Random Hacks of Kindness

Posted by Jaan on November 16th, 2009 | 2 comments

Here is quick follow on to the #rhok and #rhok0 tweets you may have seen flying around during the weekend.

RHOK aka Random Hacks of Kindness is “an initiative that brings together disaster relief experts and software engineers [...] for a ‘give camp’ to solve real world-problems related to Crisis/Disaster Relief.”

I was one of six judges at the event, tasked with choosing the best of the best from a rather brilliant roster of entries. My fellow judges were RHOK founders and organizers Patrick Svenburg of Microsoft, Google’s Mano Marks, NASA’s Trey Smith, Stu Gill of The World Bank and Sam Pullara of Yahoo.

Ultimately we decided to award the Grand Prize – an opportunity to present to all 56 state and regional FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Authority) organizations – to team “Break Glass”. Their smartphone app focused on what emergency organizations say is key – preparedness.

“Extremely simple method to build and retrieve your family communication plan [...] on phones for easy access in the event of no connectivity. One button activation [...]. Allows the broadcast of emergency message to your family circle and the update of social networks when connectivity is turned on.”

Good idea, nice execution.

There is a lot to be learned by from get-togethers like RHOK, not least proof that all it takes to get things done is commitment, like minded people, and some weekend downtime. Brilliant.

All the winners are listed at the RHOK site, including links to their code at GitHub and there’s also videos of the price ceremony (I announce the FEMA Prize winner).

Even though this and the next RHOK (in Washington D.C. early 2010) are held in the US, the idea is to share the results from the events with relief organizations all around the world.

Photos below courtesy of Jeremy Johnstone.