Southwest Ohio Give Camp - Review

Ending with the demo of the charities new sites and the excitement on their faces as they looked up at the giant screen, was certainly the best thanks we could have received.

Photos

Moments.

Arriving back at the MUVOALC early Sunday morning to find volunteers outside banging on the doors and windows trying to get in. Six a.m. days are no match for these awesome people.

The 10 year old son of one of the volunteers asking how he can help. Dropping the xbox controller to rush off to notify the teams that more pizza had arrived.

The quiet that descended on the team rooms as everyone focused on doing their best work.

Team leads complaining that they don't want to wait 15 seconds for a standup to start because they have customers waiting.

Volunteers with decades of experience reveling in talking about what their young team members have been producing.

The worry expressed by people that working till 3am would not be enough and would the charity like what they have done.

Hearing the charities talking about "their developers", bringing then brownies and taking group photo shots.

10 Charities, 10 Solutions

Elementz (temporary url)
Seton Family Center
John 15:12 Ministries
Post Secondary Education Collaborative
Hamilton Living Water Ministry
Diabetes Dayton
Working in Neighborhoods
Civic Garden Center
Dayton Battle of the Businesses
End Slavery (temporary url)

Conclusion

As much as we were thanked for this one weekend, it is clear that the charities themselves have 51 others this year to do their work. These are the true champions of this weekend. It has been a privilege to get to know them and offer a small amount of assistance.

Southwest Ohio Give Camp

On October 22 through 24th we are running a Give Camp located in Southwest Ohio. Collect your project manager and developer friends and we will connect you with a team to help out a Charity for one weekend. This is a great way to use my professional skills for a good cause.

http://southwestohiogivecamp.org

We have an awesome group of volunteers putting the event together. We are organized into 6 teams to ensure we have a focus on the various areas that have to be worked on.

The Charity team focuses on identifying Charities, collecting the details about what they need. Our goal was to support 10 charities and we already have 20 submitted proposals. This team is comprised of Andy Erickson (@axerickson), Eric Schwartz (@SchwartzE), Darrell Hulshult (@dhulshult) and Andy Douglas (@GoodPiper) all doing an amazing job pulling together all these organizations to coordinate so many successful projects. Just imagine the problem of running 10 projects simultaneously in one weekend.

The Developer team focuses on setting up the website and attracting all the tallent that will work on the Charities products. With a goal of 50 people, to give us 5 person teams for each Charity, we are now at 37 with 3 months to go. With this kind of ramp-up we may have to consider expanding our goals. This team is made up of Ernie Stormann (@EStormann), Jennifer Griffin (@jengriff), Bill Barnett (@agilous) and Matt Brewer (@MattBrewer).

The Facilities team is responsible for finding the location for the event and managing the setup and orchestration of the event over the weekend. This is a mammoth task, to plan, find and acquire food for everyone, to manage the registration and leading of people to their work environments, and ensuring that everyone is getting everything they need. The idea of 100 people descending on a single location for two days is going to be quite an experience. Fortunately, the team is incredible, made up of Ryan Cromwell (@cromwellryan), Matt Brewer (@MattBrewer) and Sandi Sumerfield. They found a fabulous facility in the Miami University Voice of America location which has the most up-to-date and state-of-the-art video, network and teaching facilities I have ever seen. This building is basically being donated to us for this event because Miami University is so invested in helping the charities in this community.

Miami University's Voice of America Learning Center

The Finance team is just me but I am fortunate to have made contact with some great partners to help me through this process and so many generous sponsors. However, I am learning that the financing of charity events is much harder than for-profit events. It seems that the word Charity discourages companies from sponsoring it. If anyone is interested in donating please let me know.

http://southwestohiogivecamp.org/Home/Sponsor

The Marketing team is a combination of people from all teams since each team has requirements to reach the people they need to reach. I just manage it but everyone contributes what they need. Andrea N. Brady from The Marketing Shop Consultants has been a great help, donating her time to craft articles for publishing.

The process for putting this together starts with lots of enthusiastic smiles and then you start to realize all the details that are involved. The key to success rests on the team you choose. it's the Charities that need to win, not us.

Cincinnati Day of Agile - Registration Opens Today

Registration opens TODAY at noon. Seating for this event is very limited and this event is going to quickly sell out. Do not wait - register today at http://cincydayofagile.eventbrite.com/.

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As the Agile project management process sweeps across the software industry, businesses not understanding the details are being left behind. The Cincinnati Day of Agile is an opportunity to understand what Agile is all about and hear from people that have used it, succeeded with it and have the results to prove it.

At this one day event on Saturday, May 15th, a host of industry experts will be on hand to offer their hard won experiences. By bringing together a mix of developers, managers, Agile professionals, and technologists, the Cincinnati Day of Agile also provides excellent networking opportunities for its attendees. We hope you will join us to learn how Agile can make your software development process more effective, productive, and profitable.

More about the event can be found at http://cincydayofagile.org/.