data

On being a HOT Board Member

After 4 years, today my last day as a Board Member of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. We have annual board elections announced at our Annual General Meeting in a few short hours. During my time on HOT’s Board, I served as a Member-at-Large, Secretary and President. Serving on the HOT board has been challenging and rewarding as the NGO has grown in leaps and bounds. It has been an honour to be part of that journey with fellow board members, members, staff, community allies, donors, and supporters. (Thank you.)

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) applies the principles of open source and open data sharing for humanitarian response and economic development.

Being a Board Member for a small NGO can be a serious commitment. HOT’s Board is transitioning from operations to a strategic board. It is something that every open source community does over time. To support this change, the board, staff and membership have learned much about organizational development, governance and fundraising. This has taken substantial leadership from two Executive Directors (Kate Chapman and Tyler Radford), staff, and many fellow Board Members. Some of the ‘back office support’ that the HOT board provided previously are now staff and community roles. (One example of organizational development, is the Board Primer that I curated.)

Honestly, serving HOT changed my life and I am thankful for all the experiences. And, I am thankful for all the amazing people with whom I met or collaborated.

HOT Activation Sprint

What being on the Board taught me

We all have our goals – personal and career.

Being on the HOT Board taught me to be a better leader. There are so many proud moments as I reflect – watching and supporting leaders, learning about all the amazing projects and advocacy work, and sharing the HOT story in many public forums, like this Datashift article. I helped build and support a growing NGO. HOT truly inspires me, as do the staff, partners and extended community. The skills I learned have helped my career – organizational development, strategic planning, meeting management, co-writing grants, interviewing staff, hiring an Executive Director, communications planning, and planning a strategic board meeting.

Other skills that I learned and/or honed: negotiation skills, coordination, dealing with conflict, managing people, and mentorship. Everyone’s Board Member path is different. If you are considering running for a board and/or joining a Board, I am available to talk.

I remain an active member of HOT, including co-leading our Governance Working Group.

(Photo credit: Jakarta HOT Activation Workshop, ccby by Mhairi O’Hara)

Thank you and keep on inspiring,

11Apr

Data @ IFRC: Blog Series update

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

Note: All previous Data @ IFRC blog posts were migrated to the IFRC Data Blog. All future blog posts will reside there.

Here’s to building a Data-driven IFRC.

Heather

11Nov

Data @ IFRC #4: GO Project, Malawi Red Cross

Malawi Red Cross MapSwipe 2

Help the Malawi Red Cross

A few clicks and taps could help the Malawi Red Cross with their humanitarian efforts. Games for change in the humanitarian space are growing. The Malawi Red Cross and Netherlands Red Cross have a programme needs your help.
MapSwipe is a gamefied mobile app developed for the Missing Maps Project to enable fast satellite image classification on mobile devices. It is a game that allows anyone to quickly make decisions about which items have roads and/or buildings in the images. These ‘tagged’ images are then sorted to have mappers at Missing Mapathons add the details into OpenStreetMap. Then, the data is used for local programmes like delivering health needs and logistics. The new mission on #MapSwipe for the Malawi Red Cross / Netherlands Red Cross collaboration to raise awareness within vulnerable communities in disaster prone areas of the possible dangers of natural disasters.

GET MAPSWIPE: The easy to use MapSwipe app can be used on android and iphone devices.
ABOUT Missing Maps – Learn more about MapSwipe and Missing Maps on Facebook.

Go with Data

This week we are sprinting on the GO Project – this is a humanitarian emergency data project to support responders in the Federation. IFRC aims to be a data-driven organization based on evidence based decisions. We provide current IFRC datasets, Red Cross Red Crescent datasets, links to other humanitarian resources and data learning materials. The team is envisioning the next steps to get from prototype to implementation. All the code is online.

GO Team sprinting

Teach Around the Data

Clearly expecting people to simply become data ready or a data scientist is unrealistic. So, while we build tools, training and programmes it is key to focus on the ecosystem around data literacy. From
Emmanuel Letouzé, Director and co-Founder, Data-Pop Alliance; Visiting Scholar, MIT Media Lab:

“I am arguing that the current focus on data literacy is an opportunity, reflecting back on the nature and role of literacy in history, to promote and foster a consequentialist, broader and thicker, conceptualization of data literacy as literacy in the age of data, one that will allow citizens and societies to challenge current power structures and dynamics to meet their goals, and perhaps the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Alright, so we build!

Building community around data training

Atlassian site
One of the items that I am keen to build is a Data playbook to serve the diverse communities within the IFRC and National Societies. The existing leaders are creating materials and we are connecting on how to share widely.

A playbook is a document and/or website that is an editable place with recipes, best practices, and technology. There are many styles and methods to build this type of project. Atlassian just launched a new Playbook which truly rocks with easy to use methods to build digital teams. It is inspiring to consider how we can create data literacy guides like this. (source:”Did Atlassian just crack the code on digital teamwork“.)