Technology
RHoK #3 on June 4th and 5th
Hackers, mark your calendars. On June 4th and 5th, 2011 Random Hacks of Kindness is coming to a city near you. Taking place in 20 locations around the globe, RHoK #3 will be RHoK’s fourth hackathon, and the first with an expanded focus on both disaster risk and climate change. So we are issuing a call to action: Experts in disaster risk and climate change—send your challenges our way. And to the coders, designers, engineers, programmers and geeks of every variety—join us on June 4th and 5th to tackle some real-world problems and hack for humanity.
Click here to register
RHoK #3 will be taking place in:
Aarhus, Denmark
Bangalore, India
Basel, Switzerland
Berlin, Germany
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Jakarta, Indonesia
Lusaka, Zambia
Melbourne, Australia
Nairobi, Kenya
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Santiago, Chile
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.
Toronto, Canada
Trento, Italy
Stay tuned for the announcement of additional RHoK #3 locations and the opening of registration, and get ready for a weekend of intensive brainstorming, collaborating and problem solving.
With Our Eyes Turned to Sendai
As we watch with shock and profound sadness the tragedy unfolding in Japan and across the Pacific rim in the wake of the Sendai earthquake, our hearts and sympathies are with the families affected and their loved ones around the world. Both personally and professionally, we are deeply sensitive to the challenges now facing that region.
We know many of you in the Random Hacks of Kindness community feel an urgency to take action in some way, to express your solidarity with the people of Japan and to offer your time, skills and efforts in their support.
There are many incredible initiatives out there that are actively engaged in the response efforts, working with volunteer technologists and citizens alike to channel their concern into action. We know they would welcome your help. These are just a few that we are aware of:
The Crisis Commons Volunteer Community
Crisis Mappers Net: The International Network of Crisis Mappers
OpenStreetMap (OpenStreetMap Japan)
RHoK the Campus
Last week we all descended upon the Googleplex where we reviewed the past, dreamed about the future and began our concrete planning for RHoK 3. We’ve culled through the lessons learned and valuable advice that many of you passed along and it is clear that, although most everything we heard was overwhelmingly positive, there are many opportunities to make this next event even better than the last. The success of RHoK 2 was, of course, the result of a phenomenal global partnership between corporations, organizations, subject matter experts, designers, hackers, event planners and a small army of other volunteers.
In planning for the next RHoK event, which we have penciled in for sometime in the first half of June, we wanted to make a special call out to universities around the world to partner with us. So whether you are a student, a professor, represent a department or have ties to a university or college, send us a line so we can start the logistics machine as early as possible. Universities can provide space, internet, problem definition expertise in the areas of disaster risk management and climate change and have, to date, been phenomenal partners in all respects.
If you are tied to a university and have an interest in participating in the RHoK 3 hackathon, please let us know here by February 28th so that we can have logistics in place by the end of March.
