charity

Geek Catalog Update

by

Sorry I wasn’t able to do an update last week, things got unexpectedly busy. But I’m back on track with a pretty wide update of places you can get your geek citizen on!

Computing

  • General
    • Coders 4 Charities – Holds regular events to rally coders to help non-profit organizations.

Fandom

  • Equality

Media

  • Equality
    • The Box Scene – A nonprofit organization focused on representation of people in media

Space

  • General
    • Planetary Society – Sponsors charities, events, advocacy, and projects to promote space exploration.

STEM

  • Equality
    • Tech Access – Nonprofit focusing on providing students of color access to STEM careers via setting expectations, providing role models, and access.

Technology

  • General
    • Beneftech – A nonprofit that focuses on accessibie technology that address social issues.

Writing

  • Literacy
    • Room To Read – An organization focused on literacy and gender equality in the developing world.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek Catalog Update for 8/9

by

People And Profile

And the Geek Catalog project continues – and I keep finding more fascinating resources and initiatives.  I’ve written some scripts to help me out, and yes, eventually this is going to get anchored or just put into a database.

What amazes me is that I just keep finding stuff.  Things I heard of, things I didn’t hear of.  We geeks have a lot of ways to change the world.

So what’s added this week?

Computing

  • Charity
    • Little Geeks – A Canadian charity that refurbishes donated computers, and gets them to children in need.
  • Female Geeks
    • The Ada Initiative – An organization that supports women in technology, with a heavy emphasis on codes of conduct, training, and an embrace of open source.

Fans-Harry Potter

  • Charity
    • The Harry Potter Alliance – A chapter-based alliance of HP fans engaged in charitable works, with a heavy emphasis on social justice and leveraging fandom for the greater good.

General

  • Community
    • Hackerspaces.org – A site dedicated to hackerspaces, from the latest news, to tools to make one, to lists of one you can join. Great to find people of a like mind so you can work together.
  • Education
    • MIT Open Courseware – Classes available online for free – from MIT. Sadly the major way to get involved is to donate, but it’s a good cause.

Space

STEM

  • Wildlife
    • Project Noah – A software platform that brings citizen scientist together in various projects to record and preserve biodiversity and understand nature.

Writing

  • Literacy
    • Kids Need To Read – A charity promoting a culture of reading, providing books to various institutions, especially those that support disadvantaged children.

 

There you go – get active!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Geek As Citizen: Ties To The Community

by

Saint Nicholas Charity

I’m sure you’re familiar with the issues of “techies” in San Francisco and the surrounding area. They’re supposedly obnoxious, driving up home prices, Google buses are getting a free pass and blocking traffic, the startup ideas are stupid, etc. If you haven’t heard about it . . . well I live in Silicon Valley and I hear a lot about it.

Though admittedly being south of San Francisco, some of it is probably a sort of bias – there seems to be a kind of SF/San Jose area split here.

Now there are issues of changes in San Francisco and the surrounding areas, but in reality none are as simple, clean cut, or frankly tech related as many people may think.  A lot of attempts to cover it are sadly over simplified and over generalized.  I myself have my own issues with some of what’s going on in San Francisco, but feel a lot of it is blown out of proportion – and population shifts, economic changes, and the like are part and parcel of big cities.

That being said, there’s concerns – and when you get a lot of people moving into an area there is going to be a sense of distance and alimentation. The new population could be totally great people, but they’re still outsiders – and that’s not helped when money and expense is a major issue, and even more so in this economy.

Read more