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100% Online Event Aims to Raise Funds for Coding Nonprofits, Including Women Who Code, ScriptEd, and Code.org this December

SAN FRANCISCO – Nov. 11, 2014 – On December 1-4, 2014, some of the brightest minds in computer science will come together at hack.summit() to raise money for coding nonprofits, encourage mentorship in the coding space, and provide words of wisdom for programmers of all languages and skill sets, on a completely digital stage. Tickets are available via donation to partnered nonprofits; those who are unable to donate can earn a free ticket by spreading the word via social media. Full details are available at http://hacksummit.org.

“An unprecedented line-up of programmers have agreed to participate to benefit coding charities” said event organizer Ed Roman.  “The creators of Ruby on Rails, CSS, Google Glass, the Java language spec, Agile, Extreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Heroku, Spark, Bittorrent, UML, the Wiki, and many more will be sharing insights at the summit.”

“Software is a mastery discipline, and nothing advances a mastery discipline more deeply or more effectively than mentorship,” said Tom Chi, co-creator of Google Glass and official advisor of hack.summit(). “That’s why hack.summit() is so important: it lets programmers learn from some of the greatest players in our industry, and that elevates the field across the board.”

“hack.summit() is one hundred percent online, making it completely accessible to developers all over the world,” said event organizer Ed Roman. “This means that it can operate on an unprecedented magnitude, both in attendee capacity and in the pedigree of its participants: almost every one of our speakers would be a keynote at another event, but they’ve all rallied around these coding nonprofits to support the broader programming community.”

Attendees of the summit will have the chance to virtually meet their programming idols via audience Q&As.

The event is sponsored and hosted by hack.hands(), a company that aims to double the speed of programming via instantaneous mentoring. Virtual conferencing technology for the event will be provided by Crowdcast.io using Google Hangouts.

“We are proud to be a part of hack.summit(),” says Women Who Code CEO, Alaina Percival. “The speakers at this event have created the technologies that we use. It is exciting to have so many of our technology heroes speaking at one event.”

 

Speakers:

-Tom Chi (co-creator Google Glass)

-Grady Booch (creator the Unified Modeling Language)

-David Heinemeier Hansson (inventor of Ruby on Rails)

-Brian Fox (invented the GNU Bash shell)

-Hakon Wium Lie (inventor of CSS)

-Qi Lu (Executive Vice President, Microsoft)

-Bram Cohen (inventor of Bittorrent)

-Alex Gaynor (Director, Python Software Foundation, and core committer to Django)

-Sarah Allen (co-creator of After Effects, Flash video, recent Presidential Innovation Fellow)

-Gilad Bracha (co-author of the Java Language Specification)

-Kent Beck (creator of Extreme Programming, created Test Driven Development, co-created Agile, author of 9 books)

-Ward Cunningham (inventor of the wiki, contributed to Extreme Programming, co-author of Design Patterns)

-Hampton Catlin (creator of Sass, Haml, m.wikipedia.org, book author)

-Matei Zaharia (creator of Apache Spark)

-Melody Meckfessel (Google Director of Engineering)

-Jon Skeet (the top answerer on StackOverflow)

-Scott Hanselman (author of multiple books)

-Jeff Haynie (founder of Appcelerator)

-Ryan Bubinski (founder of Codecademy)

-Aaron Skonnard (founder of Pluralsight)

-Floyd Marinescu (founder of InfoQ)

-Steve Newcomb (founder of Famo.us)

-Orion Henry (founder of Heroku)

-Janet Wiener (Engineering at Facebook, big data expert)

-Scott Chacon (CIO, Github)

-Chad Fowler (CTO, Wunderlist, well-known programming educator and blogger)

-Salil Deshpande (open source investor titan)

-Hadi Partovi (founder of Code.org, was in charge of Internet Explorer, advisor to Dropbox and Facebook)

-Rebecca Parsons (CTO, Thoughtworks)

-John Henry Thompson (inventor of Adobe Director and Lingo Scripting Language)

-Yehuda Katz (Ember.js, JQuery, Rails core contributor; inventor of Handlebars)

-Chris Richardson (Java Champion, book author, founder of Cloud Foundry)

 

Attendees can donate to the following organizations:

– Black Girls Code

– Bridge Foundry

– Code2040

– Code.org

– Code for America

Code the Change

– CodersTrust

– CoderDojo

– Ladies Learning Code

– ScriptEd

– Women Who Code

To get a ticket, attendees are encouraged to visit hacksummit.org, select a preferred nonprofit, and then set the value of the donation, which will help support microfinance in Bangladesh, teach computer science to underprivileged students, and drive inclusivity and diversity in the coding space, and more. Attendees can also earn a ticket by spreading the word via Twitter – simply tweet about the event and tag the official hack.summit() Twitter handle, @hack_summit.

“Physical conferences cost money and require travel; their logistics impede efficiency and attendee access,” said Ed Roman. “We see ourselves as stewards of the virtual conference space, and hope that others will be inspired to create events like this in the future.”

For more information on the hack.summit(), check out their website: http://hacksummit.org/.

About hack.summit()
hack.summit() is a virtual conference taking place December 2-4 that seeks to unite the world’s most renowned programming language creators, open-source contributors, and thought leaders to raise money for nonprofits in the programming space and bring awareness to the need for programming mentoring worldwide. Tickets are available via charitable donation or social media participation on the hack.summit() website.

Media Contact:
TriplePoint PR for hack.summit()
hack.summit@triplepointpr.com
415.955.8500