Update: If you are interested in hosting an event, please email me.

The past couple years have seen a tremendous growth in the coderetreat community. Nowadays, it seems like there is at least one happening every weekend. Events in different countries are using skype to keep in touch during the day, and on May 7th, 2011, we even hit a peak of 6 events happening on the same day in several different countries.

Since the beginning of the year, I've been thinking about organizing something larger, something to raise awareness of coderetreat and bring people together from all over the world. Thus, I'm announcing plans for Global Day of Coderetreat. On December 3rd, 2011, we will see 32 hours where there is a coderetreat event taking place somewhere in the world. Coordination and sharing between timezones will be done over video; overlapping coderetreats in differing timezones can virtually 'pass the baton'. In my mind, I see it as a series of intersecting threads wrapping around the Earth.

My goal is to facilitate the first one happening on one side of the International Dateline, potentially Australia. Then, when that one finishes, as coderetreats happen around the world heading west, I'll hop a plane and jump across the dateline to facilitate the last one, possibly in Hawaii. Possible to do? I should have around 16 hours to make it there; it is just a matter of figuring out the flights.

This is a big undertaking; I'm not going to be able to coordinate the whole thing by myself. I'll be putting together a group of primary organizers, one or two per continent. Along with them, each location will need a local host and facilitator to work out the logistics/sponsorships for the local area. If you'd be interested in hosting a participating coderetreat in your area, please contact me.

Support

While local hosts will be responsible for securing as much sponsorship from local companies as they can, we'll be tapping into larger organizations for centralized sponsorship of the event. This sponsorship money will be going towards logistics and subsidies for local events. My dream is to get enough sponsorship to get t-shirts made that can be shipped to all the local events. If you have a company that would like to take part in this, please contact me.

Along with having a great day, another goal of Global Day of Coderetreat is to push the awareness of the goals of coderetreat to the next level. To this end, I'm hoping to get widespread media coverage in both the technical and mainstream markets. If you or someone you know can help in this, please contact me.

And Also...

As coderetreat has grown over the past couple years, I've toyed with the idea of starting up a non-profit to help coordinate sponsorships, as well as provide a mechanism to help subsidize local events that might have trouble finding help from local companies. The time for this has come, so I am also beginning moves to create a non-profit organization, called the "Coderetreat Community Contribution Fund" (C3F). This fund will have an initial mission statement to support local coderetreat events through establishing a centralized subsidy fund. It isn't meant to provide complete sponsorship for local events, instead helping out when there is a shortfall in local sponsorship. I'll also be looking for larger, corporate sponsors that are interested in giving significant or recurring amounts.