Rails - Sep 2006 - Volunteer Opportunity: Disaster Relief Supply Management Database

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* Volunteer Developer for Disaster Relief Database
Feature Development *

Your time each week could help thousands of people!
The Citizen Action Team (CAT),
www.citizenactionteam.org), is a US-based nationwide
group of volunteers. The team is looking for
experienced web developers interested in learning Ruby
on Rails or experienced Ruby on Rails
programmers/developers to help maintain and develop
features for an on-line Disaster Relief Supply
Management Database. The database recently won the
Organizer''s Collaborative award for "Innovative Use of
Technology" and has been used extensively during the
aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

If you qualify and are interested in our mission,
please contact Terra Friedrichs: 978 266 2778 or
terra-vcQs7mVcXCCGivOVbIFw1yapiZJNEepC@public.gmane.org

The CAT database was launched quickly to respond to
the Katrina disaster, using Rapid Application
Development methods. Although the disaster is
almost a year behind us, the Gulf is still in dire
need. Hundreds of volunteers continue to work relief
in the area and we are getting over 700 hits/day on
this site, and it''s on the rise. Servers from other
countries are starting to hit the site. The database
allows all the volunteers involved in Hurricane Relief
to leverage their time by making the process
of finding and placing supplies much easier. We''re
also excited about the potential for corporations to
be able to use the database to donate excess
supplies. We believe that this tool has long-term
merit, as relief workers are also starting to use the
site to address the needs of other US disasters. For
example, relief organizations in New England
responding to the floods and fires in that region are
registering their needs on the database now. We hope
to eventually bring this tool into the international
disaster relief forum.

CAT is currently looking for volunteer programmers to
help develop features for the database which was built
using Ruby on Rals. Some requested features are
relatively straight forward. Others are quite
challenging. We need the programmer to help the team
figure out what it needs, devise a strategy for
developing the features and then do the
programming/testing/launch so as not to disrupt
on-going operations.

Although we would love to have people that are able to
commit a lot of time to this project, we understand
that the best people are always busy. We
believe that we can meet the need for CAT with 10-15
hours of work a week from a good developer, for the
first month or two and 5-10 hours/week on a continuing
basis . If you get excited about the project and want
to do more with the database, that would be great. We
can probably fill up as much
time as you are willing to give.

We are looking for the a developer with the following
qualifications:

· Broad range of IT experience
· Server admin experience
· Experience developing with a variety of database
tools
· Rapid application development (versus old school
development processes)
· Open Source coding experience
· Systems Integration experience
· Proven record of design/test/launch of new features
being integrated into an existing application
· Access to a hosting setup

We are all volunteers and work our own hours from
home. Occasionally there are conference calls,
regarding feature definition and/or
prioritization. We are looking for someone (with a
sense of humor please!) who would enjoy the
possibility of helping tens of thousands of
people with a relatively small amount of your time.

Best,
Terra Friederichs


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