Today marks the 4th Atlanta 48in48 event! WHAT?!
This is an incredible day. I can barely wrap my head around it, actually.
Almost five years ago, Adam and I hatched a plan to put on a hackathon at Ponce City Market with the goal of building 48 nonprofit websites over a 48 hour period. We’d invite some friends to come and we’d beg and plead some companies to donate (food, drinks, and cash) to help us put on the event. Then cross our fingers, hold our breath, and work our tails off…
Since then, 48in48 has been on quite a ride. To bring you up to speed, here’s the history:
2015: Atlanta
2017: Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Minneapolis
2018 (first half): Raleigh, Bloomington (Illinois), and Boston
2018: Atlanta and New York this weekend, and London on Nov 2nd
That’s 10 events completed, with this weekends Atlanta and New York events (running simultaneously) being the 11th and 12th. And our first international event in November! WHAT?!
After this weekend, we will have built over 500 nonprofit websites since we started the company. That’s $18 million of donated services with over 1,500 volunteers.
Today’s Atlanta event will be extra special for me. It’s our 4th in Atlanta, and we have 400 volunteers signed up to help! And we’re hosting at the Dragon Army + Dagger offices. So, yeah, that’s cool :)
So many of my friends, so many of YOU, have helped support 48in48 since the beginning, and I so appreciate all of you. And I hope to see you later today!!!
Here are some shots from our first event in Atlanta four years ago… we were babies :)
My first name badge :)
The volunteers that first year were so great, and there’s Carole (third from the left) who was our Executive Director in 2016 and 2017! She’s now our head of development and doing a GREAT JOB ;)
Two of my favorite volunteers, and people. One of the best things about 48in48 is I get to hang out with a bunch of my friends :)
More friends, and two more of my favorites…
We’ve changed many things about our events over the years, but we have always kept the tradition of ending the event with our amazing judges picking the top three websites. Here we have Tad at Delta Air Lines announcing the winner of our first event!
Delta has been supporting us from the beginning and without them there’s no way we would have had this much success. Thanks, Tad and team :)
