This post marks a milestone for me.  When I started this site nearly seven years ago I had no idea what I was doing.  Before I got serious about blogging in about a year and a half ago I had only posted 29 times!  Since then I’ve stepped it up a bit.  I’ve written 70 articles and watched my traffic steadily rise.

Back in March of 2010 I had a whopping 151 visitors.  Last month finished with 2,300 visitors and some of them were even human!  I realize that my traffic is still virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things but it’s a bit humbling when I think about how people from around the world are finding and reading my articles.  With that in mind I’m dedicating this 100th post to a good cause and hoping that it will reach a few people.

Across the United States GiveCamp events are being planned.  If you’re not familiar with GiveCamp this paragraph from the national site’s About page sums it up nicely:

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or an application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend.

If you’re a developer looking for a way to give back to your community I highly encourage you to find an event near you and volunteer.  If there aren’t any events near you, organize one.

There are events all over the country.  Here are some for my region:

Ann Arbor, Michigan: Sept. 16 – 18
Indianapolis, Indiana: Oct. 14 – 16
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Oct. 21 – 23
Southwest Ohio: Oct 21 – 23

I understand that a full weekend is quite a time commitment but if you can spare the time please join me and support this worthy cause.