Dr. Dobb's Journal - July 2008 - (Page 15)

EWB-U SA Pri nceton Chapte r: A Ethiopia rsi Negelle, Project Wagner decided last year to put together a developer contest and partnered with CMP Technology (Dr. Dobb’s parent company at the time) to do it. EWB emerged as “a great fit for the contest,” he says. The plan was to have contest participants work on different modules, such as project queries, a GIS query, and reporting, with the goal of addressing as many needs identified by EWB as possible. The contest, for whatever reason, did not come together, but in the process of planning it, Wagner learned a lot about the organization, “and the more I learned the more my enthusiasm…grew.” The concept of a world without national borders is one that you, as a software developer, are already familiar with. You doubtless collaborate with programmers or customers in other countries, you interact online with professionals sometimes without knowing what country they’re posting from, your business probably has more than a nodding acquaintance with software markets in other countries, even back in school you probably worked on projects in multinational teams. At least within this professional context, you live in the whole world. But we all do: It’s just that your work makes you aware of it. EWB recognizes this borderless-world truth and considers the moral and ethical implications. Typically, EWB projects originate in the chapters as proposals. An application review committee vets these proposals, and either approves or declines them. Projects can also be proposed by organizations without any chapter affiliation; if such a proposal is approved, it gets posted to the ESB-USA for adoption by a chapter. Because “potential projects go through a rigorous evaluation process,” Wagner points out, “EWB invests time, resources, and money on projects that are not only meaningful but life-changing for the communities/villages that will benefit from their help.” Beginnings University of Colorado Professor of Civil Engineering Bernard Amadei found himself in a Mayan village of about 250 people in Belize in April, 2000. He’d been invited to advise on putting in a water-delivery system for the village, which had no running water, sanitation, or electricity. With a team of engineering students and an investment of $14,000, Amadei delivered the goods within about a month, choosing a ram pump as the most efficient, sustainable design under the local conditions. The project “demonstrated the potential of professional and student engineers working together to help a local, underdeveloped community create a sustainable solution,” according to the EWB-USA site. The experience “really changed my life,” Amadei said. “It was an epiphany, a way for me to realize that engineering was not just technical solutions or providing technical solutions; it had very strong social components.” Later that year he founded EWB-USA. Today, the organization has over 200 developing or established chapters, at work on over 170 projects in over 40 countries. Two years later, Amadei cofounded EWB International, a loose group of autonomous organizations with the same goals. July 2008 l www.ddj.com l Dr. Dobb’s Journal 15 http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - July 2008

Dr. Dobb's Journal - July 2008 Contents Friday Night Fish Fry Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook Engineers Without Borders Conversations Patricia Tries Event-Based Architectures Graphs Versus Objects Lock-Free Queues Dr. Dobb’s Architecture & Design World Java and the Nokia N10 Internet Tablet Effective Concurrency The Agile Edge Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - July 2008

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