In the technology sector, as in many other areas, many companies have proposed to ‘pitch in’ to the extent possible before the threat of the coronavirus. In a few cases, by means of promotions temporary facilitate the users with free access to their servicesin others through financial donations or material. And, in other, promoting the development of software useful to cope with the pandemic.
Starting tomorrow, the online platform for software engineers Devpost organizes a hackathon (a meeting of developers, whose objective is the collaborative development of software) called ‘#BuildforCOVID19 Global Online Hackathon‘, in which collaborate with large companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, WeChat, Slack, TikTok, Pinterest, and Giphy.
Have also been involved in its planning, the very World Health Organization and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a centre of research in medical sciences result of the collaboration between the universities of Berkeley, UCSF and Stanford, and funded by the CEO of Facebook and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
Silicon Valley aims to produce code with “social impact”
What the goal of the event? According to Devpost, the idea was to establish an online space that allow the developers to remain in quarantine ‘to meet’, share ideas and find ways to help each other to
“finding software solutions that can be used to improve health and hygiene, helping to tackle the ‘social distancing’, to disclose and to keep the affected companies”.
Thus, companies and collaborating institutions have been encouraged to “innovators from around the world” to your effort to have a “social impact”to develop software solutions “with the technologies that they choose”, you already have an approach of “local or global”.
And for that, they have wanted to put on the table some priorities to guide the efforts of developers. These are some of them:
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Health: Promotion of behaviors aimed at prevention, support to health workers working in the front line, telemedicine solutions, tracking contacts, etc ..
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Vulnerable populations: Response to the problems that affect the elderly and immunocompromised (such as access to edible products) or to those who have lost their jobs by the downturn in economic.
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Companies: Solutions that enable businesses to collaborate among themselves, or to move to the Internet part of their business on a temporary basis.
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Community: Promote connections with the people in our usual environment, that allow them to combat the isolation; to create learning environments alternative that will serve as support to teachers and students.
Developers from around the world have already started to enroll (they are 2500 at the time of writing these lines), to introduce themselves, and to suggest ideas: the submission of proposals will be open between tomorrow and the next day march 30.
And it is not the only initiative
But this is not the only initiative in this sense: other companies of minor relevance, although with the support of Github, have also implemented another hackathon called ‘Hack Quarantine’ that raises measures for the longer term: it began on day 23, but will last even for 3 weeks.
The thematic proposals of this event are similar to those of #BuildforCOVID19, and his channel on Twitch houses (and will continue issuing these days) numerous presentations and workshops on programming. Used as a communication channel to a server Discord that has 2541 members.
it was originally published in
Engadget
by
Marcos Merino
.
