Computer giant IBM is asking software developers to join the global fight against the COVID-19 crisis. The company expanded its 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge to include solutions that address the pandemic, in addition to climate change.

“The ability for us to actually bring the developer community to bear on some of society’s most pressing issues was really the concept upfront,” said Willie Tejada (pictured), general manager and chief developer advocate at IBM Corp. “And IBM would help by bringing subject matter experts together, making available tools, because we’re thinking let’s solve the problem exactly how we solve it when we apply business.”

Tejada spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. They discussed the details of the third edition of Call for Code, the projects that won the first two years of the challenge, and how open source can power the solutions. (* Disclosure below.)

Projects will reach three areas

When responding to the crisis, developers must focus on initiatives in three main areas: crisis communication, remote learning, and community cooperation.

“You look at the news, and [there are] tremendous examples of community collaboration where technology can help scale or broaden that. That’s really where Call for Code actually comes into play,” Tejada said.

To boost the solutions presented in the challenge, IBM bets on an open-source strategy. “Each of the winners every year have the opportunity essentially to go through the Linux Foundation and have their solutions established as a project with the idea … that people can download it and fork it, people can actually fortify it,” Tejada explained. “It’s available to the whole globe, everybody in the world, to help build upon and fortify and continue to innovate on.”

In addition to encouraging the creation of such tech solutions, IBM wants to see these initiatives actually being implemented. Therefore, the company committed another $25 million for testing, scaling and deployment — an amount that was added to the original $30 million budget for the five-year global challenge.

“When you win a Call for Code Global Challenge, you also get IBM’s support around deployment, fortification, some counseling and relation … from development, to architecture, to even the business side of it,” Tejada said.

Challenge brought together 168 countries

For this year, IBM expects to see participation three times above that recorded in past challenges because of the amount of goodwill that currently exists as people try to solve pandemic problems.

In the past two years, there have been more than 210,000 developers participating in 168 countries, with more than 8,000 applications submitted in the period. The first two editions of the challenge were focused on solutions to problems arising from natural disasters, such as fires, tsunamis, floods and hurricanes.

The first-year winner was Project Owl, which developed a solution to quickly establish an ad hoc communication grid after natural disasters. Last year, the winner was a team called Prometeo, with a solution built by a firefighter, a nurse, and a developer.

“The concept [was] roughly of how do they monitor essentially a firefighter’s situation when they’re actually in the heat of battle to best allocate the resources to the people who need them most,” Tejada concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. Neither IBM Corp., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE