Hackathon 2018

October 19-21, 2018  IT workers around the world gathered in over 30 different cities to network, fellowship, and work on mission-oriented projects during the IndigitousHackathon.  DigiServe hosted the Hackathon in Chiang Mai for the third year running.  The Hackathon is designed to bring together people who have needs and people who have skills. People in ministry often have needs that go unseen and unmet because they don’t have the skills or connections to solve them. IT professionals have the tools and experience to meet these needs.  This weekend brings the two together.  During the first Hackathon in Chiang Mai we started working on the Children At Risk System (CARS), designed to help children’s homes keep track of children’s information digitally and help streamline the process of government reporting.  This project is in ongoing development.

During this year’s Hackathon, we took on four different challenges. We tackled human trafficking by designing a data input for the HUG project to keep track of trafficking cases more efficiently.  For the Lahu Living Word Ministry, we started working on making an online version of their Christian Correspondence Course that currently has over 1700 students.  For the Choojai project, a website that reaches out to Thai teens, we developed some missing features on their website and created a channel for donations. We created a program for Silaa Coffee to track and back up their coffee roaster information so that they can ensure and maintain quality.

The Hackathon is one of the principle ways DigiServe is building the IT community in Thailand while meeting the needs of Thai foundations.  We are cultivating a network of IT workers that can come together to make creative, custom solutions to the problems that foundations face so that they can carry out their mission with more efficiency and effectiveness.