Community Management

Your Neighbour is Mapping

It has been a month since the Nepal Earthquake occurred and the digital humanitarian response has somewhat slowed. We remain mindful of the lives lost and potential long recovery period. As with every emergency now, global civic tech and mapper communities connect. In this case, our friends and colleagues at Kathmandu Living Labs were at the centre. This was the largest collective response as of yet. Time and analysis will tell us how effective we were and inform the next stages. The number of contributors across organizations with diverse skillsets/offerings ranged from 40,000 with Tomnod, 2800 with MicroMappers with leaders Standby Task Force (Over 170) and over 6000 with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. We were inspired by the tremendous leadership of Kathmandu Living Labs(KLL) who together with partners like Humanity Road deployed of the most successful Ushahidi deployments for crisis response. KLL also co-lead the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team activation.

It is increasingly evident that the response changed Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s (HOT) community. Now that some of us have had some time to rest and reflect, it is only fitting to host a session at State of the Map US on “Your Neighbour is Mapping“. How can we learn and foster civic tech like OpenStreetMap around the world, especially building on the lessons from the Nepal response? And, while we think big, consider neighbourhoods and regions that could be foster the civic tech spirit of OpenStreetMap in their own language, culture and traditions. Add to a discussion how to diminish the mapper gender divide.

State of the Map – US Tickets are going fast (Get yours by June 1st, 2015).

State of the Map – United States – Join us!

State of the Map – US, organized by the OpenStreetMap US team, will be held at the United Nations. There are many sessions about the wider OpenStreetMap community, technology and use cases. HOT members and community contributors will also be leading a number of conversations. Leaders include Dale Kunce, Kate Chapman, Mikel Maron and John Crowley to name a few. We are also planning on hosting a Birds of a Feather (informal chat) about HOT and the community.

Together with Ivan Gayton of Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF) I will be co-hosting a session. We want to spark a conversation on how we think OpenStreetMap’s community can get to the next 1 Million people. Both of us will ask: “what does implementation look like?” (even with the hard questions) There are many OSM and HOT projects around the world each with their own networks and activities. Drawing on his Missing Maps experience, Ivan will cite his lessons from hosting Missing Mapathons and field work in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Missing Maps is a partnership between HOT, MSF and American Red Cross). As a HOT Board member for the past 3 years, I’ve been engaged in many community maturity and community growth conversations. We need to keep building on this. With some many contributors, how can we improve their experience and keep them engaged? To me, OpenStreetMap changed with the Nepal response. HOT changed. This a great thing. Now, how do we learn and pivot?

Elasticity means Local leads Global

Mapathons from Japan, Brazil, US, to Germany, local leaders in Nepal, and over 6000 contributors globally mapping using pre- and post-disaster imagery were just some of the community highlights from the Nepal response. Add to that all the guides on how to map everything from heliopads to Displaced Persons Camps and very detailed discussions about process, validation, imagery analysis and best practices for onboarding new mappers. HOT has always been an accordion growing for large activations and staying the course for longer term projects. We have learned so much about what we need to be more sustainable. This means everything from better training, software improvements, community microgrants, mentorship, and community development. But the biggest reminder is what makes HOT so special: yet again the local community, in this case, Nepal truly lead and taught the global ‘surge’ support what was needed while collaborating with official humanitarians.

We need to foster local OSM communities and civic tech hubs like Kathmandu Living Labs or HOT Indonesia. And, in doing so, recognize that we have so much to learn and share about global collaboration. It is my theory that much like the open data movement, these large pockets of OSM will alter the fabric to make it truly global. There were some moments during the Nepal Response when I would open my email and gasp with pride at the sheer collaborative generousity of people trying to map for good. The earnest spirit and drive to deliver the best maps to support humanitarians is what drives me to support HOT as their President. So, funders, (warmly) get ready for some phone calls. We need help to keep the momentum. And that we see how the lists of items that the new and long-standing contributors provided deserves consideration.

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OpenStreetMap in Qatar

I live in Doha, Qatar. When I moved here I researched the state of “open communities” and made some contacts. Some allies include QMIC, AL Jazeera, IctQatar, Qatar Living and Mada Qatar. At Qatar Computing Research Institute, we also use and create open source software, including OSM. The crux of the issue is that Doha is changing everyday and maps are quickly out of date. But, if there was a strong OSM community then this could be tackled. Countless times trying to explain location with faulty GPS or building names teaches me daily on the true need for OSM to grow here. There are people who want to build businesses on top of the base layer. They want the skills. Some immediate goals are to translate LearnOSM.org needs to be in arabic and begin hosting mapping parties. The good news is that I have located a small map cohort. Come September, we will host Maptime Meetings. Now, Doha does not need HOT for ‘economic development’ like other regions of the world, but Doha’s OSM mapping community will benefit from HOT tools and best practices.

(Map icon: by Mister-Pixel from Noun-Project)

17May

Working with and through Volunteers

Alex Rose, Disaster Program Manager for the American Red Cross (ARC) gave an informal talk at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) about working with and through volunteers. QCRI is very keen to tie our humanitarian software research and development to real world work. Thanks Alex for sharing your work with our staff and summer interns.

As a humanitarian volunteer and staff, he shared examples about volunteer engagement and motivation. Los Angeles is a large city with a high risk of earthquakes. He wove stories of volunteers with examples on how resilient societies like Los Angeles can augment their communities with logistics planning and volunteer engagement. How would Doha prepare for a large emergency? Do we have the community infrastructure to support the official responders? Ironically, during the whole presentation, the fire alarms were being tested in the QCRI Tornado Tower offices. Always be prepared.

******

One of my goals in Qatar and the GCC is to create a Digital Qatar or Digital GCC network. We have much to learn from building online communities. Are we supporting healthy ecosystems for people to feel rewarded and motivated? Are we providing enough training and leadership? During the question and answer session, Mr. Rose encouraged both digital and local communities to provide letters of thanks and certificates for training. This is core to community growth and very much a best practice that we can all learn from the ARC. Based on the guest talk, I will be making some refinements to the MicroMappers process to incorporate better engagement.

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Traveling to Doha

At QCRI, we encourage technologists, researchers, software companies and humanitarians to visit our offices and provide a session on your work. We want to encourage learning from practitioners and leaders to share their story. Please do drop me a line and I’ll make the arrangements.

14May

Using your Voice to Amplify your Career

Mentoring is one of the most rewarding experiences in my career. Over the years, I have learned from mentors many skills on how to build my network, develop my skills, speak publicly and find my voice. Today I had the opportunity to share my experiences with the Qatar Computing Research Institute‘s Summer Interns. I am very thankful to my teachers and mentors for guiding me. Certainly as a mentee and mentor, I consider it a goal to be a lifelong learner. Do you have tips and ideas about amplifying your career? I’d love to learn from you.

Here are the slides with notes, articles, tools and techniques that might help you:

10May

Welcome QCRI Summer Interns

Remember when you were a student? As a library studies student, I recall this unique combination of overwhelmed excitement and earnest curiousity. Now, it is a pleasure to give back. Working and living in Qatar adds special dimension: everywhere you turn there is a priority focus on education. This is even more supercharged as I work at Qatar Foundation with the Qatar Computing Research Institute.

Summer is here and today was the first day of the QCRI Summer Internship program. Dr. Eman Al Fituri, QCRI’s Director of Education Initiatives, inspired students from many local universities to join the internships offered across the various divisions. The program is in its 4th year and has doubled in size of applicants and participants. My team at Social Computing has 14 students working including such diverse research topics from wearable eye tracking to twitter trends in the MENA region, show me healthy food in Qatar via Instagram, Summarizing the Perception of Qatar on Twitter, Mobile/wearable health sensing and interaction, and Political tweets in MENA countries. And, the Social Innovation team welcomes our Sysadmin intern. Over the course of the internship, I will highlight the amazing students and research outputs.

Each of us is focused on the learning journey for the students. Being a teacher and mentor is so rewarding on both parts of the engagement. We are delighted to contribute to the mission of QCRI and Qatar Foundation to build local technical capacity. Often I joke that I am here in Qatar to deliver Social Innovation programs and find a local leader to replace me someday. On a personal note, it has been very rewarding to work with the QCRI Social Computing team to review and coordinate the internship program. For the summer, I will be coaching and mentoring on presentation and career development.

So, welcome student interns: you are our teachers and the future!

13Apr

Communicating at Disaster Management Camp

The 6th Annual Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp (QRC DMC) successfully united over 300 participants for 10 days of intense practical training. My compliments to the Qatar Red Crescent staff, International Federation of Red Crescent and Red Cross, other trainers/guest speakers and participants for a very professional and often all too realistic training camp. On behalf of Dr. Sofiane Abbar, Dr. Sarah Vieweg and our team, thank you for including Qatar Computing Research Institute in your event.

Participants at the DMC included Qatar Red Crescent Staff, staff of other Red Crescent societies, the Qatar EMS, Qatar Civic Defense, other official entities and volunteers. A portion of the participants were divided into training teams designated by colour code. These groups received training across various humanitarian and emergency scenarios including water and sanitation, shelter, food and nutrition, search and rescue, medical response and communications.Participants were responsible for the activity from their training track for the remainder of the day. The Social Media and New Technology class taught by my co-host, Ali El-Sebai El-Gamal (Qatar Red Crescent), and I held a one hour training for 6 days with 6 different teams. Before and after class, I created online communications, attended scenarios, joined classes and other camp activities. Every day people talked with me about the potential of Digital Humanitarian skills, Qatar Computing Research Institute’s work and best practices of social media during emergencies. So, if students attended the Media and Communications track, they were then responsible for all camp communications for the day (as with all the other tracks.) The Media and Communications track included media handling, communications methods, GPS, Satellite phones, radios and social media. We observed social media and communications training translate practical communications activities during the scenarios. The methodology of learn by doing provided students with a richer experience. The communications teams used their social savvy to practice online verification and human computing (harnessing ‘your network’), they live-tweeted events, crushed rumours and held press conferences with Twitter. They used WhatsApp to relay critical information during scenarios between two emergency sites, thus having the medical center receive updates via radio, phone and a WhatsApp messaging group. Pictures were also sent via WhatsApp by the response team to medical team to help them prepare.

المتحدث الرسمي باسم غرفة العمليات تتحدث للصحافة عن الاستجابة والاحصاءات الأولية #مخيم_الكوارث6 pic.twitter.com/vOTYxD34Ec

— Haneen Suliman (@haneen81) April 7, 2015

See our updated Storify (aggregation of social media) of the Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp. While the photos include smiling faces, note that we often delayed or obscured social content during some difficult scenarios. After all, the purpose of the camp is not only about communications and storytelling. Some of the participants have previously participated in humanitarian response. Some of the new trainees will be trained more and deployed. On the last day of the QRC DMC, I watched faces of participants and staff knowing full well that they may experience the best and worst of humanity. The teaching moments abound as I consider how to apply this experience to our work at Qatar Computing Research Institute. I have some ideas based on the feedback from staff and participants. Stay tuned on the implementation after I do some reflection and consultation.

Often the scenarios and conversations resulted in participants and staff highlighting ethical issues around these communications tactics. It was fantastic to hear people question issues around social media from privacy, security, access, trusted sources and the best practices. As humanitarians, they will face a wide range of issues so training instincts and debating tools/tactics is so important. The reality is that within a camp such as this it is possible to see just how pervasive new media may be during some emergencies. It is true though that this adds a complexity to their already difficult work. But the point of highlighting these tools and techniques is really training for “IF” social media and messaging becomes a factor in their real field work.

DATA: Disaster Management Camp Participant Use of Social Media and New Technology

Every day I collected a straw poll (informal survey) in my class. I asked people about their use of social media and new technology. Sometimes there were people missing from the groups due to meetings, so the numbers are not exact. However, this gives you a window into the DMC’s community technology use. Thanks to Infogram for the tools to tell this data story. How to use: click on the radio buttons to see the data by group and by type of social media/technology tool.

Qatar Red Crescent | Create infographics

(Photo 1: Said Tijani, Qatar Red Crescent, at the QRCDMC April 3, 2015 scenario, credit: Heather Leson CCBY; Photo 2: Suma (QRC) at the QRCDMC April 7, 2015 scenario).

17Mar

Break into Conversation with MIT and Michael Stonebraker

The Doha knowledge economy mandate means free and frequent access to global technical and entrepreneur leaders. A few weeks ago I attended an event Your Middle East Start-up and heard a compelling talk from Swedish Ambassador, Ewa Polano on how entrepreneurship means fostering innovation. Well, this week, serial entrepreneur Michael Stonebraker will be at the Qatar National Convention Centre to talk about “How to Start a Company in Five (maybe not so) Easy Steps by Michael Stonebraker”.

If you are a local Entrepreneur or curious, the team at Qatar Computing Research Institute would like to invite you to hear Mr. Stonebraker’s talk on Sunday, March 22, 2015. Register here for free.

About Michael Stonebraker: A pioneer of database research and technology for more than 40 years, Mike Stonebraker has founded nine start-ups to commercialize database technologies. In this talk, he discusses his experiences and the steps one needs to take to get a new venture off the ground. He will touch on topics such as intellectual property, incorporation, distribution of ownership, and will also highlight pitfalls to avoid.

Mike is an adjunct professor at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and co-founder and co-director of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data.

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MIT and QCRI: Project Overviews

We invite you to join the annual research project review meeting by QCRI and MIT-CSAIL. On Sunday, March 22, 2015, we will dive into the current projects and progress. This special event provides more detailed look at technical innovations from this collaboration. One of the projects includes my Social Computing colleagues: Punya – a easy apps development platform for humanitarians.
Register for free here.

Both events are at the Qatar National Convention Center. See you there!

15Mar

Play Data: Analyzing Gaming Interactions and Behaviour

A sense of play can teach us about interaction and behaviour for online communities. Where can we find a large dataset for this type of research? Well, Jaideep Srivastava, Social Computing Research Director Qatar Computing Research Institute, recently presented results from hours of not playing the Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPGs). Instead, he and colleagues massively played with user data. His analysis of some of the results highlight the need for all communities to really look at the user experience while building mechanisms for mentoring and feedback. For those of us who spend time trying to foster and grow healthy communities, we often turn to metrics. Online communities need to dig into the interaction data. But, that is a topic for another day. Let’s dig in some of the highlights of Jaideep’s work.

Dr. Jaideep Srivastava presented Understanding Social Dynamics Tools & Techniques: Interaction and Behaviour in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (PDF) at the Machine Language and Data Analytics Symposium, an event hosted by the Qatar Computing Research Institute and Boeing (Doha, March 9 – 10 2015). The symposium convened researchers, practitioners, students, and industry experts in the fields of machine learning, data mining, and related areas to present recent advances, to discuss open research questions, and to bridge the gap between data analytics research and industry needs on certain concrete problems.

MMORPGs record every interaction of tens of millions of players. This is a research scientist’s data set dream. How can we understand behaviour and interaction in these games? What can it teach us to build better software? Stronger communities? And, my big takeaway, how can we activate this type of research to better support spaces for other communities like Digital Humanitarians? Why do people stay involved in games and why do they leave?

Dr. Srivastava and team analyzed the relationship between social engagement, trust and player retention. Turns out that we all want a small town online. We want to have a virtual cup of coffee (or tea) with our neighbours. His analysis of Everquest’s community shows that stability and success can potentially be attained by building socialization and being mindful of opportunities to build trust within the game. Plus, he highlights how this interaction and behaviour data proves that community is a profit center. The gaming community shows this with their costs for add-ons and features. Other communities need to think about these lessons as they build great places to do __(fill in the blank)___ together. And, software creators need to think about community and feedback loops as part of their design from the beginning.

How are you analyzing your community data?

Digital Humanitarian and Open Source communities could learn a lot from other global online communities, especially these successful gaming communities. Over the years, I have spoken with software developers and funders about the power of community. Often, I hear: We don’t fund or prioritize community because there is no profit from it. Well, this continues to be a myopic view. If you want results (re: shiny metrics), you need to nurture and invest. While not all communities have access to data stores like these large MMORPGs or access to top notch researchers, we can still learn.

RESOURCES: Jaideep’s slides for Understanding Social Dynamics Tools & Techniques: Interaction and Behaviour in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (PDF) and his paper on Churn Prediction (PDF download)

This is why I am so excited at QCRI to be given the opportunity to collaborate on research and open source software development with a focus on local community engagement. You see, in the middle east, things get done by building strong relationships. (To be honest, I think that this values exist all over the world, but is just sometimes overlooked.) It is my hope that we can build on Dr. Srivastava’s work for our software in QCRI Social Innovation with a focus on Qatar. There is a burgeoning Qatari online community in many social forums. While the Qatari social data sets are not in the millions of users, it is home and we are neighbours.

4Mar

Opportunity Knocks: Maps and Data Jobs

What if your work day involved creating software and programmes that could make a difference? I often refer people to ICT4D Career Network that Wayan Vota and crew curate or Relief Web or Liberation Tech jobs list. [Edit: A friend shared these resources too: Social Enterprise Jobs and ReWork Please share these with your network as they are amazing resources.]

In the past 5 years, there has been a growth in jobs in the technology for change/humanitarian space. I’ve been very fortunate to work with some of these organizations. Truly, the number of consultant and full-time jobs is growing, so if you are ready to join the Tech for Change career track, do keep in touch. People often send me jobs as I network frequently. I really defer to Wayan’s list often, but sometimes groups hire less formally or just need a short-term person.

There are two opportunities that I wanted to give a big shout out.

MicroMappers Consultancy

At Qatar Computing Research Institute, we sometimes hire technical and research consultants via odesk. These are often very short directed items. My colleagues seek your help. You will work on a mapping interface for the MicroMappers project. While you won’t report to me, I work with this team. (code), (context).

Experience in Google Map, Google Map Engine, OSM, OSM plugins, Mapbox, CartoDB, css, html5, jquery, mysql, geotif, geojson
Familiar with push notification technology. e.g. pusher, SNS
Familiar with web optimization
good sense of WEB UI/UX
Should be able to install java spring web application for testing. The application is built with java spring mvc, spring integration, spring bus

If you are keen, please contact Senior Software Engineer, Ji Lucas (jikimlucas AT gmail dot com)
(Note: While we are not hiring full-time developers right now. Please do review our work at QCRI Social Innovation and get in touch if you are interested so that I can share with proper channels when the time is right.)

Datakind is your future

What can I say? I am a big fan of Datakind’s team and strategy. Want to work with top notch data scientists and partners making a difference int he world?They work on real data science with non-profits. Their projects are fantastic because they spend substantial time really digging into the problem set. The one role that I think is super plum is the Director of Global Communities. Community Management and Partnership building is a really niche area. I think it is a fantastic opportunity to support data scientists around the world. Please do get in touch directly with Jake and his team.

(Image credits: Map icon is by Mister Pixel and the Data Scientist icon is by Thibault Geoffroy. CCBY via Noun Project)

23Feb

Getting involved in HFOSS

Humanitarian
FOSS

[Cross-post from Opensource.com: This article is part of the HFOSS column coordinated by Jen Wike Huger. To share your projects and stories about how free and open source software is making the world a better place, contact us at osdc-admin@redhat.com].

Lending a digital hand for humanitarian projects is just a click away. Whether you have five minutes or a few hours, you can make a difference with a variety of HFOSS projects. The level of skills required vary from web search, verification, mapping, translation, training, and open source software development. Along the journey of changing the world, you can meet like minds and hone your skills. The key is to ask yourself: What do I want to do? How can I get started? How can I find the right project and community?

Over the years, Opensource.com has featured a number of articles about HFOSS and digital humanitarianism. We are in an unprecedented time of openness for international governmental organizations (INGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Citizens and civil society have a place at the table to affect change via digital humanitarian efforts, often using free and open source software.

This primer provides an overview and touches on some amazing projects.

What can I do?

Many of you already contribute to open source projects, or you arrived at Opensource.com to seek a new adventure. When it comes to HFOSS, remember that you can’t break the Internet by trying. There is an element of seriousness and a sense of “matter” which might deter you. Don’t worry, we have a sense of humor and camaraderie like many open source communities.

Digital humanitarian communities vary in size, structure, and focus. There are well-established groups like Sahana Foundation or Ushahidi, as well as the growing Digital Humanitarian Network. Each of these organizations, and many more digital communities, seek your expertise. Sometimes theses groups have full blown “get involved” programs complete with “community task” labeled GitHub repositories, while others are just getting started.

Each community needs seasoned open source friendly leadership, mentorship, and development. Digital humanitarian communities also have more diverse opportunities to do small to large tasks. You do not need to develop code to contribute, though many of the HFOSS projects count on open source ethos and software development to thrive.

This is a quick cheat sheet to show you how you can get involved in HFOSS. The list is by no means complete, but it gives you an idea of how you can make a difference. Keep in mind that some of the communities require only small bits of time (less than 5 minutes to crowdsource or microtask), whereas others can evolve to larger tasks. And, if you are a serial volunteer like me, you can join a board or become an advisor. There is simply no shortage of opportunity. We, the HFOSS organizers, just need to find ways to make it easier for you to get involved.

11 ways to start with HFOSS

Task	HFOSS community
Learn	AIDR, all the projects
Map	MapAction, Ushahidi, MicroMappers, Sahana, Standby Task Force, Google Crisis Response, Crisismappers, Esri, Mapbox, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, GIS Corps and many more
Data	Statistics without Borders, DataKind many of the listed projects
Technology	Disaster Tech Lab, UAViators, Public Lab, Brck
Tell	all the projects
Share	Humanity Road, Veri.ly, CrisisCommons, Info4Disasters and all the projects
Translate	Translators without Borders, all the projects
Reward	Open Badges
Lead	all the projects
Teach	School of Data, all the above projects
Make	Peace Geeks, Geeks without Bounds, all the projects need open source contributors

Each of these groups provide value insights, software-driven products, and information management to support humanitarians. The drive to participate openly and to have all the details shared openly is compelling. The key question becomes: what if the time I spent volunteering on humanitarian responses and/or software could make a difference in someone’s life?

With the Digital Humanitarian Network providing a direct collaboration avenue, this hypothetical question is becoming a possibility. My colleague at Qatar Computing Research Institute, Patrick Meier, recently published a book, “Digital Humanitarians,” all about the rise of these groups. Now is the time to find ways to better connect our efforts with the larger open source and corporate social responsibility programs. If we are collaborating with the official humanitarian groups, how can we better reinforce our partnerships with our big brothers and sisters in open source?

The big dream

This community builders Infogr.am chart should help community managers to think about programs and strategic planning from the point of view of the contributor. It is focused on the types of tasks that people might want to contribute and the suggested time allotment. In reviewing various HFOSS sites, there is not really an up-to-date master index by skills required or types of projects. The onus is really on new upcoming groups and organizations to tap into the larger open source network. There are many established digital humanitarian organizations that need to be added to this wiki. Finding this site has given me homework. If you have any suggestions, please do edit away.

HFOSS organizers need to make is easier to help people get involved. One recommendation that I have is a simple navigator that asks people what they want to do or what they want to give. The aggregator would then help match them to tasks and communities. Think of it as a global Match.com for giving. We would give love to open source organizations, corporations, nonprofits, community-based organizations, and citizens. Truly, this is all hands on deck to make it possible for anyone and any organization to connect. We could tailor it with the code to help people choose their own adventure based on topic, time, location, and their learning/doing/giving path. Really, we need to dream big more and build it.

To find your way in HFOSS, you might hear a talk, see a tweet, then join a mailing list, participate in a working group, or scan a Wiki/website to drill into the types of tasks and contributions you can offer. What if there was a “Hot or Not” or “Ask not” (Mozilla community code) tool that allowed new contributors to find various HFOSS projects based on the contributor’s interests, time available, and skills? This type of user-driven search tool already exists for odesk and LinkedIn, which has the awesome volunteer.linkedin.com.

Now is the time

Humanitarians are at the table with HFOSS. We have a huge opportunity to give back our knowledge and skills to support people around the world. The World Humanitarian Summit is hosting online and in-person consultations to help the traditional organizations move forward. Many INGOs and NGOs are turning to digital humanitarian, civil society, and software organizations to provide input to affect change. There are amazing innovators like Andrej Verity of UN OCHA calling for open humanitarianism. (See the new Open Humanitarianism website for more details.) Your help on these individual HFOSS projects or the larger goals is needed. All you need to do is take the step and ask yourself: “How can I help?” We will welcome you! Every interaction is a gift.

Beginners to
Open Source

A collection of articles about how to get started in open source.

(Photo note: DHN logos from the Digital Humanitarian Network website.)

17Feb

Open Source and Mapping Communities in Qatar?

Everywhere I travel in the world there are open source and mapping communities. Sometimes you just have to ask around to be connected. There is a vibrant technology and innovation community in Qatar and in the Gulf (GCC). But what of communities focused on open source? Mapping? As a new resident of Doha, I am keen to connect with other advocates. Every city and job I have had involves some component of open source or mapping. Plus, I am a bit of a community firestarter known to simply organize a meetup on topics of interest.

At Qatar Computing Research Institute, part of Qatar Foundation and based in Doha, we create open source software for social innovation and humanitarian efforts. Tasked with building an open source ecosystem, I am simply excited to meet like minds and encourage local citizens, especially students to get involved in our work. Two of our open source software projects are used globally: AIDR (Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response) and MicroMappers. AIDR combines human computing with artificial intelligence to automatically identify relevant information in very large volumes of tweets and text messages (SMS). MicroMappers is a collection of microtasking apps called Clickers used to crowdsource the analysis of tweets, text messages, Instagram pictures, Youtube videos, satellite imagery as well as UAV/aerial imagery. We have been featured in the Guardian, Mashable and more.

Who are the existing open source communities in Qatar and the GCC? Are there any OpenStreetMap, Crisismappers, Digital Humanitarians or simply mappers around? A quick survey shows that Maptime does not exist here yet. That might be my first project once I acclimatize.

Are you in Qatar or the GCC and keen to collaborate on software projects or technology for good? I’ve created this list but I think there are gaps. Please connect me or introduce yourself.

Qatar Open Source and Mapping Communities

This is a rough assessment of the open source ecosystem in Qatar. I’d also be happy to meet allies and folks in the GCC. Help me improve this list.

If you have a contact, even better! My email is heatherleson at gmail dot com. Please feel free to do an introduction.

(Photo: Katara in Doha (November 2014)CCBY)

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