Tāhuna Glenorchy Dark Sky Sanctuary
Sky readings taken by hand, two people at a time, and typed into one person's spreadsheet.
Built by local developers. For local good.
Software for community organisations across the Queenstown Lakes district, at no cost to the organisation.
3
6
5 weeks
Open source
This round
Whakatipu Reforestation Trust
Seed, nursery, planting and survival records in Excel files that cannot talk to each other.
Queenstown Mountain Bike Club
Trail audits and feature inspections noted on the trail, then typed up again afterwards.
How it works
One real problem. A local team builds the tool to fix it.
Each team works out what to build with its organisation, builds it around the way they already work, and trains their people to use it. It costs the organisation nothing.
- No cost to your organisation
- One to two hours a week, from one person at your end
- Training, written instructions, and six weeks of free fixes
Five weeks building a tool a local organisation actually needs
Six paid seats across three teams, three senior and three junior, plus intern places. You build alongside local developers you rarely get to work with, roughly 12 hours a week after the ski season closes.
- Paid contract with Startup Queenstown Lakes, at community rates
- A senior developer on the build beside you
- An open repo, and locals using what you built
A small, spread-out tech community, working together
The district has good developers, particularly early in their careers, who rarely get paid local work with real users. They take this on at community rates, well under commercial, because the work is worth doing. This programme is what puts them in a room with experienced local engineers and with the organisations that need the work done.
Everything is open source
Only three tools get built, so each one was chosen partly on how many organisations it could serve. If five need the same thing, the aim is to build it once so all five can use it, rather than once for one of them.
Planned properly and led by senior developers, not a rushed side project
Three tools were chosen by open application, each one picked so more than one organisation can use it. Each was matched with a small team of local developers, led by a senior developer. The programme is run by Startup Queenstown Lakes and funded by the Queenstown Lakes District Council Economic Diversification Fund.
- Every application was read by a panel of local tech and community people
- We agree exactly what is being built with you, before anyone writes code
- Five weeks of building, with something to try each week, then training when we hand it over
- Bugs fixed free for six weeks after you get it, and the code is yours
- Applications open
- Every application read by a local panel
- The three builds announced
- Working out exactly what gets built
- Five-week build, something to try each week
- Showcase Hui, the three tools demonstrated
Queenstown Coders Connect
Startup Queenstown Lakes leads the programme, holds the funding, and is who developers contract to.
Meet the three
Three local organisations, three problems, and five weeks of building from 12 October.