150 volunteer computer hackers under the moniker of ‘hacktivists’ will gather this weekend in the major Australian cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
They join hackers around the world in a global jam over 48 hours with the aim to software-solve real-world problems relating to natural disasters and other community orientated issues.
Known as Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) was founded in 2009 by Google, NASA, the World Bank, Yahoo! and Microsoft in response to natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina and the Boxing Day tsunami.
“The beauty of Random Hacks of Kindness is that we inevitably see something positive and powerful arise out of just an idea over the course of a weekend,” said RHoK Melbourne Chairperson, Simone Esler.
“We have seen a project created from scratch that, after a weekend of focused RHoK activity, is ready to use and have a positive impact in our community.”
“There are many local and global hackathons out there but unfortunately the momentum they inspire over a hackathon weekend is soon lost when the weekend is over. That’s not the case with RHoK. We have one of the most vibrant RHoK communities in the world here in Melbourne and we work hard to keep the momentum going throughout the year by sustaining some projects between events – we call these our RHoK ‘n’ RHoll projects,” she added.
Due to the quirks of International Date Line positioning, Australia is one of the first regions to get involved. According to the RHoK promotional team, this year one of the core projects being looked at is the tracking of king tides, something an island nation such as Australia could find of great interest.
The Australian RHoK community this weekend is to work with Green Cross on their ‘Witness King Tides’ project, which asks communities around Australia to take photos of the coastline when king tides hit. These photos are then used to gain an impression of what Australia’s coastal communities may look like in the future as global sea levels continue to rise.
RHoK-sters will be working to create an app which provides Australians with more information about rising sea levels such as who is affected, sea rise levels, when and where levels are rising, why and how they can help.
This is the first time that Brisbane based techies will be joining other RHoK-sters over the hackathon weekend. Over 20 cities around the world will participate, with hacktivists from North America, Africa and Europe working alongside our Australian techie community.
The RHoK community is open to anyone who wants to volunteer their skills or suggest a potential problem to be solved. Volunteer programmers, designers and project managers are invited to register and get involved in RHoK by visiting www.rhokmelbourne.org, https://rhoksydney.org/ or https://www.meetup.com/Rhok-Brisbane
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You can follow the action on Twitter:
@RHoKmelbourne
@RHoKSydney
@RHoKBrisbane
The RHoK community in Australia are also keen to hear from any corporates which may be willing to offer funding support to assist with rolling out more RHoK projects.
