DigiActive.org

Guide: How to Find A Volunteer Developer For Your Activism Project

Title: How to Find A Volunteer Web Developer For Your Social Change Website or Web Application

Author: Joe Solomon

Published by: NetSquared (2008)

What is it?: A short online guide of 10 steps to recruiting a volunteer web developer to help you build a social change web application.

URL: www.netsquared.org/blog/joesolomon/part-2-how-find-volunteer-web-developer

My friend Joe Solomon, with whom I created Rayt, has written a great little guide on how to find a web developer to help you create an online project for social change. The guide is available at.

Finding volunteer developers is a really serious challenge for digital activists. Although a lot of current software, like Facebook and Blogger, is fairly easy to use, some more complex projects, like Ushahidi.com necessitate the help of a skilled developer. The process of finding developers to help you is not obvious and Joe’s guide provides the necessary guidance to help you get the help you need to make your project a reality.

The guide, which is available on the NetSquared blog, is available in two parts. In Part One, Joe breaks down the task of finding a developer into 5 parts. Part Two contains continues with tasks 5 through 10. Here is a summary of the tasks he covers:

1. Create a Mock-Up of your Project to help you explaining to developers what you want to create.
2. Create a Blog which interested developers can visit to learn more about your project.
3. Create a Facebook Page to promote your project virally.
4. Print Business Cards to give your project an air of professionalism and to help people you meet remember your contact information.
5. Network at Tech Events so you can meet large numbers of developers all at one time.
6. Enlist Top Technology Bloggers to help you find developers by writing a post about your project.
7. Reach Out to MeetUp Mailing Lists which are a great place to find local developers.
8. Recruit Local College Students who have free time, passion, and technical expertise.
9. Get The Word Out With Volunteer Websites & Social Change Newsletters, which are another means of contacting large groups of potential volunteer developers.
10. Win Contests & Competitions to give your project more credility and give you concrete goals to work toward.

Joe’s guide is written in a really practical way, with simple and engaging language. I recommend that you check it out.