Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is a global collective between Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, NASA and the World Bank. They are hosting a global hackathon on Saturday, June 4 – Sunday, June 5, 2010. Events take place in cities around the world including Nairobi, Jakarta, Sydney, Washington DC and San Paolo.
If you are in one of these cities, we encourage you to join the hackathon. There are great discussions about hosting and how to collaborate on a global scale. The sign up for each city is on the RHoK website. The global event will also be streamed live–watch the official RHOK twitter account for these details.
Software developers, usability experts, emergency planners, technologists, social media knowledge workers, project managers, NGOs and university professors will meet in each of the cities to crowdsource open source solutions to very real humanitarian problems. There are seven main projects ranging building SMS applications to report amputee needs, near real-time UAV imagery processing to creating a people finder application. We also expect some awesome incubator discussions. When you get such diverse, innovative minds in a room, great things are bound to happen.
RHOK invited Crisis Commons to provide problem definitions for the global hackathon. I’ve blogged about CrisisCommons in the past–they are a global network of volunteers who use creative problem solving and open technologies to help people and communities in times and places of crisis.
I’m on my way to Sydney as we speak to participate as a core Crisis Commons volunteer and project liaison.
