Open source opportunities
An exciting area of development is in open source software and hardware. Open source software projects make it feasible to collaborate with others to learn important new skills via the web by contributing to open source software projects. For hardware enthusiasts, Arduino is an open-source electronics platform. See below for a number of promising efforts to bring technologists, from widespread geographical locations and diverse backgrounds, together to focus on important humanitarian problems.
Open Source Software
OpenHatch - "is an open source community aiming to help newcomers find their way into free software projects." (openhatch.org)
Codeathon for Humanity - Grace Hopper Open Source Day
Connect Code A Thon - emphasis on health information exchange
Humanitarian Free Open Source Software for Society
GNOME - "The GNOME Project is a community that makes great software. GNOME is Free Software: all our work is free to use, modify and redistribute. Everyone is welcome to participate in its development." (www.gnome.org)
The Free Software community has several ongoing projects aiming to increase women's participation, such as the recommendations made by the FSF women’s caucus, the ROSE blog interviews with women in Free Software, and the Ada Initiative. The GNOME community's contribution to this effort is the Outreach Program for Women that encourages women participation throughout the year and creates internship opportunities.
Sourceforge is a repository of many open source software projects. From there you can find each software project's main website, many of which invite volunteers to work on their project.
Open Source Hardware
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It is intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
Adafruit Industries - source of Arduino kits
