Opening the doors to the community at TechFestNW: Sunday Hack Day features three tracks for hackers of all kinds

One of the more important aspects of TechFestNW is helping the aggressively humble Portland startup scene celebrate itself. And get together to meet one another. That’s part of the reason for the pre-event TechCrawl and GeekWire party tonight. And it’s also the reasons we open up the doors to the community for the TFNW Hack Day on Sunday.

Last year, we focused on providing access to a number of APIs for our hack day. And while we had a number of interesting projects come out of the day, many folks asked if it would be possible to round up a few projects to which they could dedicate some time.

We heard you. So this year, there will be three different ways to participate in the hack day (whether you’re a developer or not).

First, we have the “make something” track. It’s the API track for folks who want to muck around with interesting technology. This portion of the hack day is sponsored by MailChimp Mandrill and Pearson. Okay, I’m sure you get the transactional email, but what does Pearson bring to the table? A whole bunch of content available through an API.

The company behind Penguin Books, the Financial Times and multiple education businesses now has a developer platform. Explore and test our APIs, and build your own applications using our exciting content.

I can’t wait to see what folks come up with.

Second, we have the “help someone” track. It’s the track designed for folks who want to contribute to an existing project. Sponsored by WebVisions and Day On, the Hackathon for Social Good has three interesting projects on which you can work.

Bet for Good: A website for The Love Comes (Barcelona, Spain) that will be used to raise money to address hunger, homelessness and economic disparity. Users wager credits/points on sporting events (national or local) and use the points that they win to get prizes. Credits/points are purchased by users and the revenues help purchase goods and services to help local nonprofits such as food banks, housing groups and economic development (micro loans, etc.)

Platform for Good: A website for the Hackathons for Social Good that allows individuals and teams to contribute to social good projects. The site is a repository for project plans, code, documents and contributor information. Github has agreed to help with the code repository component.

Day On: Day On is an all-volunteer, zero-cash-flow collaboration to connect nonprofit organizations that need advice and assistance with volunteers who are ready to help.

For more info, see the post by Day On.

Third, we have the “try something new” track. Sponsored by ICANN Labs, this track will give folks early access to a new offering from ICANN.

ICANN Labs is a new digital platform intended to foster collective experimentation and innovation within ICANN and Internet governance. Sign up for ICANN Labs at labs.icann.org to contribute feedback and receive regular updates about the experiments we are running. We are currently running four experiments across the following tracks: Education, Communication, Discovery, and Conversation. We look forward to collaborating with you!

And word around the campfire is that Evan “@rabble” Henshaw-Plath will be in attendance to answer questions. And participants in the hack have a chance to win passes to Lean Day West, as well.

How awesome is that? There’s something for everyone. No matter what you hack. And there’s sure to be a project or two that you’ll be able to help with. Plus, you’ll get to meet some of the amazing folks from the Portland tech scene, to boot.

Again, the TFNW Hack Day on Sunday is open to the public. Please feel free to RSVP. To attend the entire event and get into MusicFestNW, visit TechFestNW. (Startups get a discount.)