Can 50 Hackers change the world?

There’s an interesting initiative happening in a few weeks in California. An organization called Change.org is getting 50 computer programmers (it sounds more exciting to call them hackers) to spend 24 hours developing widgets and apps and all kinds of small software and other magical web things (examples below) for social good.

If you’ve ever thought: “If web browsers did ___, that would make organizing so much easier,” or “if there was a firefox extention that did ___, it would really help people think about zero waste,” you can suggest it to Hack For Change. There’s no guarantee that anyone will work on that project, but there are only 17 ideas so far (and not very many interesting ones). So if you come up with something good, someone might do it.

I haven’t come up with anything yet, but I know there are a lot of creative people on this list! Here are some of the ideas listed so far, as examples:
A Firefox extension that allows you to see the political donations of companies whose site you visit
An app that tells you the true effect/footprint of what you are about to buy (NOTE: someone’s already actually done this at www.goodguide.com)
A platform to connect grassroots activists to tangible, needed resources from members of the private sector who want to offer support, but dont know what to give, who to give it to, and how
Help people in developing nations to sell their products directly to the world
Make government data more accessible and actionable
The full list is here: https://hackforchange.uservoice.com/forums/113515-hack-for-change/filters/hot
If you have an idea, please add it here (feel free to email me if you want to talk about it).

Then please tell us so we can go vote for it! To vote you just have to sign up for a password, and then you have 10 votes to distribute to your favorite ideas.

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Article from http://mashable.com/2011/05/25/hack-for-change/
Can 50 Hackers Help Save the World in One Day?

Online activism platform Change.org is hosting a hackathon called Hack for Change, designed to get engineers coding quickly for social good.
Change.org will pick 50 engineers from a list of applicants and throw them into a programming blitz at its San Francisco headquarters. The goal is to get coders, designers and other creative types to start applying their talents to the non-profit and social good sector. While other hackathons have tried to get its talent to think like programmers, Hack for Change is trying to convince programmers to work for social good.

“The smartest people in the world are focused on problems that don’t really matter,” says Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org. “What we want to do is dedicate the time, effort and energy of those people to important issues.”

The event’s rules are simple, if a little vague: “You can create any feature or app that does good.” Participants can hack using any languages or available APIs and must post their code to GitHub. They can hack individually or in teams but teams still must apply — and be accepted — individually. That kind of openness will hopefully inspire off-the-wall ideas thanks to unexpected pairings (not to mention lack of sleep).

Spanning just one weekend, the programming starts June 18 at noon and ends 24 hours later. The finished products will then be presented to the attendees, invited media and judges.

There will be prizes, but that’s not really the point. Hack for Change is aimed at introducing a new community of talent to the non-profit world. Rattray and his team are trying to make the transition as easy as possible by giving social good greenhorns a slew of ideas to get their fingers moving. The conference will start with presentations by non-profits and conscientious companies offering their APIs. There is also a forum where anyone can suggest issues that need fixing.

Change.org is offering $10,000 of its own cash as seed money — $5,000 of which will go to the top project, with the rest to be divvied up amongst the top picks. The hackathon isn’t intended as a one-off; Rattray hopes to make it a regular event. “We want to create a very clear path by which engineers and designers can find full time work in the social change sector,” he says.

What do you think about a hackathon for change? Are designers, programmers and hackers the next wave of talent to revolutionize social good? Let us know in the comments.

Disclosure: Mashable is a media partner of Hack for Change.

A New Year a New Class

Today the Canadian Labour Congress Ontario summer school kicked off. Many important course’s are underway to build and renew the labour movement in Canada. The participates have come from all around the province and are settled in to the Family Educational center in Port Elgin.

I have the great opportunity to deliver a course in labour technology and website building. Many trade union activist have for years relied on many forms of union communications (i.e posters, face-to-face meets and union newsletters) however this week we are going to spend our time on another form of union organizing, mobilizing members and educating the greater public with the use of web 2.0 tools. The increase in  smart phone technology and ‘soapbox’ options of transforming the message often not heard or seen in most media outlets today opens opportunity’s for labour to reach out.

In fact as brother Derek Blackadder wrote in the June/July Our Times magazine

Canadians now spend more time online than watching TV. Does your unions communications strategy reflect that? We have far more access to the web in getting out our message than we ever had to TV -

Well this week we hope to harness the tools available to our movement to create the better world that is possible.  Our workshop is focused on the content management system of weebly. A simple drop menu of widgets and elements in a system that new users can quickly pick up, get creative and quickly get their word out on the campaigns and struggles their members and workers around the world are currently facing.

As we build, develop and host discussion of broader communications using the web, I’m sure the unions who have invested in labour education will have a greater equipped activist in their member ranks at the end of this week.  Stay tuned for what’s to come.

Again, I want to thank those who have supported building and supporting the work needed in order to bring this program to our members and our movement.

United steel workers 9511 – Drive Test

Seven hundred and fifty (750) government employees, most of which were full-time with benefits and pension plans. How many Serco DES employees are currently on strike? Well, after imposing a 15% pay cut and taking away their pensions, Serco DES has whittled down its workforce to about five hundred (500). However, they haven’t stopped there. They’ve turned formerly good jobs into marginal employment: 50% of Serco DES employees are now part-time with no benefits, with no guaranteed number of hours each week, and Serco DES is seeking to convert more employees into part-timers.

So out of the original 750 good jobs, 250 have been lost entirely. Of the remaining 500, the company has marginalized 250. That means that only a third of the original jobs remain. So, did the Conservative government succeed in creating a climate for job creation? Clearly not. The privatization of driver testing in Ontario has decimated hundreds of jobs in the province.

Which brings us to the public interest. With hundreds of jobs eliminated and marginalized, the province and the communities where these workers work(ed) have seen a decline in tax revenues. Local economies will have seen a decline proportionate to the decline in spending power of these workers. The ripple effects of job loss and job marginalization in communities are widespread. Is that in the public interest?

CAW calls on fishing crisis

QUEBEC CITY, Aug. 19 /CNW/ – The CAW is calling for immediate
intervention on the fishing crisis that has hit the Fraser River in British
Columbia.
This crisis comes after years of failed government policies on the
fishing sector which has devastated communities on both ends of the country,
said CAW National President Ken Lewenza.
“Thousands of workers could be out of a job as a result of the dramatic
drop in salmon in British Columbia this summer,” said Lewenza. “The economic
crisis has already had terrible consequences for the fishing industry which
was already faltering as a result of poor government policies and
unsustainable off-shore competition.”
As part of the union’s Constitutional Convention which has brought
together more than 1000 CAW members, staff and guests in Quebec City, the
union has passed an emergency resolution demanding government action on the
environmental, economic and social degradation which has occurred on both the
east and west coasts of the country.
“The federal and provincial governments on both coasts have neglected
this industry and the loss of approximately 9 million salmon should be a wake
up call to government and industry,” said CAW-FFAW President Earle McCurdy.
“On both coasts, the global economic recession has had a devastating impact on
fishing families and communities.”
The CAW represents approximately 2,500 fishery workers in British
Columbia (CAW-affiliated United Fish and Allied Workers Union-UFAWU) and
approximately 10,000 fish harvesters and 6,000 fish plant workers in
Newfoundland and Labrador (CAW-Fish, Food and Allied Workers-FFAW).
As part of the union’s emergency resolution, CAW leaders and members will
ramp up lobby efforts to all levels of government, including the applicable
provincial and federal departments.

ITUC Campaign on Nuclear Disarmerment

The ITUC is launching today an international campaign for nuclear disarmament, in the lead-up to the critically important United Nations Review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in May 2010. A focal point of the campaign is a petition addressed to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calling for strong and clear conclusions to the MPT Conference, and signing of the treaty by all UN member states.
The campaign is being run in cooperation with the worldwide “Mayors for Peace” group, which covers more than 2,000 cities in over 130 countries.
“Peace and disarmament are founding principles of the ITUC, and while there are positive signs from Russia and the USA on reducing nuclear stockpiles, the international trade union movement is extremely concerned about the prospect of further nuclear proliferation, particularly in North Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. The only way to deal with this is through multilateral negotiations, and the 2010 NPT Review is tremendously important in that regard,” said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.
There are currently almost 24,000 nuclear warheads in existence, with a destructive power equivalent to 400,000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Nuclear arms account for a significant portion of global arms expenditure, which reached an all-time high of US$1.4 trillion in 2008, an increase of 45% over the preceding decade.
The ITUC is also calling for international momentum on other agreements to curb nuclear proliferation and the spread of other weapons of mass destruction, and for effective regulation of the global trade in conventional weapons including light arms, which are responsible for at least 500,000 deaths worldwide each year.
“Success in achieving major cuts in arms spending would free up resources for urgent economic and social spending needs, to help the global economy pull out of the deep worldwide recession which is costing tens of millions of jobs. Crucially, it would go a long way towards helping the international community meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which look less likely than ever to be achieved. Dealing with the root social and economic causes of conflict to avoid further wars would be far more feasible if the sufficient development aid funds were available,” said Ryder.
The ITUC campaign also stresses the vital importance of ensuring that the transition from military to socially-useful expenditure be done in a way which supports and protects the livelihoods of those working in the arms industry, through “just transition” measures along similar lines to the adjustments needed to tackle climate change.
Copies of the petition and other information resources can be found on the campaign website:

http://www.ituc-csi.org/peace

The ITUC represents 170 million workers in 312 affiliated national organisations from 157 countries.