Christina Goldbaum
MORE than 40 programmers, multiple computers, and eight hours of intense collaboration will characterise Cape Town’s first charity “hackathon” to be held next month.
WordPress Cape Town, which holds workshops for web developers, said the hackathon would be held at The Barn, a hub for start-ups in Woodstock.
Volunteers will spend a day building websites for nine Western Cape charities, including Greater Good South Africa, the UPliftment Programme, the National Institute for the Deaf, and the Uhambo Foundation.
“About 40 charities applied,” Hugh Lashbrooke, organiser of the event, said.
They chose nine whose websites they thought needed most improvement.
Hackathons have become very popular in the software realm and usually bring computer programmers and software developers together around a certain problem or issue. Such events have produced results, or “hacks,” such as the Facebook “like” button, Facebook Chat, and GroupMe, a group SMS application Skype acquired for more than R500 million.
Web developers, designers, project managers, content creators and social media managers have been invited to participate next month.
The organisers hope by the end of the event, each charity will have a new online presence that suits their needs.
“A lot of the charities are interested in creating a channel to accept donations, attract volunteers and interns, and get a better online store to sell their merchandise,” Lashbrooke said.