Southwest Ohio Give Camp 2010
This weekend I had the opportunity to serve the local community. The venue was the first annual Southwest Ohio Give Camp. The tagline reads Geeks Giving Back. That was definitely the case this weekend.
Three Days
The idea of a give camp is to have software developers, designers and analysts to create software for local charities. Give camps were started a couple of years ago and have been done in several cities across the country.
Community
A couple of aspects about this event stand out to me. They both revolve around community. The first is the obvious literal community. Work is done at no cost for a local charity. What better way to help those that help others each and every day. The work assists charities that could not afford the work we can provide. It is also a way to help others which most of the time makes us feel good. It’s a win-win situation.
The second aspect of community is that of the local developer community. Volunteering for give camp is a wonderful way to meet others in your local area that have similar interests and daily struggles. Meeting others this way allows a developer to network with other developers and potentially learn new skills.
In my project alone I was able to work with SQL, the Entity Framework 4.0, ASP.Net WebForms, a simple MVP framework, nUnit and SSRS. Other solutions were done with CMS applications using languages that ranged from .Net to Ruby to PHP.
Looking Forward to 2011
If at all possible, I plan on attending next year. Tell your friends, volunteer and make a difference.