2016 Cleveland GiveCamp

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Two weeks ago, I was given the chance to give back to our community at the 2016 Cleveland GiveCamp. GiveCamp is a annual event where ~200 programmers and designers get paired with a collection of non-profit organizations to help with their technology needs. Most often, that means a website that allows for donations, contact forms and photo galleries of what the nonprofit does. This was my 5th GiveCamp - I attended in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and (now) 2016.

The weekend started with the fantastic Mark Schumann kicking us off with a fantastic presentation about what GiveCamp is and why it’s awesome. Then, we broke into our teams for dinner and the first bits of project work. I was on Team Y, which meant I didn’t have a project - I was tasked with facilitating and aiding the teams as the weekend progressed.

On Saturday, I spent most of the afternoon and evening (Into Sunday morning) working with the team on Blossom Hill, working on migrating the web host and setting up backups for WordPress. On Sunday, I started collecting backups of the projects from all the teams, and assisting with any last-minute fires (like Apache redirects gone horribly, terribly wrong).

GiveCamp (as always) was a great experience for me. It’s a weekend where I can do what I love (helping others) combined with technology. In addition, it helps me to recenter my focus for the year. Being around so many nonprofits and technology folks has a way of energizing me for the coming winter months. I’ve always made a new friend at GiveCamp, even if I only see them once a year at GiveCamp.

GiveCamp 2017 planning will be underway soon, so go follow @clegivecamp and keep posted on when signups for 2017 are open!

Here is a collection of Tweets (and the video) from this year:

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