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{"name":"CODE","tagline":"Champaign Organization of Developers & Engineers","body":"Associated with:\r\n\r\n## Champaign County Economic Development Corporation\r\n\r\n<address>\r\n1817 South Neil Street, Suite 100\r\nChampaign, Illinois 61820\r\n217.359.6261\r\nedc@champaigncountyedc.org\r\n</address>\r\n\r\n## Introduction\r\n\r\nMany members of the group may not know the history of CODE. In brief... The\r\nclosure of Motorola's Champaign site in 2007 dumped 200+ tech professionals\r\ninto the local job market. We knew that this was more than the community\r\ncould absorb, so a group of employees got together to attract businesses to\r\nthe area. Through their efforts and coordination with other local\r\norganizations, Yahoo! and Qualcomm sites were opened. Since then, we have\r\nhelped to attract other companies and to spawn projects to benefit the local\r\ntech community.\r\n\r\nA small group of people constitute the current CODE board. These are not\r\nelected positions. The leaders are volunteer who have the drive and passion\r\nfor developing the community at their own time and expense. We meet\r\ninformally with local organizations and coordinate mostly through email.\r\n(Personally, I would like a slightly more formal organization.)\r\n\r\nMostly, the CODE board is an influencing organization. We have no income, but\r\nwe have lots of contacts with local and remote businesses, organizations, and\r\nindividuals.\r\n\r\nOur projects include: working with the EDC on a central community job board;\r\ndiscussions with Parkland about starting a Mobile Development Certificate\r\nprogram; meeting with the U of I to help them understand the needs of local\r\nbusiness and to help make hiring from the University more accessible for\r\nmedium or small business. We have worked on or discussed many other projects,\r\nbut we are constrained by the number of volunteers we have.\r\n\r\nRegarding meetings... We have discussed having quarterly, or even monthly,\r\nmeetings and events of various types for the technical community. The EDC\r\nalready sponsors regular TechMixes. (One was held yesterday evening.) Most\r\nlikely, I think that the first set of open meetings for CODE should be\r\nquarterly meetings to discuss the needs of the technical community and how we\r\ncan act to push those items forward.\r\n\r\nWe would gladly be a conduit for helping to advertise meetings on technical\r\ntopics, but we would need someone from the community to volunteer to lead and\r\norganize the meeting. Our current volunteers are at capacity.\r\n\r\nIf anyone would like to volunteer to assist in any capacity, we would welcome\r\ntheir help.","google":"","note":"Don't delete this file! It's used internally to help with page regeneration."}