We can honestly say that without The Community Foundation’s support, we would not have gotten very far. Your support has allowed us to focus on the project while you took care of our nonprofit administration. We brought you an idea for a nonprofit startup that we developed during a sushi eating contest and you provided the nonprofit umbrella for us to make it happen which was an amazing feat. Thank you so much – we love you!

We gotta give a huge shout out to the Van Heyst Group who have provided our workspace. Our productivity is directly linked to these fine facilities and for that we are forever grateful. Thank you so much for everything. Looking for office space to rent? They have some available and it is awesome.

Both Rally Software and Amazon have provided key infrastructure components for us to develop and deliver these applications. You have made our process so much easier which is key for a large group of volunteers who are writing and testing code (you know exactly what I mean).

The Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup has been a home base for us and we can’t tell you how much the love has powered us forward. We have pitched our ideas, read your tweets (be nice!), and appreciated all of the feedback and support. Remember, we are just getting started and have much more to do so we hope you will continue to provide this tremendous lifeline to this project.

To our web and logo designers, Christopher Ritter and Chris Freitag, we don’t know how to thank you. You have developed the face of SnapImpact and we are honored to work with you. YOU ROCK!

Our volunteers. So many people. There were so many who helped us to get started and who have supported us over the time taken to get to this point, check out Andrew Hyde’s and Stepan Mazurov’s fabulous photos. Thanks for helping us get this off the ground. We could not have persevered without ya!

Most recently, we have had a kick ass software development crew – Ryan Schneider, Hassan Abdel-Rahman, Neil Simon, Tony Kay, Dave Angulo, Orn Kristjansson, Mark Chance, Eric Telingator, and Sue Uyetake.  They have worked hard slinging code with only mediocre pizza and good beer to sustain them while keeping full time jobs and family happy. You are heroes.

The current rock star business development team includes Nicole Glaros, Josh Clauss, Katrina Florence, Rick Saltzman, Rich Grote, Brett Greene, Dan Hellman, Mark Haeg, Luke Tilsley, Kevin Cloughley, and Phong Le. You slaved away to develop the feature set, build out a PR and marketing plan, and continue to push our project forward (over a few bottles of excellent tequila). Thanks for doing this while keeping bosses and families happy along the way.

Finally, our data partners HandsOn Network and All For Good, are truly the engine of SnapImpact. They provide the data that fuels the volunteering process and we are proud to call them partners.

We are the luckiest startup nonprofit in the world. Thanks to everyone!

This project began the way a lot of entrepreneurial things do. A couple of us were standing around talking about how it had been a long time since we did any volunteering. We took out our iPhones and went to the iTunes store to download a volunteering application. When our search turned up nothing, we looked at each other and said, “Well, this should exist. I bet we could build it.”

What followed was a massive volunteer effort, starting in Boulder Colorado and spreading out to an incredibly talented crew from across the United States. An amazing amount of human energy has gone into this effort, rallying around our very simple mission:

“Make doing good easy.”

Now that we’ve released our app into the wild, we need your help. Do us proud. Download the SnapImpact iPhone app, let us know what you think (good, bad, and ugly), and — most of all — connect to the terrific groups in your community and volunteer!

Thank you!

The crew working on the iVolunteer iPhone app have been hard at work!

We originally wanted to show this demo video during our presentation to the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup, but had a bit of laptop trouble and had to switch things out at the last minute.

It was definitely worth the wait. Kudos to the iPhone team!

Check out the video (btw, it looks awesome in full screen mode) and leave us a note in the comments to let us know what you think.

It was standing room only, and I was squeezed way in the back when announcement time came around. Some guy named Dave stood up and said that he was looking for iPhone developers for a volunteering application. A couple books and a crash course on Cocoa hardly makes me an iPhone dev, but I’d been wanting to learn for some time, so I tracked him down after the meetup. And the rest is history. Recent history. Still in the making, actually, since we’re still plugging away.

Which brings me to my point: iPhone development is capital F-U-N fun. I’ve done most of the major languages, but Obj-C is the first one I’ve picked up in a matter of hours vs. days or weeks. Think about it: on Febuary 1st, I had a vague idea that the iPhone used something called Cocoa, and that Objective C “was sort of like C++, but not”. Yesterday I got my first data-bound UI up and running. And this isn’t full time by any means, just an hour here and there where possible, and a couple stints on the weekend.

But the real reason I piqued up at the iVolunteer opprotunity was that, as a telecommuter, I’ve gotten kind of bored with discussing application design and implementation with myself. So, why not share the fun? You really don’t need to know the first thing about iPhone development, just a general computer programming background is more than enough to get started. You don’t even need an iPhone, just a Mac, some curiosity, and patience while the SDK downloads.

We’ve got our data model foundation pretty well worked out, so now it’s the fun stuff: a slick UI, tight look and feel, and all the cool little bells and whistles that make an app really shine. Even if you don’t want to touch a line of code, a keen eye for design is also very welcome. So if you want a chance to learn a new technology while contributing to a really good cause, drop us a line. Or look for us at next week’s BDNT Meetup in Boulder.

(or–What the Hell am I Doing Here?… Seriously.) 

Imagine you’ve just arrived in Boulder. Imagine you’re me, and you’ve just arrived here from (dare I admit it so early on?)– uh yeah, Dallas. You’re loving the mountains, the air (if there were just more of it, please), the coffee shops. And then you kinda luck into hanging with the coolest group of smart, driven, passionate, confident, community-oriented people this town has to offer. Pretty sweet life, huh? 

Oh yeah, except… ahem. You’re unemployed. In this economy. 

The suck-fest news is that you’ve got no income. The good-fest news is that you’ve finally got at least part of the substance to craft an answer to the ever-so-popular-and-not-at-all-annoying “So what do you do?” question. And the “what they do” gig at iVolunteer has all kinds of potential to effect change in how volunteering happens in local communities all over the United States.

Last Tuesday, an impressive group of folks came together at the Van Heyst Group here in Boulder in answer to the call for help with the iVolunteer endeavor. The group split into the geeks and the non-geeks and got to work. Like Obama said in his inaugural speech, “For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.” And damn straight if everyone didn’t get right to it. The non-geeks started knocking around ideas– communications, writing, brainstorming, wondering what the geeks were doing… All great stuff to be part of. 

Although this Boulder newbie may not know in which direction the winds of vocation may blow or what I’m going to be when I grow up, what is for sure is that there is power in surrounding myself with people I want to be like. Regardless, when this caliber of folks comes together to make profound, positive change happen in the world, I want to be part of it.

Hearing that there seem to be some parallels between Startup Weekend and the iVolunteer project got me asking myself some questions:

Why does iVolunteer feel like Startup Weekend?

What can we swipe learn from the Startup Weekend process?

To get insight on the second question, I’m going to go the source and talk with Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend’s founder and iVolunteer team member. (Check out his post on iVolunteer here: http://andrewhyde.net/ivolunteer-meets-with-a-bang/) I’ll write up my thoughts on that interview soon.

For now, here are my thoughts on the first question: Why does iVolunteer feel like Startup Weekend?

It’s about community.

To steal from David Cohen’s excellent Startup Weened Top 10 post, “Future co-founders will meet, experts will emerge, people will catch the startup bug. This is good for you, and it’s good for your town.” That’s what people have been saying they got from our first Meetup and I can only see that expanding as folks get down to the nitty gritty of getting iVolunteer off the ground.

It’s not about the Benjamins.

Although the air may feel entrepreneurially-enriched, participating in a Startup Weekend isn’t likely to make you wealthy. Neither will working on a guerrilla nonprofit startup. Realizing that nobody is going to make any money with this is actually pretty refreshing. Or, Nicole Glaros put it so aptly, “we don’t need no stinkin’ business model.”

“You decide your level of involvement.”

Structurally, the two endeavors have some common elements. I guess there’s a bit of Project Mayhem built into both. The projects are somewhat loosely defined at the start, then people self-organize into groups who then take on functional areas and tasks they find interesting. Nobody is in charge and people are free to take on as much or as little as they like.

This Tuesday (Feb 3rd), the iVolunteer crew will be giving an update at the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup. Show your support for the project and see the awesome startup community first hand. Note that our next working session will be on Tuesday (Feb 10th) at Rally Software. More details to come.

iVolunteer Meetup Location

iVolunteer Meetup

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
5:00pm – 9:00pm
Van Heyst Group Office
719 Walnut St
Boulder, CO  [map]

As mentioned at the last New Tech Meetup, iVolunteer’s first working session will be held on Tuesday, January 27. After the closing of RedFish Brewery, the folks at the Van Heyst Group graciously stepped up and offered their space to our efforts. Thank you!

iVolunteer has no employees and is entirely a not-for-profit endeavor. We see the project as a way to support community organizations across the country and also as a showcase for Boulder’s incredible depth of startup talent. We’ll have our laptops out hacking on code for the iPhone app and website, working on marketing plans, writing blog posts, and doing whatever needs doing to make iVolunteer successful.

Equal parts social and working, this is a great opportunity to meet interesting people in the Boulder community and work on something big. Bring your friends and anyone else who might be good to have along for the ride.

RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46562643122

Thanks!

Dave Angulo (@daveangulo)
Rich Grote (@heyrich)

This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head.

There’s no denying that the iVolunteer project is an ambitious endeavor with a lotta ins and outs and what-have-yous. While much more detail can be found at our github development hub, some folks have been asking for an overview.

Here’s how it all fits together at the 10,000 foot view:

How It All Fits Together

What’s missing? What haven’t we thought through? What’s just jacked up? How should we connect up to social media like Facebook and Twitter? Your comments will help iVolunteer evolve and become a truly useful tool for people all across the U.S. who want to make a positive difference in their communities

Thanks!

Part of the fun on a community-created project like this is the ability to stretch your wings and try new things. Yes, we could just slap this thing up with a bunch of boilerplate well-known recipes, but what’s the fun in that? Instead, we’re creating this project using some cool new technology that will be fun to work with. What follows is a quick overview of each piece of the technology stack that we’ll be using on the iVolunteer/ActionFeed project. Although some of it gets a bit technical, hopefully it’ll give you some understanding behind the technology decisions we’re making.

First off is one of the the stars from last years Apple WWDC: Sproutcore. What’s not to love about a javascript MVC framework that lets you build Cocoa-like interfaces? This is the tool set that’s behind Apple’s MobileMe experience. Not only does it use OO javascript, but it also heavily uses observer patterns similar to Cocoa programming (I’ve read, never having developed a Cocoa app). Sproutcore was at 0.9.19 when we started the iVolunteer project, but then the Sproutcore team went for a Halloween Strategy to announce they will rework large sections of it for a 1.0 release. Love being out on the bleeding edge? This is what its like!

Next, both the iPhone App and the ActionFeed website will need REST interfaces from a service in order to get the data to present to the end user. The service will also need to connect to our providers, grab a data set (Please let it be structured!), do any necessary data mapping and throw it into our database (aka ETL). It would also be nice if the service had some administrative interfaces to control the service. There are lots of ways to skin this cat, from the current rage of RoR to writing a cgi, but we wanted to experiment with some cool new stuff coming out of the Java world in Jersey/JAXB/EJB3. Also, if we do end up being successful, running in an app server container should make scaling simpler (in theory).

Of course, the crown jewel of our technology is the iPhone SDK. There are tons of thing to cover on iPhone development. Whether you are an iPhone SDK veterano or just now hoping to get started, we encourage you to come on out, meet some great people, and get your hands dirty working on something cool that’ll help the world.

That wraps up the key technologies we’re using to develop v1.0 of iVolunteer. I’ll dive into each in more detail in upcoming posts. Please comment and let us know if there are things of particular interest so we can start there first.