If you want to create successful media projects or informational services for communities, you’ll need skilled programmers—and they don’t just pop out of thin air. Community foundations, nonprofits, news outlets, and others can play a key role in developing the local developer pool, and in getting more programmers involved in local projects.

Software engineer Robbie Trencheny shares some insights on understanding developers, and how to make these relationships work…

Robbie Trencheny is exactly the kind of programmer who can help local projects involving technology get off the ground. He is 20 years old, a self-directed learner, skilled in several programming languages and development tools, possesses ample initiative and imagination to take on new challenges, cares about community, and is helpful, friendly and collaborative. He’s also very active in the open source software community.

Trencheny has participated in several local “hackathons”—events where programmers gather, self-organize into teams, and collaborate on the spot to build solutions to solve problems or highlight the capabilities of certain tools or technologies. He was on prizewinning teams at two recent Bay Area hackathons: Code for Oakland (which focused on providing mobile services based on public data to address urban community needs) and the TwilioCon Hackathon (which showcased the capabilities of a leading mobile development toolset).

Here’s what he wishes organizations which seek to engage developers in community projects really understood about the developer perspective:

“Developers get used a lot, in the negative sense,” said Trencheny. “They’re often overburdened with work, or a client will try to add a bunch of stuff that wasn’t in the initial project. They often aren’t really respected. Often they don’t enjoy working on commercial projects because they don’t like getting bullied.”

People who hire developers often fall victim to magical thinking, as well: “A lot of people think developers know everything. They see something Apple built and think I can build one for them in 20 minutes. It doesn’t work like that.”

He also noted that many of the best programmers are fiercely opposed to the territorial silo approach to coding which is common in commercial software projects. They prefer open source code, because it allows more people to potentially benefit from and build upon their efforts.

“A lot of developers dislike working on projects where the code is not released open source. Personally, I have a problem with the institution of copyright,” he said. “Can you name one software product or technology project intended to help low-income communities that’s commercial?”

According to Trencheny, developers like to be creative. They relish interesting challenges, and most of them really like to help solve problems. But they don’t like being told how to solve problems. Because of this, he sees a strong need for organizations to sponsor and host their own hackathons geared toward open-ended brainstorming on using technology to meet community needs.

“The vast majority of companies that fund hackathons or developer organizations make their own developer platform central to the effort, or otherwise have some promotional role in the game,” he said. “The only large company I can think of outside of Google that leaves the field so wide open would be General Electric: recently they’ve been doing a lot with developer community, and they have a partnership with Makerbots. Obviously they’re trying to recruit programming talent, but still. There’s a lot of room for more sponsorship of open coding efforts.”

Cultivating connections with developers requires engaging developers on their own terms. There’s a mindset divide: Foundations and nonprofits tend to be mission-driven—focusing on issues such as health, jobs, empowerment, transportation, education, food and so on. Similarly, news outlets tend to focus on covering communities more than providing direct services. In contrast, developers like to solve interesting problems.

“It’s hard to get developers engaged around the idea of helping low-income communities,” said Trencheny. “They want to work on problems that they think are ‘sexy.’ They like to hear about datasets and tools and cloud APIs. That’s what made Code for Oakland special—that hackathon compiled a lot of big, interesting local datasets that participants could use. You can namedrop big data to any developer and they’ll be into it.”

Aside from hackathons and contests, which have a defined time frame, there is also an opportunity to support ongoing efforts for community-minded programmers. Code for America is one such initiative, but there’s room for more.

“Somebody should create a community to help foundations and nonprofits find developers,” Trencheny suggested. “There are a lot of developers, and some who are obviously in it for the money—but there are many others who want to help their community.”

Also, foundations and other organizations interested in helping underserved communities could compile a library of relevant datasets, Trencheny suggests. “Data relevancy is key. Data can be used in so many ways, especially to help communities which are defined by geography. It helps developers tailor features like geolocation in mobile apps. For instance, if you have a list of 200,000 U.S. addresses that are related by some criteria, you could build something around that—like helping people find the four nearest unemployment offices or free clinics.”

There also are significant opportunities for long-term capacity building—specifically, helping kids from poor or marginalized communities learn programming skills, and supporting the proliferation of affordable devices and data network access locally.

This could mean funding programs in school or after school, or through community centers or local clubs, or through contests and challenges. For example, the CoderDojo project offers free programming classes to kids, taught by experts, with laptops provided if needed, and includes mentoring. Supporting this kind of effort could prove especially attractive for organizations with an education mission.

“The value of kids and teens learning programming skills at a young age is incalculable,” said Trencheny. “They will take those skills and build apps for the communities where they live. If you support that kind of learning now, it’ll pay off quickly. Kids learn fast and they’re very creative. They like to show what they can do.”

For many people in low-income communities, the cost of computers and smartphones (and their data plans) can be an obstacle. Trencheny notes that underwriting the cost of computers, smartphones, tablets, and data network service might help more people in those communities use technology to improve their lives and communities. But he also mentioned that there’s a lively community of open-source hardware developers, who create devices that anyone can use and modify.

For instance, there’s the open-source Raspberry Pi, billed as by its developers as “a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.”

The bottom line is, don’t underestimate the partnership potential of developers. They’re not mere “code monkeys” who exist to execute other peoples’ plans. Engaging developers as creative partners and actively supporting the developer community can yield lasting payoffs to meet real community needs.

The News Leadership 3.0 blog is made possible by a grant to USC Annenberg from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Knight Digital Media Center at USC is a partnership with the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. The Center is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.