Martin Luther King Weekend was a weekend of service for many, and for the Coder Day of Service participants, that service was to fix or write code for one of the 50+ social good organizations on the CodeMontage platform. The energy all day was positive and good-natured. No elbowing to get to the handmade bagged lunches with love notes from Mom in them, no grumbling about internet connections, just people partnering with people they’d just met, to solve a problem for an organization that they don’t work for.
CodeMontage believes that coders are superheroes and empowers coders to improve their impact on the world. This day was a continuation of Vanessa Hurst’s commitment to coding for good, which includes founding Developers for Good.
I enjoyed the inspirational keynotes from Vanessa Hurst, Julie Ann Horvath, and John Resig that began the day on a positive high. Here are Julie’s talk and John’s talk.
Some stats from CodeMontage about the day’s success:
- 175 people attended in NYC
- 40+ coders contributed remotely through the CodeMontage platform
- 42% of participants were women coders
- 1200+ hours were contributed on projects
- 50+ social good organizations received contributions and visibility for their open source projects
Also, here’s a great summary video of the day.
The Salesforce1 Platform sponsored the event to support coding for good and to get the word out about the Salesforce Foundation’s Power of Us program which gives 10 Salesforce licenses away for free to non-profits. The Salesforce Foundation also manages an open source project, the Non-Profit Starter Pack, that tailors Salesforce’s CRM app to the needs of small and medium non-profits. The next version, codename Cumulus, is coming soon.
At our Salesforce1 booth, Ryan Upton, Heidi Connell, and I encouraged coders and non-coders to try building a mobile app with Salesforce1.
Alex (pictured above, showing off his app and his new hoodie) was the first to complete his app, and our youngest mobile app builder was 13 years old, attending with his mom, a Java developer.
Overall, it was a great day with great people…including these two:
