Image via Szasz-Fabian Jozsef/Shutterstock
This weekend, developers, designers and idea hackers will unite to work on projects with a social conscience as Dublin joins more than 50 cities worldwide taking part in Geeklist’s #Hack4Good 0.5 Global.
The Dublin event kicks off with introductions on Friday at 7pm and will continue over the weekend with a 48-hour hackathon for social good.
Hosted by the Guinness Enterprise Centre and sponsored by Sigmar Recruitment, about 30 tickets remain for the free event, which will take place alongside sister events in cities as far flung as Berlin, San Francisco, Moscow, Tel Aviv and Kathmandu.
At these worldwide sprints, NGOs and non-profits like Oxfam, Amnesty International and GOAL Ireland will present teams with challenges and ideas to work on, while experts and mentors will be on-hand for guidance.
Final presentations are to take place on Sunday evening, followed by judging and the awarding of prizes. “The real winners of the weekend will, of course, be the charities and NGOs that we have all come together to help out,” said Aaron Craig, chief organiser of the Dublin event. “That said, any good developer likes to have their work recognised, so the spirit of the judging should be in rewarding those teams that really put their passion and spirit into their project.”
Apps for humanity
Geeklist, a social network for developers and other members of the tech community, established the #Hack4Good series to unite UI and UX designers, software engineers, product builders and entrepreneurs to develop apps that make the world a better place. During this weekend’s global effort, it’s expected more than 5,000 developers will form teams, build projects and present their ideas.
The goal, according to Geeklist’s guidelines, is to build a prototype of a solution to a problem helping humanity or the environment, addressing issues such as disaster and emergency solutions, education and learning, poverty and hunger.
Teams can be formed on the day or in advance and hackers in Dublin can even collaborate with those participating in other cities. While the event is free, interested parties must register in advance via the Eventbrite event page.
Previous winners
The Global Winner of Geeklist #Hack4good 0.2 was created in London by teenagers Will Evans and Josh Balfour. The duo developed Mobile Rescue, an app and tool that allows users to find lost people following a natural disaster by locating them via their Wi-Fi-enabled device.
Second place went to a team from Minsk that developed software to provide people with limited or no use of their arms the ability to use facial motion and voice to browse the web, while third place was awarded to a team from Kathmandu who developed an SMS solution to apply micro-donations directly to disaster relief funds.
Global hackers image by Szasz-Fabian Jozsef via Shutterstock
