Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
Eat, sleep, get up, repeat.
That’s been the past 48 hours for about 30 volunteers in the tech sector as they build an app from scratch for a Winnipeg social enterprise.
Builder’s League: “Hackathons Changing the World” is a series of weekend work blitzes that produce custom software for organizations or groups that might not otherwise have the means to develop it. Their first “hack-a-thon” weekend took place October 4-6.
Diogo Iwasaki is the co-founder of local tech startup Ori.Gatou Creative Solutions Inc., and organized the event. Students and industry professionals volunteered their time to code the app, with many spending the evening at the Tech Manitoba office and working evenings.
“We’re trying to help those places that maybe don’t have the resources, because apps are expensive!” Iwasaki said. “People get together, build, have meals, sleep over and create something magical over the weekend.”
That magical something is an app for The Community of Big Hearts, a local social enterprise that offers Truth and Reconciliation workshops to organizations across the country. The new app will present their “Road to Reconciliation Challenge,” an educational tool for organizations to learn about Truth and Reconciliation through an interactive platform where users learn together.
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“The Way of Reconciliation Challenge is our initiative to make reconciliation a daily conversation,” said Salena Starling, President and CEO of the Big Heart Community. “We’re trying to make reconciliation more than just September.”
Starling met Iwasaki when they sat next to each other at a business conference. Iwasaki already had the idea to hold a hack-a-thon for a good cause, but he hadn’t found a group to work with yet.
“When we had the conversation and they told me they wanted to build something that would benefit people, I had no idea what I wanted,” Starling said. “I knew I wanted to scale the business in some way, but I didn’t think the impact would be an app.”
But after months of planning and organizing before this weekend, Starling says the app has already piqued the interest of her clients.
“Right now, we have about 2000 Canadians who have joined the Reconciliation Challenge,” he said.
The hack-a-thon is also an opportunity for people in the technology sector to network and learn from each other. Sam Oyedeji is a student in RRC Polytech’s Full Stack Web Development program. He heard about the hack-a-thon from a coach.
“It gives me the opportunity to really get an idea of what it feels like when you work in industry,” he said. “You only know part of the whole, you can’t know the whole. So being able to build your own part so it can work and fit into what others are building is a skill you need as a developer.”
Most of the volunteers had never worked together before, and this was also the first hack-a-thon for many. But Iwasaki says it wasn’t hard to find people to volunteer their time.
“The great thing about the tech community in Winnipeg is that even though we’re small, we’re very, very well connected,” he said.
The software for the app is open source, which means that the code used to write it can be shared and modified. Although the content of the app is proprietary, anyone can improve the app themselves.
“It’s not just about supporting the tech community, it’s really about helping the tech community support everyone else,” Iwasaki said.
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(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://globalnews.ca/news/10797327/winnipeg-tech-community-hacks-good-cause/
