"Elixir for Good" community?

I tried to understand what Ruby for Good is, but failed. Could you please provide a short description of how it works.

• do they take money from the non-profits?
• is there a paid core-team?
• the volunteers are not paid I assume?
• essentially as a volunteer I work on open-source projects and do some good but on the other hand can’t do exactly the project I want (but then again have a higher chance that what I do is useful for someone)

Hi Sebb,

While I’m not sure of many of the finer details of how Ruby for Good is structured and operates (and I suspect that there’s some room to tweak things), I can point towards an episode of the “Ruby Rogues” podcast featuring an interview with Sean Marcia, who organises Ruby for Good:
https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/rr-456-ruby-for-good-with-sean-marcia/

Thanks,
Ken.

I don’t have the time to watch a 50min interview.

Hello and welcome,

This might resume what Ruby for good is doing…

From Ruby for good site

Our mission at Ruby for Good is to deliver specialized software development solutions to nonprofit organizations to bolster their critical missions, build an inclusive technology community, and provide technology-focused educational opportunities to underserved communities.

It started in 2013… and now it’s a big project.

You might find many talented people in this forum, I hope You find some willing to start/help Elixir for good

I think that this could be a wonderful project!

Rather than having this be run by the Elixir core team or the EEF I think it would be great for a new team of people to spearhead this one. That way they will have enough time to make this as impactful as possible, while the core team can focus on the language.

Would be good to form a community of projects and people who are working in the “elixir for good” sector. From some blog posts, I know that change.org is using Elixir a bit. Glific is also specifically focussed on the NGO / social impact sector. So would be great to see more folks doing work in this space, so we can benefit from each others strengths and build on our collective work

Lobo

Wow - at the outset, I’m really heartened to find so much goodwill for such an idea so quickly! Thanks to everyone for useful suggestions, etc. This could be a very fun project to be part of, I reckon…

Regarding lpil’s comments, I’d personally be fine with that - and I’m willing to play an active part in such a group. I’ve no idea what kind of time commitment it might entail (that’s probably a “how long is a piece of string?” kind of question), but I’m open to discussing that topic in due course.

Lobo, what you’re suggesting sounds good. I’d be keen to hear you unpack those ideas some more…

For now, I guess one of the first questions would be, how best to get the word out among the Elixir community? This forum post is obviously a start, and I suspect that Mark and the folks at Thinking Elixir might be happy to give the idea a quick plug on their podcast…

Seems to me that this project has got some fine potential. Who knows, I might even improve my own Elixir skills along the way

Cheers,
Ken.

I had another look at their page.
I think they work like this:

They have

1. a (paid?) core-team that coordinates with the stakeholders
2. volunteers that implement the requirements created by (1) see Ruby for Good · GitHub

(1) is hard and something you do not have in a normal open-source project. You need experienced people for this and I do not see how this could be possible without payment.
(2) the smaller problem

Just to throw in a cautionary note (and only that). I don’t really know Ruby for Good, but from a glance at the web site it seems like their main emphasis is facilitating volunteer labour for NGOs. As someone who’s all but left the tech industry in part because it’s so hard to find work within it I consider socially or environmentally constructive, I wonder if that is the most ethically productive direction for developers, who tend to be more flush with money than with time.

I like the notion of an ‘Elixir for Good’ community, so I’m (truly) not trying to be negative. But I’m wondering whether ‘closely modeling’ it on Ruby for Good (if my gist of its purpose is correct) is a useful initial constraint.

Hi Sebb, I don’t have enough knowledge of this kind of project to have much of an opinion yet about the funding side of things, and I agree with you that funding (and more broadly, the sustainability of the project) is a very important consideration. I hope that by putting our heads together (in a COVID-appropriate fashion, of course ) we can find ways to get point 1) addressed, regardless of exactly how it can be made to work.

Crispinb: I think you make some fair and valid points. I guess my intention is to use Ruby for Good’s model as a starting point or launching-off point for EfG and some form of inspiration for it, rather than slavishly following their lead. Anyhow, I suspect that the unique selling points of Elixir / BEAM will naturally lend themselves to addressing classes of problems / challenges that Ruby may not have been a great fit for. Assuming this to be the case, EfG would create and occupy a complementary yet somewhat different niche to RfG, even in terms of the type of projects undertaken.If I put on my Walt Disney-style “dreamer” hat (which I do quite a bit ) I could see Elixir’s prowess in processing data streams being useful in projects for folks like seti.org , environmental and climate monitoring, data science and machine learning competitions, etc etc etc.

Anyhow, the questions you’re asking, and especially the ones about ethics, are the kinds of questions that I think that the steering group and the broader EfG community will do well to consider, if this idea gets up - and I’m optimistic that it will. In my view, lpil’s earlier comment rightly pointed towards the idea that we should consider as a guiding criteria the opportunity to make genuinely impactful contributions to whichever group EfG serves / works with, and I think it’s a point well worth highlighting.

K.