May 12, 2012 Code Jam Projects

Organization Description: Kuska is a non-profit organization that was developed as a structured way to help low-income individuals obtain their educational goals. The “Kuska process” begins when we select potential students who meet specific criteria including financial need, prior educational “history” (including high school or college GPA, transcripts, etc), and who demonstrate clearly defined future life goals. Potential students are first given a detailed application to fill out (see application by following the “For Students” link). Depending on the quality of their application and the number of student slots available, the student may then be interviewed by a member of our staff. If the student successfully passes the interview stage, his or her profile is uploaded to the Kuska homepage for potential donors to view.

Project Description: We have an established website hosted on GoDaddy. It does not use content management, so it is difficult to constantly change the content. Also, we have a database that is set up to allow management of users/donors/students/etc. However, we would like to expand on this functionality. The two key things we'd like are to port the page to a content management service (like Joomla) and to expand on the database management section (via keeping track of donations through PayPal and redrawing graphs for each student showing their funding).
Existing Work on Project: "The webpage was developed to its current status (www.kuskaperu.org). Then, a database management section was added (under login) using PHP and MySQL on GoDaddy. This allows an admin to change content for students/donors which allows donors to see their students' grades.

Existing info can be provided to access the content. There is a GoDaddy login and a database login."

Technical Skills for Coders: Programming languages used: MySQL, PHP, HTML, Javascript

Organization Description: Stanford Dance Marathon seeks to inspire, educate, and mobilize the community to combat HIV/AIDS and support international health by raising a meaningful amount of money for our beneficiaries through a year of fundraising, education, and community-building. This collaborative effort among student groups, university administration, and the surrounding community culminates in a 24-hour Dance Marathon of wakeful and active solidarity.

Project Description: Our goal is to update our website, make it super easy for students to register for DM as dancers and moralers on it, and to make it easy for community members to make donations online. We have had difficulty with our website in the past because none of the DM directors are expert coders! So we would appreciate any help we can get, and we are willing and excited to learn how to handle upkeep of the website!

Existing Work on Project: DM website exists (dm.stanford.edu). Alex Coleman has the login/password stuff, which I will work on getting for her.

Technical Skills for Coders: I know zero programming skills, but since our program has the existing structure of a website that has links and sign up tools, I am hoping I can learn how to do basics on it.

Organization Description: FamilyEase streamlines the foster care and adoption process by securely connecting families with their case workers. This is an issue that the government should solve, but never will. My husband and I just finalized the adoption of our 7-year-old daughter so the problem is near and dear to my heart. By reducing friction in the process agencies will increase their retention of families, which ultimately means more kids will find successful placements.

Project Description: We're a small team of 3 trying to solve a very big, mostly paper-based problem. Our first step is to create a simple site where foster / adoption agencies can go to manage basic forms. Our plan is to use Force.com as the CRM solution but we'll need a front-end designed and developed so we can start onboarding agencies during our testing period (we can take care of designing it and having plans all in place for the event). At the same time, we want to give foster / adoptive families access to some of that data and the ability to add their own - so we'll need a separate login for families to use. We'll tie that in to weekly email reminders for foster families so that they can properly document and share relevant information (health/behavior/school) with their case worker. Depending on the number of developers at Code Jam we could potentially have basic versions of both ends up and running. The first priority would be building out the agency side.

Existing Work on Project: None. It looks like we'll be able to integrate with Force.com for free given our mission. I can firm all that up before the event.

Technical Skills for Coders: Ruby & Salesforce. Those are the two major platforms we'll be building on.

Organization Description: FACE AIDS' mission is to fight HIV/AIDS by building a movement of young leaders dedicated to global health equity and social justice. FACE AIDS harnesses young people's passion for social change and equips them with the skills, resources, and community to promote global health equity now and throughout their lives. We also empower HIV-affected youth in impoverished communities with access to credit, savings, and business skills training, helping to limit HIV/AIDS' devastating impact on the social and economic development of communities.

Project Description:

OVERVIEW:
FACE AIDS' mission is to build the youth movement for global health equity. To achieve this mission, we have chapters at high schools and colleges across the U.S. who raise awareness and funds for the fight against HIV/AIDS. To further motivate our chapters to take action in a variety of arenas (fundraising, service, advocacy, and education), we want to create a Facebook application-based competition for the 2012-13 academic year.

VISION:
FACE AIDS chapters take a variety of actions, ranging from fundraising to service. For our competition, we will assign a specific point value to each action (i.e. hosting free HIV testing = 100 points, speaking with your Congressman about global health funding = 200 points).

Here's how the Facebook app would work. When a chapter takes an action, they will log that action on the Facebook app and receive that action's corresponding number of points. The Facebook app will feature a leaderboard that will dynamically rank all FACE AIDS chapters based on total points received.

We have a model for this Facebook app, created for a similar purpose by Fission Strategy for the ONE Campus Challenge: http://www.facebook.com/ONECampus/app_290860714262728. ONE chapters log specific actions on the ""Report Points"" tab, then see their status in comparison to other chapters on the ""Leaderboard"" tab.

As far as looks go, we want our Facebook app to look like ONE Campus Challenge's app (but with FACE AIDS' color scheme and logo). Instead of five tabs, we need only three: About, Log Points, and Leaderboard. ""About"" will feature our mission and a description of the competition.

On the back end, FACE AIDS staff should be able to:
1) Receive notification when a chapter logs points (i.e. a form is submitted to us automatically via email).
2) Make manual adjustments to a chapter's points to guard against abuses (i.e. a chapter accidentally or falsely logs an action).
3) Input specific actions and their corresponding points"

Existing Work on Project: No work has been done on this project, as we do not have the technical expertise in-house.

Technical Skills for Coders: The ability to create Facebook applications will be necessary for this project.

Organization Description: Happy Hearts Fund is a non-profit foundation dedicated to rebuilding schools and restoring hope and opportunity in the lives of children after natural disasters. We work during the period after emergency response is complete, implementing sustainable practices to ensure a lasting impact. Globally, HHF is active in nine countries and has built/rebuilt 57 schools and kindergartens. Since inception our programs have benefited more than 34,412 children and 337,450 community members.

Project Description: "We are in need of a new up-to-date website that features the most recent technology needed to show our mission, encourage people to support the foundation, and to easily join our volunteer efforts.

We would like an interactive project page that displays the location of our schools around the world and information about them using a map.

We need a streamlined and welcoming donation process for contributions to be made to the foundation.

We would like an up to date media page that includes downloads, videos and images that are easily downloadable and accessible."

Existing Work on Project: We own the rights to www.happyheartsfund.org, the necessary logins to access the information, etc. However, we would like an entirely new site with the same address that we currently have to represent the foundation.

Technical Skills for Coders: You guys are the pros, so we fully trust your input with the type of program that should be used in creating the site... however, if possible, we would like to be able to edit the site once it is designed.

Organization Description: Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV) is an organization that has partnerships with businesses, governments, and non-governmental organizations that are identifying and addressing environmental and resource challenges in Silicon Valley through education and collaboration. After focusing on carbon emissions during 2006 through 2010, the organization began to focus on water and energy more recently. Based on Santa Clara, SSV offers a series of workshops and conferences that connect industry leaders, and operates an online social network called EcoCloud to support the organization's programs, as well as supporting the research projects of our academic partners.

Project Description: We wish to develop a web-based application that allows city managers to track and manage wastewater and other resources across multiple collection and treatment centers. Our academic advisor for this effort is Stanford’s Prof Craig Criddle (http://www.stanford.edu/group/evpilot/) and his graduate students have developed Excel-based models of resource usage. They have asked SSV to help migrate these models to the web. The application will support:

* A data model for resources, resource consumption and disposal, resource treatment, and the geographic connection of resource management centers to provide net flows or balances.
* A front-end to allow city managers to operate the application
* Business logic that implements the formulas located in the Excel spreadsheets.
* Geographic map-based displays

Existing Work on Project: This will be the first effort to connect the research models with web technology. We will be starting a new application in this project, but extracting models and code from SSV’s EcoCloud code base where relevant.

The project team will be provided with Excel spreadsheets, and a Ph.D. student from Prof Criddle’s team will attend to provide background and domain knowledge to the effort, as well as technical guidance from SSV’s CTO and EcoCloud team members.

We will set up source code repositories for the project team, using Git or Mercurial as requested by team members. We already have a hosting site created, with an app server and database installed.

Technical Skills for Coders: There will be two main tracks of design and development. The back-end developers should be familiar with web application tools such as Grails, Java, and Spring, as well as database technology such as MySQL. The front-end developers will work with their choice of front-end technology, but we expect to focus on jQuery, CSS/HTML, and Grails.

In the first hour, the Ph. D. student will provide domain education for both teams. In the next two hours, the backend developers will be provided with a UML modeling tool for data model design work, and the backend developers will be provided with an on-line wireframing tool for front-end design work (at project start there are few designs for the front-end).

In the last six hours, we will focus on integration of front and backend.

This is an excellent opportunity to learn and apply data modeling skills or front-end design skills in a setting that enables research efforts to add value in our community. The project team will have the opportunity to give a follow-on presentation to Prof. Criddle and/or to Phil Bobel, environmental manager for the City of Palo Alto.

Organization Description: The Learning, Design and Technology Program prepares its graduates to apply learning theories and technology to solve a wide variety of learning problems.

Project Description: "People learn best by constructing their own knowledge. But many of our schools and even online learning resources still depend on a one-way, transmission model where the learner is expected to passively absorb and then reproduce information.

I want to change this to a learner-centered model where users leverage on the vast amount of information on the internet to actively construct their own knowledge and thus learn more effectively and independently.

The “Knowledge Builder” project (started as part of the Learning, Design and Technology program's Masters Projects) aims to create a tool for this purpose with the following components:-

1. Concept-mapping function – allowing users to create concept maps on any topic, creating nodes that are linked to show the relationship between them.
- Nodes – users would use found objects from the internet as nodes, e.g. images, video thumbnails, sections of text. Each node would be hyperlinked to the actual resource on the internet.
- Links - users would be able to choose from a range of linking words, e.g. “is an example of”, “is a type of”, “leads to” etc, as well as create their own.
Examples of existing tools that have the necessary functionality are Vue (vue.tufts.edu/) and Inspiration (www.inspiration.com).

2. Search function – this would allow users to search the internet for information and found objects with which to build their concept maps.

3. Editing and extraction of material – this would allow users to easily extract images, thumbnails of videos, sections of text etc from existing webpages to be used as nodes in the concept map.
Examples of existing tools that have similar functionality are Clipular (http://www.clipular.com/) and Awesome Screenshot (http://awesomescreenshot.com/).

4. Sharing – this would allow users to share their concept maps with other users. Specifically, it would allow users to rate and comment on entire structure, or on specific nodes and links. Sharing should be enabled across social platforms, e.g. Facebook.

Knowledge Builder can be used for individual, independent learning, as well as for powerful collaborative learning. For example, two users could compare their concept maps of the same topic, or could collaboratively create a concept map.

I envision Knowledge Builder as a browser add-on, to better enable a user experience that flows seamlessly from their use of the internet as it stands.

Existing Work on Project: I have put together a few low-res prototypes, including the latest which approximates Knowledge Builder's functionality by combining

i. The Firefox browser and Google search;
ii. ""Awesome Capture"" add-on for Firefox
iii. ""Draggable Star"" add-on for Firefox
iv. Inspiration concept-mapping application.

No coding has been done.

Technical Skills for Coders: "The project currently has no existing infrastructure.

As I envision the product to be a browser add-on, any familiarity with creating such add-ons would be useful.

One possibility I was considering was adapting existing open-source concept-mapping programs e.g. Vue, which is built in Java."

Organization Description: Global Exchange In Leadership Initiatives is a global platform to empower aspiring global leaders and foster global exchange in culture and volunteerism through an alliance of youth organizations around the world.
GEILI works closely with a large number of international partners to develop a variety of projects and provide opportunities for our members to gain international exposures in cultural, educational, and professional advancement.

Project Description: "Project goal: build up a crowd sourcing service learning online platform

Mission:
To allow social changers around the world to submit their project and get financial support through crowding sourcing.
To allow volunteer travelers to select their favorite projects to donate and get a trip voucher for future use

Layout:
Home page
A page for registration of member organization and individual member.
A page for submitting projects which link to a database
A page for selecting projects to donate (which link to payment) and get a trip voucher to print (with generated code). The projects should have a minimum amount of money to execute. Only when the project has got enough funding, the project owner and webmaster shall receive an activation email for notification. GEILI shall send the money to the project owner.
A page for media
A page for contact us

Vision: I would like to empower any youth in the world to realize their dreams to change their society."

Existing Work on Project: None

Technical Skills for Coders: Website development

Can't make the physical event for a fundraiser? No problem! Bring your mobile device to the gym and raise money anyway. CharityRUN allows any Charity to create their own fundraising RUN on the mobile application under our ""Events"". These may last a day, a week, a month, or even longer.
Want to turn those minutes of aerobic exercise you already spend at the gym into value-raising steps for a cause you believe in? CharityRUN allows any person -by downloading the free application- to chose a cause and turn their exercise into real money. And we do this all for free!

Project Description:Mission:
The goal of the hack-project is to code the front-end for one (or two) templates for Charity run "Events". Specifically, if a Charity wants to use the application to host a virtual run to raise money for their cause, then they will be able to do so simply by selecting a template, a color-scheme, and uploading media content files to us (like photographs, video, or fan-facts).
When a user opens our application and finds that Charity under the "Events" tab, they will then be able to run for that Charity while experiencing the media from that Charity presented to them in the format determined by the agreed-upon template.
With just one or two templates, we can offer this free service to a countless number of Charities.

NB, Your Resources:
A working design for the templates are already completed, and there is an SDK that is responsible for "detecting exercise".
We will have someone working on the back-end with you in real-time during the event, and already have working PNG files ready to go, with the presence of a digital designer using Photoshop on-site as well.

Layout:
We will be using a specific charity as a reference point for constructing the code which will then serve as a template that can be applied to any media files.

Keeping in mind that all the Screen-Shots are completed, with PNG files ready to go, there are two main tasks for the front-end hacker(s):

1. Coding the menu selection screens, coordinating them to communicate dynamically with the media stored on the server. This includes, for example, linking the selection items in the start menu of Events, with the respective media-files for each corresponding Charity. Similarly, communicating to the server when a user has completed a run. --Our back-end tech will be there to coordinate when appropriate.

2. Displaying the media files (either video or picture files) in a slideshow-like format to the end-user when triggered by the SDK. This also includes other on-screen media icons that are responsive to being triggered by the SDK registering the exercise.

Then, time permitting, we can have fun adding any, and as many, of the other features that this platform can support, include log-in-user system, team-based activity etc.

Existing Work on Project:
The basic idea for what we are trying to do has already been accomplished by our friends at BitGym with the release of their application: "ActiveTheory", which can be found in the AppStore. We will have the Founder and Product Lead from BitGym with us on the day of the event, who will be assisting with the back-end and communications with your work on the front-end.
All major Story-Boards and Screen-Shots are completed with PNG files ready to go. Layouts, and transitions are organized.
A basic prototype is built displaying a Unity version of a front-end user experience that is responsive to the SDK.

The above notwithstanding, if you are interested in creatively getting involved, input is welcome.

Technical Skills for ProgrammersRecommended proficiency in iOS. HTML 5 could also be useful. I'm not fully sure what other skills would be ideal, but I'm sure you do! We may try to include some of the Unity programming into the front-end as well.