AI for Good
A multi-chapter regional initiative uniting chapters around annually rotating societal challenges to build solutions with Google's applied AI ecosystem.
Uniting chapters around an annual societal challenge
The GDG AI for Good initiative is a multi-chapter regional program across the Google Developer Groups in North America. Rather than running disconnected, one-off hackathons, the initiative unites chapters around an annually rotating societal challenge (such as environmental resilience, digital accessibility, public health informatics, or workforce readiness).
Local chapters host hacking sprints during the Fall period, where developers, designers, students, and domain experts collaborate to build solutions for community-validated problems using Google’s applied AI ecosystem.
Why chapters build together
Raise awareness of societal challenges and educate the public on the latest AI tools.
Provide a concrete on-ramp for participants to master agent frameworks within AI in an applied, ethical problem space.
Establish a shared evaluation baseline across chapters, fostering cross-chapter collaboration, talent discovery, and measurable impact tracking.
Lasting civic & ecosystem value
Builds a direct bridge between local non-profits, municipal agencies, and GDG talent, delivering actionable open-source repositories to underserved community partners.
Connects collegiate tech enthusiasts, career switchers, and senior engineers across urban and suburban tech corridors, showcasing regional talent to industry sponsors and ecosystem partners.
Generic Universal Evaluation Rubric
This proposed 4-pillar rubric serves as the master scoring guidelines across all chapters and annual iterations to guarantee cross-regional parity.
| Pillar | Weight | Core Focus | Scoring Criteria |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Problem Validation & Social Impact | 25 Pts | Depth of community relevance, beneficiary focus, and quantifiable real-world value. |
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| 2. Technical Innovation & AI Architecture | 25 Pts | Rigor, elegance, and utility of the underlying solution. |
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| 3. Responsible AI, Ethics & Accessibility | 25 Pts | Safety, equity, bias prevention, transparency, and inclusive design principles. |
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| 4. Feasibility, Scalability & Sustainability | 25 Pts | Viability of handoff, operational cost management, and long-term ecosystem maintenance. |
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Intellectual Property & Open Source Licensing
Participants retain 100% ownership of all software, models, and intellectual property created during the event; neither Google Developer Groups (GDG), Google LLC, nor host institutions claim any equity or commercial rights in your work. To ensure community and non-profit partners can deploy, maintain, and scale these civic solutions without legal barriers or licensing friction, all builds submitted to the GDG AI for Good track must be released publicly under the Apache License 2.0, with accompanying project documentation and synthetic evaluation datasets shared under Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0 or CC0).
Attestation & Showcase Rights
By submitting to codingjam.dev, teams warrant that their build is original work, free of unauthorized third-party or employer-owned proprietary trade secrets, contains no unscrubbed personally identifiable information (PII), and adheres strictly to upstream AI foundation model terms of service. Entrants grant GDG and local organizing chapters a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free license solely to index, demonstrate, screenshot, and publicize the project across regional leaderboards, promotional media, and DevFest showcases.
Built something? Two minutes, and it lands in the showcase. Half-finished is fine.
How the session flows
Every Coding Jam follows the same shape, whichever track the room takes.
- 0:00 – 0:15Intro
Grab a name tag and a slice, say hello to the instructor, and meet the people either side of you — you'll be asking them things later, so it pays to know their names now. Low pressure, high creativity, ship something messy. Then a quick word on what the room is building tonight, and you're off.
- 0:15 – 0:30Credits & setup
The instructor shares the Google Cloud credits with the room. Everyone gets their environment ready — whichever tool they brought. Nobody should be installing anything once the build starts.
- 0:30 – 1:35Build
Heads down, and enjoy it — this is the part everyone came for. The agent does the typing; you decide what it's making. Ask the room when you get stuck; someone two seats away hit the same wall ten minutes ago. Want more structure? The codelab walks the spec-driven route — Setup → Plan → Review → Build → API → Verify — but nobody has to follow it.
- 1:35 – 2:00Share & submit
Show the room what you made — two minutes, screen-shared from your seat. Half-finished is welcome; the wobbly ones are usually the most interesting. Say what surprised you along the way, and cheer for everyone else while you're at it. Then submit your build before you leave. This is the one thing not to skip — it's what puts your name and your chapter on the showcase, and it takes about two minutes.