Technology can transform lives and strengthen communities when wielded for good. And the Pacific Northwest is home to an impressive share of organizations and individuals leading the charge to make the world a better place through tech-driven initiatives.
This year, we’re excited to celebrate three of the most noteworthy efforts as Geeks Give Back honorees at the 2024 GeekWire Awards.
The recipients are Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s Coding for Cancer, a program connecting teens to computing in the biomedical field; Housing Connector, a nonprofit pairing landlords and renters who have imperfect rental backgrounds; and TrueMedia, a nonpartisan group using AI to detect deepfake videos, photos and audio that spread political disinformation.
The Geeks Give Back category is presented again this year by BECU.
The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Honorees for the Geeks Give Back Award are selected based on community nominations, along with input from awards judges.
In the ten contested categories, finalists are selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges. Community voting across all categories will continue until April 12, combined with feedback from judges to determine the winner in each category.
We’ll announce the winners live onstage at Showbox SoDo in Seattle on May 9. There are a limited number of table sponsorships available to attend the event — and early bird pricing ends March 31 — so get your seats today.
If interested in sponsoring a category or purchasing a table sponsorship for the event, contact us at events@geekwire.com.
Special thanks to Astound Business Solutions, the presenting sponsor of the 2024 GeekWire Awards.
Continue reading to learn more about this year’s honorees for Geeks Give Back.
Coding for Cancer
The Coding for Cancer program at Seattle’s Fred Hutch wants high school students to realize that computing skills have an essential role to play in biomedicine — and give them a chance to do some hands-on learning in the field.
The half-day program runs for four weeks in the summer and is virtual so that it can reach a larger geographical area, including rural areas of Washington state.
Coding for Cancer also aims to serve teens from backgrounds historically excluded from the biomedical sciences, and works with families to provide technological resources — computers or WiFi, for example — that they might not have ready access to.
Students receive a $1,000 stipend after completing the online program and do not need any prior computer science skills.
The goal is to reach students early, to teach them about the possibilities of coding in biomedical sciences before college sets them on other career paths.
Related coverage: Coding saves lives, and Fred Hutch Cancer Center wants the next generation to take note
Housing Connector
As the Seattle area’s housing crisis continues, Housing Connector is trying to level the playing field for the region’s most vulnerable renters.
The nonprofit acts as a matchmaker, connecting landlords looking to fill vacant units and would-be renters who lack perfect rental records due to eviction, low credit scores, or other factors that can contribute to homelessness.
Housing Connector focuses on four main concerns for landlords and property managers: Keeping units full, ensuring reliable rent payments, mitigating the risk of property damage, and maintaining healthy and safe communities. To accomplish this, the organization guarantees rent payment and promises $5,000 in damage insurance for two years. It works with partners to provide conflict mitigation, behavioral support and other social services for renters.
Housing Connector has also teamed up with real estate giant Zillow to build and maintain the Zillow Affordable Housing Search Tool for renters.
Since launching in Seattle five years ago, Housing Connector has expanded to Portland, Ore., Denver and Dallas and has helped more then 6,200 people get housing.
Related coverage: With help from Zillow, this nonprofit wants to change the game for high-risk renters
TrueMedia
TrueMedia is developing an AI-powered tool to detect deepfake videos, photos and audio, aiming to combat political disinformation in the leadup to the 2024 elections.
The nonprofit publicly launched in February and is preparing to release a free, web-based tool that combines advances from TrueMedia technologists with existing deepfake detection tools in areas including computer vision and audio analysis.
It will be available initially for use by journalists, fact-checkers and online influencers before broader public release later in the year.
Oren Etzioni, University of Washington professor and former CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, founded and leads the nonpartisan effort. The Seattle-based group is backed by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp through his Camp.org nonprofit foundation.
Related coverage: New nonpartisan AI nonprofit TrueMedia, led by Oren Etzioni, is making a political deepfake detector
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