Outbox Uganda hackathons: Get code jamming with RapidFTR

What’s a code jam?

Laptops, drinks, pizza and most importantly code are some of the ingredients that make up what has been termed as a code jam.  The Jams are usually organized by innovation hubs like Outbox Hub, an Innovation hub in Kampala Uganda to nurture, train and mentor upcoming developers to spur the growth of startups.  Sometimes the jams are also organized around certain technologies or projects driven by their communities or sponsored by companies that use technologies.

But they aren’t Hackathons

Now before you read ahead,  code jams should not be confused with hackathons! While both events share most elements, hackathons are a lot more intensive, time bound(usually 24 hours), once in a while  events where developers, business analysts meet sometimes without prior knowledge of each other to develop solutions to specific problems.  Code jams aren’t that intensive and aren’t geared towards pushing certain products within a short period of time.  Code jams are also more frequent and specifically targeted towards certain technologies.

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Jamming with RapidFTR

This particular jam is organized by Outbox Uganda in Soliz house, Kampala in partnership with Thoughtworks  Uganda– an international  software development company that opened shop in Kampala last year.  The jam is around  RapidFTR. RapidFTR is a versatile open-source mobile phone application and data storage system that seeks to help humanitarian workers collect, sort and share information about unaccompanied and separated children in emergency situations so they can be registered for care services and reunited with their families.

RapidFTR’s back-end is built on Ruby with a CouchDB a NoSql DB  as the back-end DB while its web front end is based on Ruby on Rails web framework and the mobile client is based on Android.

What are you waiting for?

Get the code at Github and join the development Google group at [email protected]

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