Random hacks of kindness to bring together industry heavyweights

David Swan
Monday, 30 May 2011 15:09

IT Industry - Strategy

Volunteers and experts around the world are collaborating to solve disaster and climate Problems through Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), with the event set to come to Melbourne next month.

 

On June 4th and 5th, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA, HP and the World Bank, through their initiative Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), will bring together thousands of people in over 18 locations around the globe to create open solutions with the aim of saving lives and alleviating suffering.

Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges.

For the third global RHoK, events are planned to take place in Melbourne Australia, Hartford, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle and Silicon Valley in the United States and international events in Toronto, Aarhus, Basel, Berlin, Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Kampala, Lusaka, Nairobi, Trento, and Santiago.

During past events the volunteers have worked on applications that are already making an impact.  I'm OK, an SMS service that lets people inform their families of their status, was used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010. The World Bank is piloting CHASM, software for visualizing landslide risk, in the Caribbean.

Other apps have received support and interest from governments, NGOs and international organizations around the world.

The inaugural RHoK Melbourne will be held at Swinburne University of Technology's recently opened Advanced Technologies Centre on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th of June 2011, concluding with World Environment Day.

For more details you can visit the Random Hacks of Kindness website, or follow the hashtag #RHoKmelbourne