community

How will Qatar prepare for Information Overload?

We are neighbours, no matter where we live. Being a new resident to Doha, I am grappling with a number of questions. These stem from working with humanitarian and crisis information for a number of years. Plus, it is part of my mandate at Qatar Computing Research Institute to help apply research and software to support local needs. We have learned much globally about emergencies. I’d like to learn more about how to help locally and who is keen to collaborate.

How will Doha and Qatar prepare for the upcoming information overload? What are the communications plans during an emergency? How will the public use or not use social media or new technology during an emergency? What are the information and technology needs in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council)? How does preparedness compare to other regions? How can citizens and communities prepare? How can Digital Humanitarians be of service? How would Digital Humanitarian community in Qatar differ? What are the training and technology needs of digital humanitarians locally? How can the local Digital Humanitarian community get more involved in the global community? How would Qatar Computing Research Institute’s work apply or not apply for emergencies in the region? What other types of research and/or software would serve the local responders and communities?

In September I attended the GCC Government Social Media Summit in Dubai. There were a number of presentations about preparedness and communications. I was interested to learn that in Dubai, every neighbourhood has a #hashtag. It is used for community activities but my colleague Ali Rebaie advised that this practice is also used for emergencies or resilience. This is something that happens around the world. Neighbours online are networks and information ambassadors locally (offline). This is invaluable. How can we apply this to Doha? Maybe because we are a smaller city and country, we organize primarily around #Doha or #Qatar. There should be tags for all social media platforms in multiple languages by districts and cities. By doing this, we can plan and share for communications.

The Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp in April 2015 provided great insights into how communication flows among responders. My observations found that people use WhatsApp to organize but are keen to investigate how social media might also be a communications channel. This participation has provided an impetus and goal to host a local social media and emergency meetups. Bringing responders and local enterpreneurs into the same space has started with the joint QCRI and Qatar Red Crescent Digital Humanitarian workshops. But, we do need to talk more about how social media will or won’t be a factor in Doha. How will people communicate during an emergency? How will responders work with them? At minimum, there needs to be local ‘information ambassador’ programme setup on WhatsApp. The more training the more ready we are for emergencies. The Qatar Red Crescent has been doing preparedness and resilience training in communities and with schools. Businesses may be thinking about text messages (SMS) during emergencies. But as a new resident working in these spaces, I do see opportunities to help.

Civil Defense Exhibition and Conference is hosting preworkshops on preparedness, community risk reduction, evacuation and infrastructure planning. All week for 5 hours a night I have joined about 60 people to learn from experts in the field. Participants are from across emergency response, civil defense, business and research. Questions have been fascinating. The earnestness to plan for all the stakeholders is very evident. While the mandate was not about ‘how communities will communicate’, it is very much on the minds of organizers and participants. All of this highlights the need for a more research on how will responders and communities work together.

(Map presented by the Professor Zare of the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, IIEES (Tehran, Iran))

There is a large multilingual and high-volume mobile telephone penetration. I’ve found some success in building informal alliances and finding allies. In talking with many stakeholders, there is an enthusiasm to build more plans around communications and citizen engagement for preparedness. Who should I talk with who is interested in communications and emergencies in Doha, Qatar or the GCC?

26Oct

Why Youth are core to #ReShapeAid

Dear Digital Humanitarian allies, the United Nations Children and Youth Major Group have big ideas. Let’s help them make these happen. They embedded the need for digital skills into the Doha Declaration which then informed the World Humanitarian Summit Synthesis Report. Over the past months, I have closely followed and met these amazing leaders. Their sessions in Doha for the World Humanitarian Youth Summit followed by their participation in the World Humanitarian Global Consultation in Geneva, has shown the true power of youth. And, frankly, they have written Digital Humanitarian strategic plan that we should help them implement. Roll up your sleeves, while the talking continues leading up to the Summit, there is no need for any of us to wait.

Read the whole Doha Declaration report.

*****

These are just some examples of statements. I find the whole report really inspiring. While many of the topics discussed, here are some key statements that resonated with me:

2.1
“Develop specific data collection tools and train young volunteers in affected communities to collect, monitor, and report data that will inform country-‐level preparedness and response standards. Disaggregate data in conflict or
crisis stricken areas by sex, age, and socio-‐economic, as well as other status so that the situations of youth can be
assessed.”

4.1
“Innovative Tools for Local Capacity and Participation Foster communication via robust and portable technologies at the local level to facilitate collaboration and engagement of different humanitarian actors (e.g. telemedicine, e-‐learning, phone applications).”

4.2
“Enable safe learning spaces to raise awareness on preventative safeguards and measures to disaster response, strengthen resilience, and promote participatory action (e.g. virtual disaster simulation, meetups).”

“Encourage online and offline peer-‐to-‐peer exchange to share knowledge, skills, culture and trade to collectively build resilience through interactive media and art.”

“Make use of technologies such as mapping, web-‐-‐based platforms, social networking, and others to build partnerships,engage youth in early-‐warning, promote reciprocal action, and coordinate efforts of different humanitarian actors.”

*****

Many of us have youth engagement plans for NGOs and Digital Responders, but just take a look at some of their additional core priorities. Let’s spend the next months helping draft plans to make these items happen. How can each Digital community consider these items as part of their plans? How can funders/donors plan for this? What role can companies play? I’m hosting Digital Humanitarian training classes in Doha because we need local knowledge for local action.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on how groups and organizations can help build plans. And, for the members of the Children and Youth Major group = please keep up the great work. Policy negotiation is hard, but you have a voice and a plan that can thrive with passion and action.

4Oct

Sold out – Digital Responders in Qatar

On October 7th, Qatar Computing Research Institute and Qatar Red Crescent Society will co-host the first ever Digital Humanitarian meetup in Doha, Qatar. We are sold out! The room holds 100 people and that is how many free tickets we made available. If you reserved a ticket and can no longer attend please email me asap so that I can open up a ticket for the waiting list. IF you are looking for a ticket, please do contact me.

The Digital Humanitarians in Qatar registration page

Digital Humanitarians are people who use their technical, social, community and storytelling power to help support humanitarians in their work. We aim to use maps, data, and social media to provide information and insights. While this is the first event of its kind in Doha, we join a growing global civic technology community.

About the Digital Humanitarians in Qatar event

Technical preparedness supports a resilient city and country. Qatar has a highly technical and young population. Digital Humanitarians use their social media savvy, create maps, conduct data analysis and use new media tools to provide insights to support humanitarians and affected communities. How can we get young people more engaged in their world, region and country? This is an opportunity to be globally responsible while potentially using the acquired digital skills for your work. We will work in partnership with humanitarians locally and globally to help you contribute.

What will you learn in this session?
In this session, we will provide an overview of the basic digital skills for humanitarian response online. Our guests will share real humanitarian scenarios for us to do some hands on learning.

Topics include:

Overview of Humanitarian response – context for emergencies
Introduction to Crisismapping and Digital Humanitarians
Social media curation, analysis and verification
Hands on exercises

We will provide more details on how you can learn between sessions and answer questions based on real world experiences.  

Who should attend:

Digital Humanitarians come from all walks of life. All you need is a willingness to learn and a technical device (mobile, tablet or laptop). There are many different types of contributions that people can make – large and small in terms of time and activities. In the global community, there are teachers, students, business people, creative people, humanitarians, researchers, analysts, data science, GIS experts and more. We will provide introductions to each of the various communities and skillsets to help your learning journey. It starts with us.  

23Sep

How to: A Digital Humanitarian Handbook

The Digital Humanitarian community is growing. In the Digital Humanitarian Network, there are many communities and organizations. Each of them have a specific set of skills to offer. While there are some guides for each of the groups, there is no free, online and translated course or introduction guide to help people get involved.

The purpose of this community driven project is to create a community sourced guide on github to help people learn from each other. This online handbook builds on the work of 1000s of community members who use their technical skills for good. Earlier this year, my colleague, Patrick Meier published his book about Digital Humanitarians. How can we widen the circle of participation and reach new areas to support resilience. For example, during the Nepal Earthquake response, the Japanese community created a translated version of the Nepal building guide for how to map in OpenStreetMap with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. The Qatar Computing Research Institute and Standby Task Force response to the Nepal Earthquake had over 2800 participants from around the world. Our IP address report highlighted a participation gap in some regions of the world. At the recent World Humanitarian Youth Summit, I presented on why I think these digital skills are essential for the youth communities. Participants expressed an interest in learning and evolving this for their regions of the world.

During my time with the Qatar Red Crescent team at their annual Disaster Management Camp, we determined that core materials need to be translated into Arabic. I’ll be hosting local Digital Humanitarian training in Doha starting on October 1st. But what about the rest of the global community of civic tech and technical savvy communities. We hope that this will support our collective mission to encourage resilience and preparedness. And, while we are focused on crisis and emergencies, we think these core skills are very transferable to all the Sustainable Development Goals.

How to get involved

Or contact @heatherleson or @willowbl00 for help.

Draft Table of Contents

In the upcoming Digital Responders call in, we will review this draft table of contents. This will then be added to github to begin the curation process. Stay tuned for more details soon.

SECTION: Digital Humanitarianism Introduction
History of Crisismapping and Digital Humanitarians
Lessons and best practices
Code of conducts
Ecosystem: Working with Humanitarians and Contributors
Tools and Techniques overview
Examples by various topics – environmental, crisismapping
SECTION: SMS, social media and messaging (Whatsapp)
Digital Storytelling
Storify, Storiful,Blogging
Social media storytelling
SECTION: Community work
big tasks, small tasks
Microtasking 101
Software development in HFOSS
managing community lists
managing language and culture
SECTION: Data collection and analysis
Data Collection 101
sensors, social media, sms
Data Analysis
basic tools and techniques
SECTION: Verification
Overview and the Verification handbook
Verily and other tools
Visualization
charts, graphs
SECTION: maps
basic network maps
Geo for Good
Mapping 101
Mapping Google
Mapping OSM
Mapbox and Cartodb intro
Mapping ESRI
SECTION: Simulation 1: Teamwork and Roles (Global scenario)
How does coordination work during emergencies?
Coordination and community guidance
after action review
Simulation 2: Technique and mentoring (GCC scenario)
Technique testing
after action review
What to do with data after a project is done
How having a pre-existing community matters (KLL and Public Labs as examples)
Adversaries in digital space? InfoSec but also GamerGate
Digital colonialism
APPENDIX
Sample curriculums
Sample simulation templates and checklists

I envision that the manual will have chapters by country and region. The Taiwanese OpenStreetMap community, for example, might have specific examples and scenario templates for their region of the world. Plus, it is our hope that the manual will help people find best practices across the very topics and civic tech communities. We need to learn from each other. This Digital Humanitarian Handbook is for all of us to evolve and fork.

2Sep

The Next Stage of Digital Humanitarians

The World Humanitarian Youth Summit is in Doha, Qatar this week (September 1 – 2, 2015). Students and young people under the age of 30 joined from over 80 countries around the world. They are here to consult on a number of key issues creating an outcome document with key recommendations. Last night the drafting team was up until 5am AST working to compile all the brilliant ideas. This work will be submitted as part of the larger global consultations to Reshape Aid.

It was my honour to join the Transformation through Innovation panel to share some thoughts on how people could get involved as Digital Humanitarians and how they could learn and lead with these skills. During my talk, I share some thoughts on how we could challenge the future to get young people more involved all around the world. See my slides and detailed notes for more information.

The Next Digital Humanitarians from heatherleson

**********

Thank you to Reach out to Asia, the World Humanitarian Youth Summit, and the Children and Youth Major group for welcoming me in their conversations. Also thank you to Chad Bevins, Mark Iliffe, Kathmandu Living Labs, Yantisa Akhadi, and Stace Maples for their photos about Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and OpenStreetMap activities around the world.

24Aug

In their own words via Kasra

What does it take to be a successful local startup? If Nawaf Felemban, CEO of Kasra, is any measure the components are niche concept, vision, humility, technical acumen, mentorship and grit. Tonight Nawaf will be sharing some lessons at Doha Tweetups for their event feature on startups.

Kasra is a user-driven content site and community network focused on a myriad of topics ranging from fashion to technology. All the articles are created by a growing community of writers for each other in their own voice. Translation for non-arabic speakers like me: Kasra is the accent symbol in the Arabic language and means “break”. This speaks to their mission – get people comfortable and, dare I say, enthusiastic with sharing a wide range of community and user-driven content in Arabic. It is a “break” from the formal use of Arabic infusing every day people’s content of their own interest and own voice. All the content is in pan-Arabic neutral language to serve all the various dialects across the region.

What’s Under the Hood

Kasra was spun up with a minimal viable product (MVP) with a launch in May 2014. The goal to test out the idea was proven viable from the outset with 1000 Facebook followers within hours. Now their imprint is a over 1 million unique views per month (metric over 6 months). Add to this: They are the fastest growing website in the Arabic speaking world. Considering that the online market segment is 150 million people, they are in front of some serious opportunity to grow.

For technology, they started out with a WordPress site, but are currently building out the next version. The newer shiny Kasra is being built with node.js, react.js, Mongo db. They choose this platform for the (java script framework, optimized for asynconryous and scaleability )

A strong plan about social analytics and engagement are to their ongoing success. They have a number of tools and tactics in their toolkit. Nawaf suggests that startups use, at minimum, Twitter insights and Facebook Analytics. These engagement As Nawaf points out, basic tools like these plus big data tools for your customer usage tools will help measure reach and reveal strategic next steps.

Growing Talent

Kasra is growing talent within the community. By fostering a space to create compelling content, they are encouraging their contributors to become great writers and share best practices. They want to inspire the next generation of writers to share articles (even long form version) across the Arabic-speaking world.

Nawaf is building a strong team ethos by encouraging staff to take a leadership role in the industry while inspiring others around them to learn. Their strategy is two-fold: attract top talent and foster local talent. He said there is a gap with technical skills so while they focus on building their technical skills, they want to give back to others. Mentorship and community are core to the Kasra backbone. There is a gap of mentorship in the region. While he has located this for himself, 90 % of local entrepreneurs need the help. They need mentorship from people with actual entrepreneurship experience not just theoretical.

Here’s to seeing more startups learning from each other. Thanks Kasra for sharing your story about making it happen step by step.

19Aug

Digital Humanitarians in Qatar

It is World Humanitarian Day today! Humanitarians make a huge difference in the lives of many people around the world. On this day that we honour these amazing people, we are starting a local Digital Humanitarian Community to support their efforts.

Digital Humanitarians are a growing global network of people aiming to use their technology and social media skills to support humanitarians and affected communities. There are many communities within the Digital Humanitarian Network. Our goal is to encourage more participation from Qatar and the GCC. We will host local community events, training and support. Qatar has a high youth and very technical capable population. It is our hope that more people from Qatar will join and lead within the various communities.

We’ve created a mailing list to help you connect. (digitalhumanitarians-qatar@googlegroups.com ) Join us and stay tuned for more details. Please introduce yourself – your interests and why you are keen to learn.

This community is for you. We will provide spaces for technical and non-technical participation. Getting involved in your world is your journey. Digital Skills learned from Digital Humanitarian activities are directly applicable to your learning and your potential career. Plus, you will meet others from around the world who seek to make a digital difference.

There are a number of active Digital Humanitarians at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) (based in Doha Qatar). We created Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response (AIDR) and MicroMappers to help people get involved in the world. Training and events will include data, maps, verification and software techniques. We will invite our local and global friends to help support your learning journey.

Upcoming Events

Our first big activity will be joining the World Humanitarian Summit – Global Youth Consultation to be held in Doha on September 1 – 2, 2015. The Reach out to Asia team has been working hard to bring over 450 young people from around the world. There will also be many participants from Qatar. Our team will host a booth at HBKU to share details about our work at QCRI and share how you can be a Digital Humanitarian. Please stop by and visit to learn more!

18Aug

Recap: Virtual Reality at Google Developer Group – Doha

As I child, I loved to play with kaleidoscopes. It seemed like pure magic to put a box to your face and see colour and light design and change before your eyes. A sense of play in technology can lead to new startups and creative research science.

Last night Qatar Computing Research Institute hosted the Google Developer Group – Doha team for the Virtual Reality session. The night included an introduction to Virtual Reality, Google Cardboard and then a hands-on session with creating VR with Unity. Hadij Hicham and Sachin Kumar lead the training and are founders of GDG Doha. As always, it is a pleasure to have technical guests at QCRI to collaborate and learn.

Get involved:

GDG Doha
G+
Twitter

The next event is to be scheduled, so watch those spaces for more details.

Some photos from the night:

Note:

There were 6 women in attendance too, I just missing getting a good action photo of their brilliance. All photos are CCBY.

17Aug

Checking into the next stage of Digital Humanitarians

What does NEXT look like? Often as digital humanitarians, we are in the weeds of tasks. Many of us are still writing about the Nepal Earthquake Response and pondering how to improve and learn. With Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, I have my hands full with the Executive Director hiring process. And, at Qatar Computing Research Institute, we are testing a MicroMappers microtasking translation clicker with our friends over at Translators without Borders.

Last week Aspiration’s Willow Brugh held a casual Digital Humanitarian Checkin. In the conversation, each of the participants provided an update about themselves, their research, their technology and/or their digital humanitarian community. This checkin was special on a few fronts. First, many of us connect during times of crisis when we are super busy leading activations and onboarding new volunteers.

See the notes from our chats. Some of the big themes were:

Cross-community collaboration processes and tools
Contributor Training and On-boarding
Potential global meet-up for Digital Humanitarians

We need more regular activities to connect outside of emergencies. Thanks Willow for being the connector.

(Source: MicroMappers Global Nepal Earthquake response, June 2015. Created by Ji Lucas with Cartodb)

Digital Humanitarians in Qatar

I see blank spots on the map as a need to shift training and engagement. This is already happening, but for the next months, I am going to try to build a program in Doha. There are so many talented digital folks in Doha. I’d like to see them join the Digital communities. Certainly in speaking with some of them, I found a strong interest to learn.

If someone has the base digital skills, then they will remix it for local language, culture and needs. Plus, everything you learn is directly applicable to success in your career. Employees want digital savvy staff.

There is a buzz of activity in Qatar leading up the the World Humanitarian Youth Summit to be held in Doha on September 1 – 2, 2015. I’m hatching plans for digital activities to encourage more participation from Qatar residents and hopefully the GCC/MENA regions. Stay tuned.

10Aug

Virtual Reality – Doha Google Developer Group

SciFi dreams come alive with research and technology tinkering! Doha’s Google Developer Group (GDG) and Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) are hosting a Virtual Reality event on Monday, August 17, 2015. Tickets are going fast, so we hope you can join us.

It is exciting to see this technology find roots in Doha. Qatar University has a Virtual Reality Lab and QCRI’s team is doing some deep computer vision work with 3D and 4D. Our hope is that this event will help you get an understanding of how the technology works and how you might be able to make things.

About GDG:

Google Developer Groups (GDGs) are for developers who are interested in Google’s developer technology; everything from the Android, Chrome, Drive, and Google Cloud platforms, to product APIs like the Cast API, Maps API, and YouTube API.

DETAILS

Who Should Attend: The GDG is for your learning. We invite entrepreneurs, students, technologists and the curious.
When: Monday, August 17, 2015 17:00 – 20:00
Where: QCRI offices, 18th floor, Tornado Tower

How to Prepare:

Download these tools before you arrive and bring your laptop. Also, if you have some VR items or tips on resources, please do share. DOWNLOAD:

Registration

Please CLICK HERE to register in advance as there are limited spots available. Also, if you can’t attend, please let us know so that we can open up a spot.

Lastly, what is virtual reality anyway? Always turn to XKCD if confused.

(Image: XKCD CCBY NC2.5)

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