Random Hacks of Kindness, a weekend-long hackathon to create disaster risk- and response-related software solutions, will be held at locations around the world Dec. 4-5. Volunteers will get the chance to work with disaster response professionals to create hacks that change the world. Google, Microsoft, NASA, The World Bank and Yahoo are the founding partners of the event.
Some of the hacks to come out of the first Random Hacks of Kindness event:
- I’mOK! – An app that can be preloaded onto a cell phone to send SMS or social media notifications to a pre-defined list to let them know that you’re ok.
- Tweak the Tweet – An attempt to create a predefined hashtag syntax for Twitter during disasters.
- Break Glass – Software capable of transmitting a users’ GPS location via cellular phone, along with information about whether the user is safe or injured.
U.S. locations for the hackathons include Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Seattle. International locations include Toronto, Canada; Aarhus, Denmark; Berlin, Germany; Bangalore, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; Nairobi, Kenya; Lusaka, Zambia; Bogota, Colombia; and Sao Paolo, Brazil.
