Last week saw the region's first overnight charity “hack”, Webdurance; 36 gurus teamed up to create new websites for 6 North East charities in a gruelling 24 hour marathon.Beginning at midday the volunteers worked to meet a common goal, in many cases with people they had met that day for the very first time.
“The atmosphere is great, people are swapping ideas and know how. There is a real buzz about the event and it’s going really well.“ - Colette Hume, 5 hours in
The night brought it's own challenges as the volunteers struggled with the need to sleep and flagging concentration.
To make things more challenging, each website needed to be representative of very different charities; ranging from Whoops!, a group helping to teach child safety to Tynemouth Blind Society which cares for partially sighted and blind people.
One thing which organisers Paul and David King were keen to encourage for every website however was the addition of a good content management system.
A recent study carried out by the Institute of Fundraising showed that many visits to charity websites simply end in frustration, with content being out of date or hard to find.
“We wanted to create websites that were easy to maintain and update for each of the charities we were supporting.” said Paul King, Managing Director of internet software company 1DayLater and co-founder of Webdurance.
“Many charities are, for the most part, managed by very passionate and exceptional people who are often non-technical”
“By developing websites which can easily be managed after the event we hope to extend their lifespan and give charities more control over the message they put out”
The event gained great support from regional innovation drivers; Sunderland Software City and Codeworks as well as local software companies; 1DayLater, Touchscape and Bond Solutions. VONNE; an organisation for local volunteers, also lent their support.
Bernie Callaghan, CEO of Sunderland Software City, said; “We were delighted to get involved with supporting the Webdurance event. Not only does it provide our talented software engineers with a novel showcase, but it also benefits some extremely worthy causes which might otherwise struggle to get a powerful web presence”
Our aim is to develop the software industry throughout the North East region. The fact that this initiative not only involved local developers and designers but was also conceived and managed by local software entrepreneurs demonstrated the talent, creativity and drive that abound in the North East”
Now with the success of their first event, Paul and David hope to make Webdurance an annual occurrence; and to grow year-on-year to support more struggling charities.
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