Programming for Humanity

LetGive—a platform for good

It has been a while since my last post, but I am thrilled to say that the delay was because of a rather tremendous life change. Between working with Developers for Good and being a part of the Hamptons Hackathon, I appeared on the radar of LetGive. LetGive is a startup that is creating a platform that allows mobile and web developers to seamlessly incorporate charitable giving into their applications. Want an e-commerce site where you sell your stuff, but choose to donate that money to charity? Want an alarm clock that donates $0.25 to charity every time you hit snooze? Want a weather app that lets you donate to RedCross and other first responder organizations when there is a severe weather advisory? Yes? Me too. That’s what LetGive makes possible.

If I sound like I am evangelizing, I might be. Within a week and a half of meeting the CEO of LetGive, I signed on to be their Lead Developer. This means that all the programming that makes those apps possible is my responsibility. To be honest, I was thrown in to the code my first week. I had to wade through thousands of pages of half-finished code in order to understand what was happening. Fixing one page on the site meant changing 5 different files of code. And the best part? The code to make the platform and their sample app (coming to the iTunes store soon!) is in five different programming languages!

Despite my frustration and my ongoing 80 hour work week, I finally have the satisfaction that every single line of code that I write, every single query, every single semi-colon is for good. We are enabling a whole community of developers to provide ways for anyone to give whatever they can afford to potentially 750,000 non-profits. I finally feel like I am earning a living by doing good and enabling others to do the same.

P.S. Shameless plug, you can be one of those developers by joining our hackathon in September: LetGive Hack for Good http://www.letgive.com/hackforgood

Education—a universal good

I finished up my latest Girl Develop It class on PHP this week and next week I will be wrapping up the one on Android development. Each time I teach a class, for GDI or elsewhere, I always leave the class with an elevated sense of how capable we, humanity as a whole, could be with access to education. 

In my classes, I teach programming to people, particularly women, who are uncomfortable with the traditional world of computer science. I love the “I can do this” smile that steals across each students face throughout the class. The moment can come while I explain a concept, when they have created something for the first time, or when they have challenged themselves even further and have met the challenge head on. The moment when they realize that they are truly capable.

I believe that understanding how the technology that controls our modern lives is not only empowering but vital to our understanding of access to information, technological progress and human interaction. But more than that, I believe that giving ambitious, talented women (and men) the tools to begin creating their own technological platform can be the catalyst for a chain reaction of good.

If even a fraction of the hundreds of students I have taught this year alone go out into the world a begin creating platforms for education, awareness, advocacy, (in short, humanity), then my contribution has been amplified by that much. My two, four, six hours a week educating people about the technology that controls most of our information can potentially translate to hundreds of changed lives.

Education, about anything, is one of the most important gifts we can give anyone. All causes, all problems, all movements must begin with education. When I walk out of my classroom at the end of each class, I want to feel that I have given my students that gift—a gift which they can then use to change the world in their own way, for their own causes.  

Hamptons Hackathon for Humanity—a reflection

During what may have been the first all-female* hackathon in NY, fifteen people banded together to use technology to take on the global problem of human trafficking. We were programmers, designers, writers and researchers. We came from a variety of backgrounds. We had an array of skills. And we all came to donate the most precious resource we had, our time.

For anyone who follows me on twitter (@izzy_johnston), you know that this weekend was the Girl Develop It Hamptons Hackathon for Humanity, sponsored by JumpThru. Deborah Jackson graciously hosted our hackathon at a beautiful location in the Hamptons and Buff Penrose supported us every step of the way with words of encouragement and food!

We really got started on the planning and programming at 8pm on Friday. And I ran out the door to catch the train at 8:15pm on Sunday. In that 48 hour period, the fifteen of us developed three amazing products.

Vanessa Hurst, database analyst for Paperless Post and fearless co-founder of Girl Develop It, and husband developed a Ruby on Rails platform that crawled and flagged Craigslist posts that were likely posts by or for human traffickers. To be honest, we all parted ways in such chaos that I have no idea how far they were able to get on this very complicated program. But don’t be surprised if the CIA and FBI have already whisked the couple away to work for the government.

Marianne, founder and creator of F.S. Publishing, worked tirelessly with others to aggregate data and create QR codes (those squares-within-a-square bar codes) that educate people on trafficking issues. Keep a look out for a possible guerrilla campaign to plaster them across New York City.

Most of us, however, worked round the clock on developing Commuting in Traffic, an online choose-your-own-adventure game that educates the player about issues of human trafficking that happen daily right here in NYC.

Sara Chipps, software developer and co-founder of Girl Develop It, and I were in charge of back-end development and functionality. Between her awesome Javascript powers and my PHP and MySQL database skills, we created a dynamic structure for the game. With our structure, the game is scalable, dynamic and can literally be played over 10 BILLION(!) ways. 

We had a spectacular design and front-end team—Christina Lutters, a designer and front end developer for a post-production team, Brenda Storer, a designer and developer at a design firm here in NYC, and Pamela Castillo, co-founder and creative director of Market Publique. There is no way we could have created such a beautiful, simple and elegant interface without their tireless work and amazing collaboration skills. This was one of the first chances I ever had to work closely with designers. Usually, I am given designs and told to implement them. What an opportunity to learn how the designer approaches a project! I honestly believe that if there were more opportunities for designer/developer collaboration, the tech world could come together in so many positive ways!

JumpThru intern, Jasmine, and community manager, Jamie, worked endlessly with Jennifer Hill, an attorney who specializes in advocacy for startups and entrepreneurs. They poured over content and statistics, sifting through the heartbreaking stories of women, men and children who have been trafficked. All of us agreed that the content was the hardest part of the endeavor. They expertly balanced the light-hearted story of the game with the sobering truth about human trafficking. If you learn anything from playing Commuting In Traffic, it is because of the dedication of these three amazing women.

All in all, through the lack of sleep, the frantic programming, the fist-shakings of frustration, and the spontaneous ovations for our little success—one thing will stick with me. No matter what your skill, your tech-savviness, or your background, we can all come together and program for humanity.

*Ok, we had one guy, but he’s awesome.

Thoughts on Programming for Good

The problem with being a programmer who has a much deeper desire to create change than earn money is actually finding people to work for. Imagine a site that accepts applications from non profits to have work done and matches programmers who want to spend part (or all) of their time on lesser paying projects that matter?

Am I the only one who wants this?

This week I had a series of personal and professional encounters that solidified an idea that has been forming for years—people should be able to use their talents to do good. 

While this idea is not revolutionary, it is relatively untouched in the programming and developer community. We have some wonderful organizations like Catchafire, which matches volunteers with non-profits, and we have dozens of charitable start-ups. But as a culture, the world of computer science is still more about ego and money than about social change.

Over the past year, I have built websites, mobile apps, and back-end infrastructures for multiple non-profits. Each of the organizations were small but filled with passion for worthwhile causes. “Brand name” charities have the kind of money to contract programmers at $80-$100/hr. But what about the little guys? The local organizations? The ones that live by the mantra of changing one life at a time? This organizations can’t afford the big programmers. But at they same time can’t afford to not have a web and mobile presence in our digital age.

So what can we do to change the culture of developers to become programmers for good?