Too often, geeks are called upon to leverage their technical expertise (which, to most non-technical peoples' perspective, is an all-encompassing uni-field, meaning if you are a DBA, you can fix a printer, and if you are an IT admin, you know how to create a cool HTML game) on behalf of their friends and family, often without much in the way of gratitude. But sometimes, you just gotta get your inner charitable self on, and what's a geek to do then? Doctors have "Doctors Without Boundaries", and lawyers can always do work "pro bono" for groups like the Innocence Project and so on, but geeks....? Sure, you could go and join the Peace Corps, but that's hardly going to really leverage your skills, and Lord knows, there's a ton of places (charities) that could use a little IT love while you're off in a damp and dismal jungle somewhere.
(Not you, Seattle. You're just damp today. Dismal won't be for another few months, when it's raining for weeks on end.)
(As if in response, the rain comes down even harder.)
About five or so years ago, a Microsoft employee realized that geeks didn't really have an outlet for their desires to volunteer and help out in their communities through the skills they have patiently mastered. So Chris created GiveCamp, an organization dedicated to hosting "GiveCamps" all over the US, bringing volunteer developers, designers, and other IT professionals together with charities that need some IT love, whether that's in the form of a new mobile app, some touch-up on the website, a port from a Microsoft Access app to something even remotely more modern, or whatever.
Seattle GiveCamp is coming up, October 11-13, at the Microsoft Commons. No technical bias is implied by that--GiveCamp isn't an evangelism event, it's a "let's help people" event. Bring your Java, PHP, Python, and yes, maybe even your Perl, and create some good karma for groups that are doing good things. And for those of you not local to Seattle, there's lots of other GiveCamps being planned all over the country--consider volunteering at one nearby.
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This story, "Seattle (and other) GiveCamps" was originally published by JavaWorld.