Sheltr.org stars at Random Hacks of Kindness Philadelphia [VIDEO]

The Sheltr.org group, from L to R: Salas Saraiya, Robert Cheetham, Casey Thomas, Cheyne Rood, Mike Ball, Gabriel Farrell and Bula.

Sheltr.org, a mobile-friendly, web application to display nearby housing and food services for needy residents, was the featured tool at Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon held over the weekend at Drexel University.

The tool, built by a volunteer team of seven developers and designers, launched Philly.Sheltr.org, using available homeless intake facility information and a meal-providers data set collected by the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, said team members.

A representative of the city’s Office of Supportive Housing, who was contacted over the weekend by the team, said the department was interested in supporting the project, which could be used by service providers and the general public to more accurately direct distressed members of the street homeless population.

Sheltr was one of six projects created by nearly 40 participants, which also included non-developers, during the second local version of the global hack weekend led by a smattering of tech giants, like Google, NASA and the World Bank. This weekend, Random Hacks events were held in 34 cities, including Philadelphia. Locally, the event was hosted by Drexel University, led by PhD student Michael Brennan and sponsored by Voxeo Labs, CloudMine and, full disclosure, Technically Philly.

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What problems can be solved during Random Hacks of Kindness 2 this weekend?

The second local version of Random Hacks of Kindness to be held at Drexel University is this weekend. It’s the fourth global RHOK, which are held in cities throughout the world.

Like last June, the weekend hackathon is being kicked off with a reception at Indy Hall in Old City where developers and non-developers alike can talk about what could be built, designed and delivered.

RSVP for the free Friday night reception here and the hackathon here. All are welcome. The hackathon is organized by Drexel PhD student Mike Brennan and, full disclosure, the reception is sponsored in part by Technically Philly.

Though participants will be able to choose from problem definitions offered by U.S. AID, Voxeo Labs, NASA, like last June, Technically Philly has collected a few other ideas:

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Philly SNAP: hackathon-built text messaging service to access nutritional assistance retailers begins outreach [VIDEO]

Philly SNAP, a project to create a simple text messaging tool sharing nearby farmers’ markets and stores that accept state supplemental nutrition assistance vouchers, is still being moved forward by its team some three months after it was first conceived at the Random Hacks of Kindness held at Drexel University in early June.

Technically Philly was a sponsor of the event, organized locally by Michael Brennan.

The four-person team has launched outreach to hunger-related nonprofit organizations in the hope that they will share their service with their constituencies. SNAP benefits, which stands for supplemental nutritional assistance program, are more commonly known as food stamps.

After texting a Philadelphia street address to 267-293-9387 — using any text-enabled phone regardless of Internet-access — a Philly SNAP user receives the nearest farmers’ market address, its dates and time of operation, the closet two SNAP-participating retailers and information on how to maximize SNAP vouchers through local fresh food initiatives, said Katey Metzroth, who came to Random Hacks interested in food justice from past nonprofit work but without any web development background.

“This became an important issue for me,” she told Technically Philly, lauding team developers Mark Headd, Tim Wisniewski and Danny Chang.

With that interest, Metzroth has led the group’s outreach effort.

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What problems can we solve during Random Hacks of Kindness this weekend?

This weekend, June 4-5, Random Hacks of Kindness will bring together hackers, developers, coders and designers to build at Drexel University, as we told you last month. RSVP here.

This Friday night, at Indy Hall, we want you all to come grab a (free) beer and talk about what we can accomplish — whether you have any development background or not. Free reservation here.

The international weekend hackathon is targeted for practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges and here in Philadelphia we’re using the recently unveiled resource OpenDataPhilly.org as inspiration. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is co-organizing Random Hacks with Drexel PhD student Michael Brennan.]

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Event Highlights: May 31 – June 4, 2011

Happy Memorial Day Philadelphia.

We hope you are lucky enough to take this day off and enjoy doing summer things. However, your Technically Philly event highlights never take a week off as there are always amazing tech events happening in our fair city. This week, Technically Philly is especially excited to co-sponsoring Random Hacks of Kindness, a weekend-long hackathon at Drexel University.

Elsewhere: Gamers gather and the Philly WordPress Meetup digs in to 3.2.

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Random Hacks of Kindness: hackathon led by Michael Brennan, sponsored by Drexel University and Technically Philly

A 2009 California Random Hacks of Kindness event

Updated: Friday June 3 reception will now take place at Indy Hall.

Michael Brennan owns a big, old West Philadelphia rowhome. He runs a tiny DIY record label.

He also wants to solve global problems with data and technology in small ways. So, when he heard about plans for the third national Random Hacks of Kindness, a weekend hackathon of coders and developers developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges, he thought Philadelphia needed to take part.

REGISTER HERE

“There needs to be a stronger connection between the technology community and the broader problems happening in the world,” said Brennan, 28, a PhD candidate in the Computer Science Department at Drexel University and a technologist for the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the Federal Trade Commission. “I don’t think there’s been enough focus on bringing computer scientists and coders into the room for big problems, here or anywhere.”

So Brennan has taken the lead with Random Hacks of Kindness Philadelphia, co-sponsored by Drexel University and Technically Philly, to be held the weekend of June 4 and 5 and kicked off with a Friday, June 3 reception presented by Technically Philly and coworking space Indy Hall.

The reception will be an opportunity for those without the specific technical know-how to use data in interesting ways to be able to come with ideas about what projects could be broadly useful.

Brennan, a native of Long Island and University of Delaware alumnus, is passionate about being a part of the growing development scene here. “Philadelphia is my chosen home,” he says.

“There’s a large tech and a large nonprofit and academic community here and the strong links are coming together,” Brennan said. “I think this can be part of the common ground.”