Post GiveCamp Reflections

GiveCamp this year was a great opportunity and I had an awesome time. Taking a
weekend out and focusing on giving back to charities that are making a
difference in peoples lives and communities felt really good. Also I got to
hang out with some great people.

Our charity CUFA (Communities United for Action) came to us in need of a way
for people to report on properties that have become problems in their
community.

The app (https://cufacincy.heroku.com) that we built to help
out with this problem was in concept pretty simple. It allowed a person to
report a house by address for various problems such as high grass, overgrown
bushes, and broken windows to CUFA who then can report the property to the
correct authorities for a municipality. It also allowed CUFA to provide the
user with some helpful contact info for local representatives for that
municipality who could assist them.

Over the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) we set out to build this
application and along the way I feel like it reaffirmed a lot of what I have
learned about writing software.

The first thing it reaffirmed was the value of a good team.

The first thing it reaffirmed was the value of a good team. This year our team
largely consisted of people from here at Gaslight. Don’t get me wrong I love
working with new people and getting a chance to pair with other developers.
However, with the short time frame it was really nice to have a team behind me
that I was used to working with and I knew how to collaborate with. Also
having the support of two of our very talented designers Ryan Arthur and
Kristin Lasita was a huge boon. One of the skills that was in high demand the
entire weekend was that of good designers. I would love to see more designers
get involved next year!

Second something that is true for any software project; Having direct timely
access and feedback to and from your client / product owner is vital! With
just the weekend to deliver it was a huge win for the project that our charity
was available most of the day for all three days. At times I felt bad because
we spent a lot of our time with our heads down in our laptops or lost in the
back and forth discussion that is involved in pairing but, whenever we ran
into issues or questions about a feature Kevin or Mary from CUFA was there to
help us. Their help was invaluable and we could not have delivered without
them. Huge thanks goes out to Kevin and Mary for sticking it out with us.

software is hard and there is always something you did not plan for.

Another thing that struck me was the value of up front planning and the
conversations that were had prior to GiveCamp. Thanks goes out to CUFA, Bill
Barnett, and Chris Moore from Gaslight. Pairing down, prioritizing and taking
the time to write stories ahead of time was essential. Knowing and having
confidence as well as understanding the value of what you are working on is
always critical to the success of a project. Cucumber
stories and Trello really shined here and allowed us to
move and execute quickly.

The fourth thing that was reaffirmed to me was not matter how well you plan or
how much you have thought a problem out; software is hard and there is always
something you did not plan for. In our case we relied on certain geocoding
data from Google that was not as consistent as we had hoped. Despite problems
and at times feeling like we may have bit off more than we could chew we were
able to deliver on the core of what CUFA had asked us for. That felt really
good.

I can’t wait to see what GiveCamp can accomplish next year!!

I was proud of our team and all of the other teams at GiveCamp. There were
tons of success stories like ours over the weekend and a lot of awesome
charities benefited. I met so many passionate, smart and caring people this
year and the energy in the rooms over the weekend was high and infectious even
into the late evenings. The entire support team of GiveCamp did an excellent
job keeping team leaders on and focused with regular standups about every hour
and made sure people got help whenever they needed it. There was around the
clock snacks, meals and support and I cannot thank them enough for the
wonderful job they did. I can’t wait to see what GiveCamp can accomplish next
year!!