you!

  Best,

  Vanessa, Theresa, Rebecca, Nathan & Courteney

Noah Blumenthal, CEO of SwayWhat, joined us at Developers for Good Open Hours to speak about the value of information as the basis of discussion in our increasingly politically polarized society.

Noah's full talk, which will be available later this Spring after its TEDx debut, compelled us to ask ourselves whether we're truly making informed decisions in today's information age - or whether we're falling victim to the divisive argutainment the media creates for us.

A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate - Thomas Jefferson

We'll keep most of the gems from this talk underwraps until the full video becomes available, but we urge everyone to consider Noah's question - Which of your beliefs are fundamentally, factually incorrect? - and seek the information you need to better understand the world around us.

      Paperless Post Database Engineer and Girl Develop IT co-founder Vanessa Hurst recently sat down with GIRLS WHO ROCK for our Tech Thursday: Women in Tech Series. 

Vanessa wears many hats during the course of an average workday. In addition to being a database engineer for the online company Paperless Post, Ms. Hurst overseas the development of Girl Develop IT with her co-founder. She also organizes monthly meetings for Developers for Good, a network of web developers, software engineers, and database administrations looking to make a difference. They do this by lending their technological skills and talents to non-profits and social mission businesses. In the interview, Vanessa muses about what it was like to meet her tech role model, what she learned from the Iridescent Technovation Challenge experience, and what the future of Data looks like. Vanessa is a warm and astute jokester who would be a great role model for any budding techie! Thanks again for taking the time Vanessa! 

What are you the first in your family to do? 

I am the first in my family to write computer software, and to control computers, if you want to think about it in a little bit of  [an] evil mastermind kind of way (laughs).

For more information on:                                                                                           Paperless Post                                                                                                         Developers for Good                                                                                                           Girl Develop It                                                                                                                   Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Location & Local Services for Google                          The Op-ed Project                                                                                                 Iridescent Technovation Challenge