Call for Code Blogs

Since the creation of Call for Code, IBM has tackled society’s most pressing issues by partnering with a wide collection of humanitarian experts and leading tech providers. This ecosystem is what sets us apart. It helps developers get the real-world insights and tools you need to create innovative solutions and deploy them wherever they’re most needed. We rely on partners like HERE Technologies to help inspire and power each new wave of solutions.

HERE, a location and technology platform, joined Call for Code in April. They provide location services APIs that let you access geospatial data, routing, geofencing and interactive maps. Working together with the HERE team, we realized this technology was a perfect fit for our starter kits: the quick start-guides to help you start creating applications tied to easy-to-understand use cases in just minutes. HERE’s code and APIs are featured in both the COVID-19 community cooperation starter kit and the climate change disaster resiliency starter kit.

“When you combine HERE’s highly accurate location technology with IBM Watson, you give developers a sophisticated tool set which can be used to help solve the world’s most challenging problems,” said Mithun Dhar, VP Developer Relations and Self-Serve Channel for HERE.

So far, hundreds of developers have signed-up for HERE APIs to build their Call for Code solutions, including Dave Chura who created Safe Queue. Safe Queue is one of the top three solutions IBM selected in May as part of our accelerated COVID-19 track for early deployment.

Safe Queue is a community-driven mobile app that replaces physical lines at shopping centers, small businesses, and polling places with on-demand virtual lines, to enable a safer way to manage entry during COVID-19. This solution builds on IBM Cloud Foundry for web app hosting, HERE technologies for geolocation, and IBM Cloudant to store data. We are currently working with experts from HERE to help Safe Queue take their solution to the next level.

I invite you to check out HERE’s technology in our starter kits and join the Call for Code Global Challenge, open for submissions through July 31st. Watch this replay of our recent Disaster Resiliency Livestream to learn how HERE Technologies can help you build solutions to combat COVID-19 and Climate Change.