Rails for Charity ( railsforcharity.org ) http://www.meetup.com/Rails-for-Charity/

1. Rails for Charity
San Francisco / Bay Area

2. A Big Thank
You to our
sponsor

3. Agenda
Member Introductions
RailsforCharity(RFC) Mission
RFC Motive
Open source projects
Areas where we can contribute
Benefits for us?
How will we do it?
Questions?

4. Member Introductions

5. RailsforCharity(RFC) Mission
“To build open source web based
applications which help in improving the
society.”

6. RFC Motive
• We want to fix the social problems that surround us
through the use of our skills (Technology) and give
something back to the society.
• We want to incubate, foster, develop, mentor and
support web based software projects which could
potentially have a social impact.
• Provide a platform for people to share/pitch their
social impacting ideas, get help and be helped for
achieving their goals.
• We want to make Silicon Valley the starting point for
such a unique open source initiative.

7. We have built hundreds of open
source projects and tools
Now its for us to build &
maintain complete end to end
web based open source
applications.

8. Areas where we can contribute
Most of Silicon Valley is focused on building products
for the top 1% of the world's population.
Do you think we can sell
an apple iPod or even
coca-cola to them ?
Most of the world is not 16-29 year old males. There's a
whole range of perspectives that go underrepresented in
Silicon Valley. There are a lot of women out there.
Older folks. Also, it might be hard to imagine, but
there are a lot of kids not growing up on video games.
Source: http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-are-some-things-Id-be-
shocked-to-learn-about-the-outside-world

9. continued...
Most of the world needs solutions to problems
we rarely talk about, in areas like health
care, agricultural production, sustainable
construction, citizen activism and
empowerment, childhood education, affordable
transportation, community solidarity and
efficacy, etc.
In short, there are lots of simple ideas that
we can implement and make a difference.

10. Benefits for us?
Self satisfaction. You know that you are
giving back to the society.
Open source projects shine well on your
resume. A contributor of a large open
source project is more impressive than an
individual contributor in a corporate one.
Collaborate and learn.
Work on latest technologies apart from your
job.

11. continued...
Meet people from various backgrounds. Work
on projects which have a direct impact.
Work on challenging problems and whacky
ideas.
If not us, who will?

12. How will we do it?
Anyone who has an idea would pitch.
Members will vote on each idea and form
teams to work on those ideas.
The code will be open sourced.
Friendly competition among the teams.
Take Baby steps.
Build a working version 0.1 in 2 weeks
Deploy on heroku (heroku.com)

13. continued...
Meet again, get feedback & assimilate new
members into the picture
Iterate continuously & get Beta out in 2
months.
Spread the word.
Monitor user engagement.
Reshuffle teams...
Keep iterating...

14. Tools & Services
Github - For Source Control & Issue
Tracking
Pivotal Tracker - For Project
Management
Travis CI - For Continuous
Integration
Heroku - For Deployments

15. Who do we need?
Everyone!
Artists, Businessmen, Designers, Developers,
Editors, Evangelists, Marketing, Sales,
Lawyers, Writers, QA, etc...
In short, anyone who is passionate about
charities and open source and wants to
contribute.

16. Questions / Comments
/ Ideas

17. For the next meetup...
Pitch your idea.
Vote.
Divide and conquer.

18. Thank You!