On December 1st and 2nd, we organize the third Random Hacks of Kindness event in Belgium.

RHoK is a  rapidly growing global initiative encompassing a community of over 5,500 innovators in over 30 countries making the world a better place by developing practical, open source
technology solutions to respond to some of the most complex challenges facing humanity.

If you feel like joining us on December 1st and/or 2nd, register at our website: http://www.rhok.be

It’s a project of the ICT2Act npo, like the BruJUG :-)

Calling all hackers, coders, programmers, developers, designers, thing tanks, brain stormers of all shapes and sizes! Spend a weekend with us and change the world!

The 2nd RHoK Hackathon Belgium event happens on 2-3 June 2012, in Kontich, near Antwerp, Gent and Brussels.

The mission of the global RHoK movement is to make the world a better place through a global community of innovation developing practical open technology. Hacking for Humanity, so to speak. RHoK is unique in the space of “apps competitions”, “hackathons” and “technology for social good”. RHoK’s model is to start from identifying, defining and refining problem definitions provided by subject matter experts and local stakeholders. This ensures that volunteer time is focused on solving real problems for real people.

This will be the 5th event in general, happening at the same time in 35 cities around the world, live streamed and … great fun!

The event is free. Food and net access will be provided. Great fun is promised, prices for the best applications are foreseen and sleeping is possible on place. Everything the hacker’s heart requires is prepared – missing part: YOU!

We would like to introduce the Hackathon with some shorts talk sessions and maybe one of you would like to join us for a discussion panel or a talk?

We are also looking for “local problem definitions”, so if you have some inspiration what could be done, please let us know.

More info on the Belgium event page: http://rhok.be and the global event page: http://rhok.org, or just Google around.

Impressions from the last event in Belgium (video and pics): http://www.rhok.be/media/

CU!

This year, for the first time in Belgium, a Random Hacks Of Kindness event is hosted in our country. The Brussels JUG is one of the partners of this event – some of us are part of the crew and some are taking part as participants.

For those that never heard about RHoK, here a resume in some words:

“Initiated November 2009 by the Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, NASA, HP and the World Bank, the projects mission is to make the world a better place through a global community of innovation developing practical open technology. RHoK is unique in the space of “apps competitions”, “hackathons” and “technology for social good”. RHoK’s model is to start from identifying, defining and refining problem definitions provided by subject matter experts and local stakeholders. This ensures that volunteer time is focused on solving real problems for real people.”

RHoK 2011: 240 Problem definitions, 111 Solutions under development, 32  Two-days-Hackathons around the world (at the same time) – and the first RHoK in Belgium – the 3th & 4th of December 2011. More information: http://www.rhok.org and http://www.rhok.be/

Everybody is invited to join! The event is free and any programming language and run-time environment is welcome. Also needed are “problem solvers” and “thinkers”. The event will be introduced by speakers from divers NGOs , then working groups are formed and the hacking begins. At the end, some prizes are sponsored for the best contributions.

The goal is to cover all Belgium cities with the subsequent RHoK events. For this first event, a great venue in Antwerp has been selected.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch:  http://rhok.be and @RHoKBelgium

Sponsors of this event are:

In the first week of December happens the third edition if the global Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon. For the first time, Europe is part of the event. One camp is organised in the danish city of Aarhus and another one in Berlin, Germany.

What is Random Hacks of Kindness?

Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is all about using technology to make the world a better place by building a community of innovation. RHoK brings software engineers together with disaster risk management experts to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK Hackathon event brings together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems. Founding partners of the event are big players like Google, NASA, Microsoft, Yahoo and The World Bank.

More about RHOK:
   http://www.rhok.org
   http://wiki.rhok.org/
   http://twitter.com/randomhacks
   http://www.facebook.com/RandomHacks
   http://www.youtube.com/user/RHoKsydney
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomhacks/

Other organisations, similar concepts:
   Crisis Commons (organisers of CrisisCamps): http://crisiscommons.org/
   Geeks without Bounds: http://gwob.org/
   HOT :: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team: http://hot.openstreetmap.org/weblog/

Belgium is not yet part of this great movement, but why not arrange a RHoK 4 event in our country? Personally, I think this is a great idea and I’m sure we will obtain a lot of support here!

What do you think?