Phoenix Hackathon of Help Agenda

Friday, 3/24

4:00 PM Non-Profit Organization Check-in
4:30 – 7:00 PM Volunteer Check-in
6:30 PM Dinner

Saturday, 3/25

8:00 AM Breakfast
12:00 PM Lunch
6:30 PM Dinner

Sunday, 3/26

8:00 AM Breakfast
11:00 AM Start to panic
12:00 PM Lunch
2:30 PM Demo – All teams demo solutions
3:30 PM Cleanup and goodbye until next year

AZGiveCamp Humanitarian Toolbox Hackathon

AZGiveCamp is hosting a 1-day Humanitarian Toolbox hackathon. Join us at Ticketmaster at ASU Skysong on August 27th, 2016 from 8:30 am to 5 pm. We will be hacking on the allReady project. allReady is an ASP.NET Core open-source Humanitarian Toolbox project for assisting the Red Cross in installing smoke detectors in homes throughout the United States.

Install before you come

Downloading source

  • Fork https://github.com/htbox/allready repo
  • Clone your local repository
  • Open AllReadyApp/AllReadyWebOnly.sln or AllReadyApp/AllReadyApp.sln (Cordova)

  • Build and Run the Web-App project to make sure it is working

Schedule of Events

  • 8:30 am – Doors Open
  • 9:00 am – Join the national stand-up on Google Hangouts
  • 10:00 am – Start hacking on your machine
  • 12:00 pm – Lunch sponsored by Ticketmaster
  • 4:30 pm – Stand-up, closing ceremonies
  • 5:00 pm – Clean-up and go

Please RSVP only if you truly plan to attend and can bring your laptop with the toolsets installed. Lunch and snacks will be provided.  We will try to accommodate special diets.

Come together, Build tools, Help the world!  Together a few sharp minds can save lives and make a real difference.

Thank you Pluralsight for sponsoring AZGiveCamp VI

Now that we’ve all had a few weeks to recover from the marathon that was AZGiveCamp VI, I want to take the opportunity to thank Pluralsight for sponsoring that event. Their sponsorship came in just a bit late to be recognized during the event, but their longstanding support of the development community and AZGiveCamp, is one I want to make sure is known and recognized. Pluralsight provides training for software developers through their library of over 3000 video courses.

Personally, I have been a Pluralsight fan for many years. I use videos from Pluralsight’s library at least weekly to keep up with the latest technologies and to drill-into those topics that I need to learn quickly. In just the last few weeks, I have gone through courses on AutoFixture, RayGun, ASP.NET 5, Wireshark, Entity Framework 6, and SignalR. Some of my favorite authors have their best content on Pluralsight, including Jeremy Clark, Julie Lerman, and the Valley’s own Dan Wahlin.

If you are interested in Pluralsight’s offerings, please tweet us @AZGiveCamp and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you. I am sure that I can arrange for a free trial of their video library. It would be great if you could take any opportunity you can to thank them, and their authors for their terrific work and their awesome support of the development community.

Sincerely,

Barry Stahl, AZGiveCamp Co-Founder

Announcing AZGiveCamp VII

We’re but halfway through our 6th AZGiveCamp event but it is time to announce that our next event will be held 1 year from now, on March 18th-20th,2016, at this same great facility at Phoenix College. Save the date by signing up now at Meetup.com.

AZGiveCamp VI Projects

We’re about 7 hours into AZGiveCamp VI and the development teams are all hard at work building projects for their respective charities.  The projects for this year are as follows:

  • A web application for See It Our Way that will help them satisfy the literary needs of the visually impaired
  • A web application for generosity.io that will help match-up non-profit organizations with needs to those who may be able to satisfy those needs
  • A content-managed web site for the Arizona Burn Foundation
  • A mobile event app for AZGiveCamp
  • Enhancements to the website for TechPhx

Huge thanks to all the volunteers working diligently to help these great non-profit organizations further their missions.

AZGiveCamp and ASUBaseball

What You Need to Know for AZGiveCamp VI

AZGiveCamp VI is almost upon us. This post contains everything you need to know about where to be and when to be there for this awesome weekend of coding for charity.

The doors open for technical volunteers at 4pm on Friday. Registration runs through dinnertime at 7pm so you can arrive anytime between 4pm and 7pm, but we recommend getting there early for maximum flexibility in the projects that are available.

A full schedule for the weekend is available here.

The facility is located on the northeast corner of 11th Ave. and Flower St. on the campus of Phoenix College. For those who attended last year’s event, we will be in the exact same place. Flower is north of Thomas and south of Osborn. There is plenty of free parking in the lot on the southwest corner of the same intersection. Park as close to the funky statue on the corner as you can, and walk across the street to the Willo Room. Signs will be posted in the area.

Map

From I-10, exit at 7th Ave and head north about 1.5 miles. Turn west (left before the Bashas’) onto Flower St. The parking lot will be at 11th Ave., approximately 1/2 mile away.

From I-17, exit on Thomas Rd. and head east a little over 1.5 miles. Turn north onto 11th Ave. and the parking lot will be on your left, about a quarter-mile up.

If you have any problems finding the facility, you can call or text us at (623) 252-GIVE (4483) or Tweet us at @AZGiveCamp.

AZGiveCamp VI FAQ:

Agile Project Management at AZGiveCamp

Doing an entire project in one weekend is a challenge even for the most experienced of project teams. Fortunately, we have a number of agile principals we can rely on to make sure we deliver value to the non-profit organizations in just these few days. Please keep the following in mind when working on your AZGiveCamp projects:

Get to the Minimum-Viable-Product (MVP) as quickly as possible

Once we’ve got the MVP, we know we have satisfied at least the most basic needs of the NPO. From there, we can start adding features, and delivering even more value.

Deploy early and often

We don’t want to spend all of Sunday finding out that there is a major deployment problem preventing the NPO from using what we built. As soon as we reach an MVP, deploy it, to get those issues out-of-the-way as early as possible. Then, whenever additional significant value is added, deploy again to make sure we always have delivered the maximum value we can. While this is primarily for web-based projects, some deployments are also recommendation for other delivery mechanisms as well.

Keep the features (stories) small

You don’t want to spend a day building one huge feature. Instead, try to keep the features as small as possible and deliver (deploy) them often. Again, the idea is to constantly be delivering value.

 

We recommend the following schedule for projects at AZGiveCamp:

Fri evening:

  • Understand requirements
  • Build the product backlog
  • Define the minimum-viable-product
  • Determine platform and frameworks
  • Setup source control & feature tracking mechanism
  • Begin development

Saturday morning:

  • Deploy the minimum-viable-product

Saturday afternoon – Sunday morning:

  • Continuously deploy features as they are completed
  • Build any needed documentation for each feature as it is completed

Sunday afternoon:

  • Code-Freeze
  • Final Deployment
  • Documentation round-up
  • Turn-over to the NPO

Food & Drinks at AZGiveCamp

At AZGiveCamp, we want you, our technical volunteers, to be able to focus on the work of building the projects for our Non-Profit Organizations. We therefore do our best to take care of as many of your basic needs as possible. This includes food and drinks.

Drinks and snacks, especially caffeinated drinks, are available 24-hours a day at AZGiveCamp. Throughout the weekend there will be a variety of snacks and drinks, some healthy, some not, for your snacking pleasure.

There will also be 6 meals provided during the weekend. These include dinner Friday evening, all 3 meals on Saturday, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. Meals may vary, depending on whether or not the meal was donated, from catered gourmet dinners, to pizza, to bar-b-que hamburgers, hot dogs and veggie burgers, to Hal’s world famous pancake breakfasts. We always try to make a veggie option available, and will do our best to accommodate any special dietary requirements that you let us know about.

While we want these meals to be as awesome as possible, we do try to be as frugal as we can with our limited budget, so we won’t be offended if you prefer to bring your own although it usually isn’t necessary.

How Do I Pick My AZGiveCamp Project?

At AZGiveCamp, our teams self-organize around the Non-Profit Organizations, and their projects. This means that, when you arrive at the start of the event, you will be able to talk to the different non-profits and select the one you wish to work with. There are at least 2 criteria that you’ll want to consider in selecting a project:

  1. Does the mission of this organization spark my passion?
  2. Are the requirements of the project in line with my goals for the weekend?

Since #1 above is self-explanatory, let’s take a deeper look at #2.

Fact : The team working on a project will decide what tools and technologies work best for the organization and the development team.

  • If you are an expert at a particular tool or technology, you might feel you can provide the maximum value by working on a project that is centered around your area of expertise.
  • If you have the desire to learn, or hone your skills on a particular tool or technology, you might feel that it is best for you to work on a project that is centered around the skills you want to improve.
  • If you are a self-starter and want to do the most good for the community by fitting-in wherever you are needed, or by working for a particular organization, you might find it best to pick the organization, and then work in whatever technology fits best for that organization and the other members of the development team, whether those fit with your current skillsets or not.

Whatever your goals for the event, you’ll want to make sure you discuss your ideas for tooling and technologies with the organization and other members of the development team.

Some other things to consider when selecting a project:

  • If you have friends at the event you want to work with, you are more than welcome to select the same team. You are also welcome to spread out and get to know others from our great development community here in the valley.
  • We’d like to keep people fairly well distributed around the different teams. If we find that the teams are out-of-balance, we may ask some people to move around to make sure we can support the volunteers from all of the great organizations who are also giving up their weekend for this event.
  • Since teams will fill up, get to the event as early as you can for the widest selection.

AZGiveCamp VI Agenda

Friday, 3/27

3:00 – 4:00 PM

Non-Profit Organization Check-in

4:00 – 7:00 PM

Volunteer Check-in

7:00 PM

Dinner

 

Saturday, 3/28

8:00 AM

Breakfast

12:00 PM

Lunch

6:30 PM

Dinner

 

Sunday, 3/29

8:00 AM

Breakfast

11:00 AM

Start to panic

12:00 PM

Lunch

2:00 PM

CODE FREEZE (check-in solutions & brag)

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM

Final handoff to NPOs

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM

Closing – All teams demo solutions

3:30 PM – 4:00 PM

Cleanup and goodbye until next year