The Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco hosted 1,400 do-gooders interested in technology. There were over 100 sessions in 3 days, including “Web 2.0 Philanthropy: Crowdsourcing through the Kiva Developer Program” by Kiva’s Skylar Woodward. In case you missed it, here’s a description of his session:
So now you have a hip, beautiful, and compelling web site for your cause; how do you organize other developers to help you build on that and reach even more audiences? Good software development is hard and volunteered code can often be a nightmare for your organization to handle. What if you could have people build on your work without you even knowing about it?!
In January 2009, Kiva launched a developer program to accomplish just this, building on successes with non-tech volunteer programs in content translation, acquisition, and overseas partner relations. We’ll explore crowdsourcing development though a look at Kiva’s program and we’ll be sharing what we’ve learned so far though mistakes and surprises.
Takeaways:
1. How to use a well-formed public API to coordinate outside development.
2. The importance and approach to cultivating your community.
3. Incentivizing developers when financial profit isn’t an option.
Tags: conferences, events
Kiva Team,
So I just have a debrief session to my team and we have been talking a lot about launching a KivaAustralia initiative.
I’ll be in touch to talk further.
Eddie