From: betaboston.com

December is a time to reflect on the achievements of the last 12 months and prepare for the new year. And the City Awake festival, which launches today in Boston, is giving individuals and companies focused on social impact the opportunity to do just that.

The goal of this festival is to bring all of Boston’s do-gooders together, to maximize the impact they can all have and raise awareness about the work others are doing, said Justin Kang, a volunteer co-organizer. He said that while other cities are known as hubs as finance, entertainment, or politics, the goal is for Boston to be associated with social impact. “When people think of doing good or making a difference, we want people to think of Boston and we think this is a good first step,” he said.

To accomplish this, the organizers have scheduled more than 85 eventsfor the next 10 days. “We were only expecting 20 to 30 events, to reach 85 is exciting, we hope this will be the start of building an impact community,” Kang said. Events range in subject from hackathons and TED talk-esque presentations to crafting and dancing sessions.

There are, of course, many tech and innovation events on the docket, like an “Ebola Hack-a-thon” at Massachusetts General Hospital, which will look to find new innovative treatments for the disease, a “Girls Who Code” info session hosted at Boston’s Twitter headquarters, and a “Hands on Intro to Data Visualization and Analysis” which will be held at the Impact Hub.

According to Kang, those involved hope to make this festival an annual event. Many of the events are free, those who wish to attend just need to RSVP to reserve a spot. A full listing of all the events can be found on the City Awake festival website.