Let's get to work: "Workathon" featuring 3 tech projects

Looking for a chance to put your tech skills to good use? Join us for our Saturday “Workathon”. We’ll feature three projects that are using technology to help solve social justice issues that are aligned with our mission. They will be open source projects with organized issues and clear tasks for our community members to jump in and get to work. Our goal is to make it easy for you to contribute to awesome projects and leave the event having made a clear impact.

Schedule

9:30AM - 10AM Doors open/Breakfast served

10AM-11AM Introduction & Pitches from 3 featured projects

11AM-1PM Work on projects

1PM-1:30PM Lunch

1:30PM - 4:30PM Work on projects

4:30PM - 5PM Regroup & Wrap up

Featured Projects

• Active Project Repo An open source collection of active, open source projects that our community members should know about and can work on. This is a greenfield project that will need design, copy, coding, and research. Features include a submission and review process for new projects, an easy way to sort and tag projects, and a front-end to easily browse them. Led by Briana Vecchione (https://twitter.com/brianavecchione) of Microsoft.

• Fake News Detector This project is based on a hackathon project from Hack Princeton, where they created a Chrome extension to help evaluate article for fake information. We'll work to squash bugs and improve the existing codebase, while also working on workflows to allow for fact checking from an active community of fact checkers. There's lots of opportunity for coding, research and design, and if you work in journalism, your perspective on this is incredibly valuable. GitHub repo here. (https://github.com/EricSchles/fake_news_detector-backend) Led by Eric Schles (https://twitter.com/ericschles).

• Code Corps This projects empowers everyone – developers and designers, marketers and managers – to work together to build and fund open software that will power schools and governments, small-scale farms, or big-scale movements. It needs help building the platform itself! They're wrapping up a donations platform built on Stripe and redesigning the project management UI. We could use help with people who know Ember.js, Elixir, Phoenix, JavaScript, WordPress, HTML/CSS, and design. Website here (https://www.codecorps.org); Elixir api here (https://github.com/code-corps/code-corps-api); Ember repo here (https://github.com/code-corps/code-corps-ember). Led by Brian Whitton.

FAQs

What type of skills/contributions are you look for?

The projects will require a number of different skills, including coding, design, research, project management, and marketing. We’ll have opportunities for you to contribute in a number of different ways, regardless of your skill level. Once we’ve finalized the three projects, we’ll send out a list of specific skills/tasks, but we will make sure everyone has the opportunity to make a difference.

What should I expect to get out of this event?

You will leave having contributed to a project in a meaningful way. Expect to leave with a better understanding of the problems that are currently being solved and what it takes to make an impact.

Where is the money going?

We’ll be providing breakfast, lunch, snacks, and coffee throughout the day. The $15 fee will go towards covering costs for the full day. You can view all of our finances here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1teHPvI0FWWxfWPrDjBPikDHzodoVCQbcKBBFFP7qKBk/edit?usp=sharing). If you are unable to pay the $15 for the ticket, please message one of the organizers, and we’ll take care of it.

What if I don’t want to work on one of the featured projects?

That’s perfectly fine. You’re welcome to come and work on your own project, or pitch an idea and collaborate with members at the event. The featured projects are intended to amplify existing good work and provide focus, but what’s important to us is that you leave having contributed in a meaningful way.

Excited to see you on Saturday. Tell a friend, bring a friend.

Saron