CrisisMappers

Stop Hacking without specing: a Top 10 needed

Here we are again. It is the day before a mass of hackathons occur around the world. It is exciting and important. Really. We all dream of using our knowledge and technical skills for a cause.

Earlier in the week I mentioned that we need to get more organized as a global community. Inspired by my colleague, John Crowley who wrote in Time Ideas: “Stop Catastrophizing Relief Efforts in the Philippines“, I ask that we please “Stop Hacking without Specing”. (Spec’ing = build a specification = a plan)

In the past week, I have had no fewer than 30 conversations with individuals, groups, governments and fellow organizers all about How to Help. They have been so amazing in their earnest need to include the technical community. We have come along way. Folks are asking tons of questions to prepare for the weekend. This is fantastic. I am so impressed with their fresh eyes, warm response and desire to make a difference.

I have two points to make: Organizers need to get connected/organized and we, collectively, need a TOP 10.

So you want to Hack for Emergency Software for change

Welcome, we are so excited for you to join us. Sorry that we have not got this quite sorted yet. This is new ground. We are all trying to build a common language. This is my short list of considerations:

Steps:

1. DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Please don’t hack or organize a hackathon without looking into what was done previously. Yes, of course, if you have a brand new idea: great! But first, check the following;

a. Random Hacks of Kindness website
b. Github
c. Google foo (trust me, it sometimes works)

2. ASK THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY

d. ASK our community – ask Geeks without Bounds, ask Random Hacks of Kindness, ask Crisis Commons and ask Crisismappers. We apologize in advance that we have not organized this yet. Trust me, we know this is an issue. Join us and help make it better. We have community skype windows open, just add me and I’ll introduce you – username- heatherleson

3. OPEN SOURCE IS LOVE, BUILD ON EXISTING SOFTWARE

We don’t need another Ushahidi, Sahana, SMSSync, Person Finder, etc.

(more on this below)

4. IF SOMETHING NEW, DOES it have an OWNER

…(And, will the owner be at your event) Serving an audience and having an owner be part of the design, testing and implementation process equals better software.

5. CHUNKS, DON’T TRY TO HACK THE OCEAN

Bring the problem down to hackathon size. The hackathon leaders need to really think about the problem statement and what is actually feasible to build or build-on during a weekend.

6. KEEP THE TECHS WANTING MORE

People are using their weekend to DO something. Every interaction is a gift. Honest. But, we want to build trust and have them know that their small contribution matters in the bigger picture. This is a really hard one. Honest. We know. Help everyone feel like they are part of the second or third wave of a very long process to build this collective effort.

7. IS IT SUSTAINABLE, USABLE

Who are you really serving if you build the shiniest tool that cannot be used in the field? Infuse your hack with local knowledge. Do they really have a need for an HTML5 enabled phone app when there is no CELL PHONE COVERAGE? Can you write a feature phone (DUMB PHONE) app?

8. Emergency Hack Lab

Emergency Hack Lab tackled the question of how to credential, task and thank volunteers in times of crisis. We hacked and built proto-workflow for the UN OCHA Noun Project sets to the Mozilla Open Badges programme. More details from session organizer Jessica Klein. You can add to this.

9. MAP instead?

Why not contribute to OpenStreetMap? The community has been mapping all week. Join the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team and add to the map. Why is this important? UN OCHA, Red Cross and Doctors without Borders are already using it in the field and to inform their decisions. If you want to have an impact, map it!

Ok, that is part 1 – Helping the Hackathons in the interim. Yes, it is only 9 items. Please feel free to add something in the comments as I have probably missed one or 2.

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What is our top 10 Hacks that we need in Crisis/Emergency response

We are here again. How can we make sure that new hackathons, new techs learn from our experiences and build on efforts that already exist? I think that we have to have a TOP 10 wishlist that we know needs to happen.

I call on my fellow global community leaders to review and improve these. AND, I promise to make this a session at the International Conference of Crisismappers next week. I am sad that we are here again, but we deserve it. We need to get more organized and help the hackathon surge folks know what we need. Yes, we are still trying to figure it out, however, we have got to get better organized.

1. Humanitarian Exchange Language

NGOs and Governments need to share information better. UN OCHA is building this to help improve flow. This hack has been part of RHOK, International Space Apps Challenge and others. The code is online.

2. Google Person Finder

Ka-Ping Yee has worked tireless to document Google Person Finder. It has been deployed numerous times in the field and has been reviewed by many people in the humanitarian field. Help improve it.

3. Ushahidi

Bias alert: I am an Ushahidi former staffer and permanent fan girl. This has been deployed many times in the field. There are bugs. And, they have a new version. I believe that if we put our heads together with techs that we could make is so much better. This means that Ushahidi has to meet us half way (What are the top 10 hacks that people can do to help?) We need to see the power of citizen voices and how this project could help amplify real needs. Ushahidi can help on this. But, it needs community support. (love you guys)

4. Micromappers, Crowdcrafting, SwiftRiver and Tweek the Tweet

All of these tools work on helping people manage signal to noise. The help volunteers get engaged and curate mass volumes of information. How can the technical community help?

http://micromappers.wordpress.com/

http://dev.pybossa.com/

https://github.com/ushahidi (swiftriver)

http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/tweak-the-tweet.html

5. ALL YOUR DATA SETS BELONG TOO….

Last night I handed a population of Philippines dataset to Medicine Sans Frontieres. Some friends had scraped it from Philippine National Statistics website (http://www.nscb.gov.ph/activestats/). Not sure on the license, but folks need to have data with an open license to be able to layer it to maps. Why don’t we have a package of all the top datasets ready by country for emergency response?

6. MAPS ARE LOVE

We need common sharing among all the various map projects. And, a standard that lists all the active maps and provides interoperable layers so that people can pick and choose. When I say people, I mean those in the field who are helping.

Truly, we all dream of satellite imagery, citizen data, open data and sensor data on one map. Maps are love. What can we do to make this happen?

I am purposely leaving the remaining 4 items empty. What is on your list?

…..Happy hacking! Really, I am so very excited to see techs using skills to help. Just be aware, you may get hooked and change your life like I did.

12Nov

Why we volunteer #YolandaPH

My spare time has been handed over to #YolandaPH response via the Digital Humanitarian Network. We are working in sprints on images and information (Tweets) to help sift data. This is all being added to map.

You can participate too

The Humantarian OpenStreetMap Team and the whole OSM community are mapping infrastructure. It is amazing to observe. More on their efforts.

Quick observations and Why we Volunteer:

Diggz from Geeks without Bounds said it well: WE, the open mapping and volunteer community, have a lot to learn and re-learn. Those of us involved in the Haiti online response are already having flashbacks about duplication and confusion. It is bound to happen but it has improved some.

The tools still need work, but the purpose is clear: We know that together if we collaborate we may be able to help information and decisions.

I am seeing many many tweets asking for money. Some are legitimate, trusted organizations. Some are really unknown. I’ve seen people trying to sell stuff and say that they will give a percentage to aid. I’ve seen people offer to add their ‘brand’ to things. But, the overwhelming parts are the folks who have family there. Then, the pictures. All we can do is focus on our tasks.

Our community takes care of each other. We check in about rest, food and health. We welcome new people. We are all learning as we go.

All of us feel guilty for having jobs, personal needs and less time. I feel guilty posting this summary. But, I know that I need to tell what is happening. For us, we volunteer because we want to help in what we know we can do from our couches, our late night hub spaces and around the globe. We do this because we know that we can help. And, that our very small part might help a responder or a family know more details. We do this because we want to help those people.

Some examples of communication and tools:

My dashboard: Skype, IRC and Micromappers (add to this tons of tabs)

An example of the Micromapper tool using Crowdcrafting software. This was incubated as part of the OKFN Labs.(my employer)

Why does Crisismapping matter for Open Data?

Crisismapping inspired me to work in Open Data. The world needs it to make better decisions in crisis and beyond. This means using open data and open collaboration.

In times of crisis (see the Yolanda response) we all seek every type of open data set we can. We have governments, civil society, private sector and individuals all working together or in parallel. While the volunteering is very busy, I see it as the future for how we can get people to care about open data in sprints on any topic.

Back to it

7Nov

Putting on our Training Hats!

You’re invited to a skillshare pre-conference day with fellow Crisismappers. The International Conference of CrisisMappers (ICCM) will be held November 18 – 22, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. (About the full ICCM Conference.)

If you just want to attend the pre-conference training, you are very welcome! It is open to EVERYONE for a small fee ($50.00) paid to the ICCM conference. The trainers and speakers are local and national leaders. We hope you will join us at the ihub on Tuesday, November 19, 2013.

(Photo by Ushahidi)

See more ihub and Ushahidi pics

About the Training

ICCM Training Day will have 4 tracks: Mobile/Security, Maps, Data and Knowledge. Each track will have sub-sessions and directed training. Participants can elect to join in one whole track or pick the individual sessions within the tracks. The purpose of this to give more hands-on training and allow folks to learn/share in smaller groups.

This is our ICCM Pre-conference day Draft Schedule. (Note it will be updated in the coming days)
We will add more details about the sessions and the bios of the speakers/trainers here.

How can I join?

To Join you can sign up for the Crisismappers Network, then click “ICCM 2013″. There you will find details about the registration login.

If you have any outstanding questions, send a note to Heatherleson @ gmail DOT com with the subject line – ICCM Pre-Conference Help wanted. Then, complete the registration. If you have questions about the full conference – please contact melissa at crisismappers dot net.

Outreach help wanted

We have more space open for the pre-conference training, Can you reblog my post or tweet this to your local communities? The sessions will offer a breadth of knowledge and expertise from security to research to map and data. We know folks will want to dig in and learn.

TWEET ME:
Join @crisismappers Pre-conference training- Nairobi – Nov. 19th. All welcome. Please register. Details: http://bit.ly/17fSDeE

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Thanks a million to my fellow trainers, to ihub/ ihub research for hosting us and for Ushahidi (love you guys) for keeping us in food and drink!

31Oct

Connecting the open dots

When I think of open, I think global. A number of us have the privilege of collaborating on large scale global open communities. We all see the potential of combined efforts and dissolved borders/barriers to all our common success. What have we learned and what are the next steps?

This week I’ve had the honour to participate in both the Mozilla Festival and the Open Government Partnership. The conversations have really distilled the question: what are we waiting for? OGP is a common language building forum for governments, business, civil society and the technical communities. Yes, we do have some different priorities and agendas. But let’s dream big then build it. Policy discussions should and must beget action. How can we get there for more open and very global communities? How can we better support each other? At heart, I am a maker. I need to see and be part of evidence and impact.

Here are some key actions and win suggestions:

1. Master search
There are open data portals and github repos. Yet, there is no master search of which open data and which code is available and remixable. This will help us build on The pain of duplication and vanity ware (creating software for the sake of “new” rather than sustainable, built-on efforts).

We need this to help anyone build on the open source ethos. We need common standards in creation. This is not to stifle great new ideas but to end the “reinvent the wheel” model that is causing us to stall. If people can find the existing work, irrespective of country, perhaps we can build faster. I realize that software and data really counts on local needs, knowledge and language, but have we asked what are the common needs that we can remix.

I ask: what are the top 10 software topics that we can focus on as open source communities and civil society communities collectively need or want? Can we use the power of agile software development to guide us?

2. Code of collaboration
Last year I spoke with someone who apologized to me: “I received funding for x and even though it is duplication of efforts on existing software, we need the funding and have to do what they funder wants.” This conversation made me realize that the funding model also needs a shift. If we are funding without building on existing work and existing knowledge, are we regressing? Are funders funding only new ideas and potentially shiny ideas? Are the funders sharing data? Believe me I want to eat and really respect how hard it is to find the bright spots and the right things to fund. I am really learning as I go, but am struck with this dilemma.

For those who lead in civil society and open source communities, including hackathons, are we encumbering the open growth? Leaders need to build on the open source methods, encourage good practices and encourage mission before branding. By means, fork the code/idea. Please. But, document and collaborate, be responsible and stop duplicating. Who are we serving and what is the real demand/citizen need? Sometimes we are not building priorities based on feedback and real people. And, sadly there are examples of chasing the shiny and quick without considering privacy and risk. Really, this is new ground and we are all trying to figure out the way to get there.

The Crisismappers community created a community code of collaboration. What would a funder, civil society and open source community code look like for open government and open data?

I propose that we build a code of collaboration beyond the policy aspects.

3. Open community leader collaboration and census
Who is doing what where and how to collaborate? What can an open data hacker from Kenya teach someone in India? I’ve seen this power of global with Random Hacks of Kindness, International Space Apps Challenge, Mozilla, Ushahidi and more. We don’t see borders, we see and build on ideas and skills.

At Mozilla Festival my colleagues at Wikipedia, OKFN, Creative Commons and others hosted a session about Building an Open Community. A followup session was held at the Open Government Partnership Civil Society Unconference. How can we keep the momentum of this? We need to continue to learn and share these ideas. Are there other examples out there?

Often I am asked to do introductions to open community members around the world. What I would really like is an open community footprint of who is doing what where? Apparently, the legacy icommons.org served this need. We build our open networks and relationships. Great. If communities shared their networks, best practices and commons goals, we could move this ball forward.

Who is already working on this idea, especially in the tech for good and social good space? Can we collaborate? My goal is to start finding and connecting all these leaders. We are stronger together as we teach and share.

Thanks to my colleagues at Mozilla, OKFN, Wikipedia, Second Muse, Random Hacks of Kindness, Geeks without Bounds and Creative Commons. We’ve had a number of conversations in the past few weeks. In the spirit of open, some of you directly contributed to this text.

Moar is more.

(All photos are from events that I’ve attended or coordinated in the past year).

22Oct

Global Community: the road to learning

For the past 3 years, I have focused on building global community via maps, hacks and data. The journey has introduced me to a number of communities plus I’ve been fortunate to lead efforts in a few great spaces.

For the past month, I’ve been head down at Open Knowledge Foundation working on the Open Data Partnership for Development project as well as learning all about Open Knowledge Foundations’ communities and networks. We have the amazing opportunity to activate everything from open data to open government to open science to open glam (galleries, libraries, archives and museums.) Having library training background, I’ve always thought that the Internet opens up large borderless communities, much like the old Mechanics Institutes*. It gives us a chance to connect with fellow leaders and support the unusual suspects who want to use new technologies to disrupt and activate change.

(Stools by Ai WeiWei)

Some might consider it a tall order to involve citizens and technology to activate change. I see it as an art. What if we looked at it differently? Many of us are focusing on building stuff and showing the potential of opening data, creating apps and convening at hackathons/sprints. Others are focused on analyzing our methods. Great! We need to have real-time analysis/research in all our projects. Giving evidence and showing impact is mandatory as we move forward. ABC: Always be communicating/changing. Some folks make a career out of highlighting the faults in the old systems and faults in attempts to use new technology to see the world and the information overload in a new way. Also, great. The truth is: None of us are getting it right, yet. But, we are trying.

Meeting, Making and Showing

In the next month, I am going on a whirlwind of meeting, making and showing. Each of these spaces involve communities of folks trying to use policy, information, maps, hacks, data and more to open up our world. It is a huge privilege to participate and learn. I’ll try to post some ‘Dispatches’ as I have done at previous events:

1. Mozilla Festival – London, UK October 25-27, 2013.
MozFest is a home for me. I’ve attended each of the fests including its predecessor (Drumbeat). Imagine rooms full of brilliance in everything from Open Hardware to Open News to Open Internet. My brain and heart will burst with happiness in seeing old friends and digging into learning while making stuff. There are few events that are this interactive. The Open Knowledge Team will be hosting a few sessions (Building collaboration across the open space and a Data Expedition)

2. Open Government Partnership Summit – London, UK October 29 – November 1, 2013
The OGP summit connects governments and civil society communities to discuss policy and demonstrate the latest actions by country, topic and movement. The Open Data Partnership for Development is focused on helping connect governments and civil society folks. My goal will be to meet others on this journey and see how I can help support their efforts. As well, the Open Knowledge Foundation team will be supporting the Civil Society Day.

3. International Conference of Crisis Mappers – Nairobi, Kenya November 18 – 22, 2013
The Crisis Mappers community is one of the most amazing ones that I’ve encountered. Each of us from business to open source to government and academic want to learn the best ways to use data, mobiles, informatics and maps to aid crisis response. We will meet for a week of training, ignite talks and collaboration/simulation. The opportunity to do this in Kenya is amazing. My heart remains in East Africa. Ushahidi was born there and has inspired so many of us to consider how citizens can and should be involved in the conversation. I’ll be running a full day training session with 4 tracks: Maps, data, mobile and knowledge. There are many community leaders helping out, including my colleague Michael Bauer of the School of Data.

I am really look forward to involving more people in each of these communities.

Here’s to amazing building and making. I am more than certain that the next weeks will shape the coming year and far beyond!

*On Mechanic’s Institutes: I had a membership at the Atwater Mechanic’s Institute in Montreal, Canada. I loved that I could use a library and get training. It is the way forward: we need to train a digital network of new leaders to use the power of technical skills to tell stories and use data/software to activate new ideas/change in their communities.

29Aug

The Interviews: Heather Leson & social good on the internet

[Cross-posted from Michael Goldberg's Blog]

How can we use the Internet as a force for good has been a question that many in the tech community have asked. Heather Leson is the Director of Community Engagement at Ushahidi, and is working on that exact problem. Ushahidi allows users to compile maps to track anything they want. Collating data from text messages, social media, e-mails, sensors, and more Ushahidi is trying to aid those that want to help fix the world.

Websites, and programs mentioned by Heather:
Great Lakes Commons Map
Trash Wag Matching artists to trash.
Brck
Brck specs
Brck’s Kickstarter Campaign
Social Coding for Good
Random Hacks of Kindness
Public Lab
Open Knowledge Foundation
Ushahidi Wiki
OpenStreetMap
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Social Tech Census
Learn OSM
Map Box

Audio recording can be found on Michael’s blog

9Jul

Decamping to Open Source

It is July, which means OSCON is around the corner. OSCON is the largest Open Source Convention run by the folks from O’Reilly. (Portland, July 22 – 26, 2013) It is bootcamp to learn and meet others who work in this wide field.

One of my major life goals is to get people more involved in their world. Sometimes I call it “Brain Sharing” and other times “Brains Colliding” – all in an effort to do good with our collective knowledge, especially our technical know-how. On this journey, I’ve volunteered and worked with a number of Humanitarian Free and Open Source Projects (HFOSS).

This year I’m honoured to speak this year at OSCON with a group of rockstar Maps, Hacks and Data leaders: Become a Digital Humanitarian Open Data and Open Source for Good.

We will be share stories from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, Random Hacks of Kindness, Sahana Software Foundation, Geeks without Bounds, and Change Assembly.

Speakers are given a discount code. Ping me if you’d like it.

The Community Leadership Summit (FREE) is right before OSCON. It was a huge infusion to my brain and work at Ushahidi. If you can’t attend OSCON but volunteer or work with communities in HFOSS or regular technical communities, then consider joining us.

20Jun

You can’t just throw a map at it….

I’ve been saying this quite a bit online, in workshops and now in interviews. Putting a map project takes a plan and a community. Every day I teach people strategies for map plans. The first question I ask is: why a map?

You can’t just throw a map at it! Shiny, sexy maps and visualizations are great storytelling and activating devices. True. The route to technology for good of maps or data takes basic project management. While we can all hope to be on Upworthy and be the next meme. I truly believe that behind every one of these Internet stories, videos and pictures comes grit. I’ve been writing on the Ushahidi blog and in the wiki all about how to be successful with map projects. Plus, this year, I co-lead a large online map project for the Kenyan Elections. As my colleague, Jake Porway of Datakind, wrote this great article on “You can’t just Hack your Way to Social Change…” Map projects fall into this same category.

There are major ethical issues with just throwing a map at it. I’ll write another day on that huge topic. In the meantime, see my Data Ethics in Research Google Hangout.

Conrad Chau interviewed me for his Cambridge MBA podcast on how maps level the playing field, but need a plan. I advised his listeners to stop only reading TechCrunch, buy a plane ticket to the continents of Africa or Asia and look for the unusual suspects to invest and develop.

You can't throw a map at a problem. @HeatherLeson on how @Ushahidi maps succeed when users have businessplan. http://t.co/FcXshJx0DY

— Conrad Chua (@ConradChua16) June 20, 2013

11Mar

When your community changes you….

[Written and Cross-posted from the Ushahidi blog]
Uchaguzi is You! is our mantra. We are always on and always in edit mode. We are managed in a team driven engine that is decidedly non-linear. Everyone works with integrity and takes our Code of Collaboration to heart.

From the community, partners, team and friends, Uchaguzi has been a massive project of collaboration and change. In that spirit, we wanted to share some overall highlights. We are global and 24/7 with over half of the people involved based in Kenya. While our cultures and languages may be different, Kenyans and people from around the world joined together in a common cause: GIVE VOICE.

The Uchaguzi team have been head down mapping since last Friday, March 1, 2013. We are collectively exhausted, but driven. Each person, each edit, and each suggestion has been discussed in a team zone. Often, we’ve been so busy doing that even writing about what we are doing instead of doing, seems, well, wrong. But, we want to honour the community by sharing some of their story. Thank goodness that our Analysis and SMS teams have been blogging some on the sitroom blog. Their posts give a great view into the ever-changing project. We have been inside the skype chat rooms trying to take their large volume of inputs (SMS) and give them outputs (reports to analyze).

“Everyone pulled together and went where was most useful. Even though they had signed up to perform one certain task, no one complained etc about doing a different one. This just goes to emphasise what a bunch of multi skilled volunteers there are.” Jus MacKinnon

The connection between the offline and the online is core to the project. Daudi Were, Project Lead, has held tireless field meetings and training sessions with partners who were on site for election monitoring at polling stations. These people remain deployed in the field. In addition, have trained over 200 people mainly local with some global support for timezone shifting. Our mapper friends from Abuja (Nigerian mappers), NYU GIS class lead by Dr. Colette Mazzucelli, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap and some Standby Task Force folks have joined the mostly local Ihub Nairobi community as well as those trained from our partners Creco, Peacenet and Sodnet (who are all across the country). We also have a strong contingent from Translators without Borders to help translate and folks from MercyCorp to help verify reports. There are many new people, which is beautiful and hard. We are seeing the future leaders in this field. And, we are overwhelmed by the gift of each person’s time and energy to this project.

“But for me the long term impact of this deployment will be an evolution in the area of connecting humans to their governance process from a position of power”- Om.

More about what the Digital teams are doing:

The Community participants come from all walks of life. Here are some of the key curves that they have navigated with amazing tenacity, spirit and dedication:

MAKERS: learning and building global collaboration skills in real-time
BUILDERS: creating a common language while combine all areas of knowledge and disciplines. This is truly an interdisciplinary group that works with many cultures and languages
EDIT MODE: change the process, software and research in real-time. There are few things sacred on this project. Our wiki has all the process documents which get edited frequently. We advise of changes via skype because email is too slow. Bugs and some features are fixed and tested in real-time. Plus, the embedded real-time analysis and research team is providing guidance, sensemaking and quality control feedback. Data is not static in this type of project, so we in turn, need to be in EDIT MODE.

See our wiki for how we are editing. : )

The number of A-ha moments across the board are brilliant. Not only are people rising up to learn and do, it is changing our software development as well as changing best practices for deployment, research and documentation. Thank you, take a bow.

Photo by Wambui Kamiru

SOME HUMAN STATS:

We’ve been posting numbers all week about reports, types of reports, awaiting approval, awaiting verification etc. But, the big community story is how we collectively made this possible:

Number of Skype Sub-teams active:
10 (SMS, Media Monitoring, Geolocation, Translation, Reports, Verification, Analysis & Research, QA, Tech and Communications), 11 if you count the Ushahidi internal team chat.

Number of Training sessions with Field Partners:
50 plus meetings between January 4 and March 4th. (There were many in 2012 too.)
Number of Community Working Group and Digital training team meetups:
14 (There were also some side group team sessions. (e.g. Analysis))
Number of people trained for digital teams from February 11 – Sunday, March 3, 2013: Over 239 trained on and before
Number of people added from March 3 – 6th (including some real-time trained folks): 218
Number of days that the Deployment was 24/7 around the globe and locally: Saturday, March 2 (9am EAT) – Tuesday, March 3 (3:00 pm EST)
Number of days of monitoring: Friday, March 1st plus Tuesday, March 3 – continuing
Where are people from: Kenya, Cameroon, Libya, Botswana, Nigeria, Ireland, UK, Slovenia, US, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Spain, South Korea.

Digital Teams

Some quick team updates for you:

SMS
The SMS team wins for the most revisions to their process to meet the real-time needs. The good news is that team trained and handed off each process. Due to high volumes, we use many people from other teams. (See more about their team below).

MEDIA MONITORING
The MM wins for being the team that we steal participants. Honestly, with the volume of SMS, we needed more folks in SMS and Reports to help. The Media Monitoring team has been slightly skeleton. We made a mandate at the beginning of the year to only post citizen voices to the map. This means SMS, Twitter and Facebook posts. We aren’t recycling news stories. But, with the sparse coverage there are fewer of these types of reports. We look for the most urgent ones.

TRANSLATION
The Translation team is a combination of trained professionals at Translators without Borders and digital participants from Kenya and beyond. The transition to being deeply inside a software deployment had a steep learning curve. But, it was fantastic to see reports quickly translated. Being fast paced on global teams is hard enough, try doing it in a few languages like these folks.

GEOLOCATION
The Geolocation team has been one of our rocks in this process. They have been doubling up on reviewing content and keeping the rest of us in line for process adherence. Plus, maps are hot. Our friends from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap arrived Tuesday and Wednesday just as we were burning out. The amount of nerd cross-training in Team Geo has been fantastic. Simply put, there will be more geonerdia in .ke if these folks have anything to say about the future.

VERIFICATION
Verification is the ROCK of the project. The folks in the field and in our verification skype rooms are fast. Stellar fast. Often, they are working on verifying information before the rest of us can get the reports to geo or translation. At first it was confusing, but once we got into the flow, it was amazing. Please look at all the reports with “verified”. You will see notes about the action taken. This is not the first deployment with embedded verification. But, their often seamless link between offline and online teams will be a best-practice strategy for other deployments to model and remix. A taste of how we worked:

TECH:
The technical teams included some core Ushahidi staff and trusted developers. Code was pushed frequently. See github for that action.

They also worked closely with the Analysis team to create the Visuals and Results pages.

You’ll note that we hacked that into the Uchaguzi platform.

ANALYSIS, Research and QA
The Analysis and Research team includes designers, developers, data hackers, researchers and policy folks. They collaborated to create Visuals and make sense of the data. Plus, their frequent reports helped all of us know the wide-angle lens.

In the middle of our live project, we created a sub-team for Quality Assurance. This team includes developers, researchers and others. The goal is to dig into the data and problem-solve. Doing root cause analysis can help with training and fixing stuff. This is one of the most important changes to keeping the project on the rails.

Communications:

We’ve got a dedicated group of folks trying to tell the story while we map. Check out their amazing snapshots on the SitRoom.

Some More thoughts from the community:

“I want to profusely thank the “UshaGuzi” team for their vision to create a best-practices solution for such pressing needs. Ushahidi and spinoffs are a huge step in the right direction. I also want to highlight how this process was different from other deployments in the respect that a communications feedback loop was closed and I think the effect will be electric.”

Receiving SMS and mapping it: done often
Receiving SMS and sending a response: done rarely

Creating a means to react to ongoing communications with an individual: New Paradigm Thinking
School and childcare pulled me out of the windows longer than I anticipated; it was always incredible to return and see hundreds of messages gone by. But for me the long term impact of this deployment will be an evolution in the area of connecting humans to their governance process from a position of power. I look forward to refining all of our procedures to prepare for the inevitable next election. Having developers involved with the live deployment was a pleasure.

I’ll include the ubiquitous appreciation for the actual people who joined up and got involved and whose dogged determination provided valuable understanding. SMS Team deserves more than that though. For problem solving on-the-fly, being enthusiastic about the larger goal while doing so much to tackle the minute by minute reality of providing a more clear ‘people’s voice’ to the world. Al Jazeera is just the first of many places where this map will show up and I’m very grateful to have had this opportunity.”

With deep respect,
Om
Asante tutaonana siku moja.
…………………………………………………………………………………….

The Kenyan team was very happy to have the Pan African contingent individual (Botswana), Yemi and Egghead Odewale (Nigeria) and Jean Brice (Cameroon) fly all the way to volunteer and spend time with us when we really needed it.

They were rockstars at helping out and jumping between their teams and assisting with SMS. It has been a great week of learning and camaraderie with the local community. Friendships made stronger around Africa and the US.

Dr. Susan Benesch not only worked with the Umati team but also assisted with the SMS backlog.

5Feb

CBC Spark Interview: Crisismapping, Ushahidi and Canada

CBCSpark’s Nora Young interviewed me about Ushahidi, Crisismapping and citizen activism. The episode #205 also includes an interview with Rebecca Chiao of Harassmap and my colleague, Daudi Were, Project Lead of Uchaguzi.

Download the CBC Spark podcast

I firmly believe that the lessons learned from crisismapping can be applied to every day important things. Maps have also been storytelling devices by sharing versions of history and location.

****

There are a few maps in Canada that are truly indicate the future state potential:

Great Lakes Commons, based in Ontario and lead by Paul Baines, is keen to build a commons approach around Water Stewardship:

” A Commons perspective respects the waters as the heritage, sustenance, and inheritance of all peoples and species that live within this Great Lakes watershed. This map is yours to mark your connection and concern and share our collective desires to protect, improve, and sustain this home. “

YXEVoices, based in Saskatoon, SK and lead by Ushahidian Dale Zak, aims to connect citizens and their cities:

YXEvoices

Here’s to more growth in these areas.

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