Archive for December, 2008

Last Post of 2008… Oh, Wait… First Post!

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

iVolunteer is a free location-aware iPhone application that makes it easy for people to find one-time volunteer opportunities and get involved in their communities.

With the participation and support of Boulder’s awesome tech scene, we are in a great position with iVolunteer. Dave Angulo has rewritten the server back end, the development of both the website and iPhone app are progressing, we have secured 501(c)3 status as a component fund of The Community Foundation, and we have a data sharing agreement with the Hands On Network which utilizes their new API. We were very fortunate in the timing of our agreement with Hands On Network, as we contacted them right as they were making significant changes to that API. With Dave’s background in web service development, we were able to give them some timely advice on how to make their service more scalable and their API most useful to their data consumers.

While the data from Hands On Network is enough for us to meet our requirements to launch (“one-time low-commitment volunteering opportunities covering the entire US”), our hope has always been that our database be as large as possible. To that end, we’ve had very positive conversations with VolunteerMatch and are continuing to reach out to the American Red Cross, United Way, and other sources for event data. Please let us know if you have any great leads with folks in those organizations!

Creating iVolunteer is an all-volunteer effort started by Dave Angulo and Rich Grote. We would be nowhere if so many talented folks hadn’t volunteered their time and amazing abilities to making the project a reality. Thanks to Bracken Christensen for the sweet logo, Andrew Hyde for his awesome design work, Ryan Imel for turning that design into CSS, Chris Browne for his work on the iVolunteer website, and Aubrey Francois for his contributions to the iPhone app. Brian Burns is our master wordsmith and Gerhard Rivera has shown an inspiring willingness to step in wherever we need.

People are drawn to the startup scene for three main reasons. To make a bunch of money, to work on something cool and important, and to work with awesome people who are fun and wicked smart. Since iVolunteer is going to be given away at the App Store for free, we can’t do much for the first one. But we’ve definitely got the last two handled.

To continue to make this project social and move quickly, we’re setting up a weekly informal meetup at RedFish Brewhouse on Tuesday nights, beginning January 27th. It’ll be part hackathon, part technology discussion, part group blogging adventure, part strategy session, and all fun. No experience necessary, just bring your enthusiasm. More details to follow in additional blog posts, join us!

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