Who is the new volunteer for Humanitarian Aid?
Steve Kalaydjian and I presented this talk at the Toronto Social Tech Unconference on October 23, 2010
The conference details: http://stcu.freegeektoronto.org/
Thanks to Ushnish Sengupta and Free Geek Toronto for having us.
The room is full of people working on an open video HTML5 script, transcribing content, tagging photos and collaborating for Drumbeat’s closing night video. Video interviews, photos, tweets and other content are being transcribed, edited, designed and morphed into one master. The script on the projected screen is foreign to me. There are 6 people are writing in html 5 with fast-paced collaboration. Two people are editing and transcribing one set of videos. Three folks are working on graphic design. Everyone is an orchestra of activity with a deadline to tell the story of the Drumbeat Festival- people, events and more.
I’m here because I’ve spent the bulk of the festival brainstorming ideas and this is deep in the heart of Drumbeat tech. Brett Gaylor of Web.made.movies and Ben Moskowitz of the Open Video Alliance are both conducting and participating. It seems wrong to write a blog post instead of doing a meta video to show how the Drumbeat video is being created. Safe to say video would best capture the pulse of activity and the steady stream of conversations: Jquery, popcorn, I could go take a nap, adobe fireworks, do we need translation of this video?, use the firefox beta, the border, no move the font a few pixels, we need to get this done to universal subtitles, plus conversations in English and Spanish.
Can’t wait to see the final version tonight. Go Video Lab!
Two university students: Vasileios Georgitzikis and Pierros Papadeas, spent yesterday in the Hackerspace Playground and Arduino. Their goal: create an Arduino xbee open web powered bicycle. The night before they worked on their script. Then, they refined it by creating the device and testing speeds without a bike until about 3:30pm.
How it works
What they built was an Arduino wireless transmitter and a hall effect sensor on the wheel of a bicycle.
This calculates speed and then broadcasts this wirelessly. The receiver module connects to a usb.
Every bike broadcasts and id and speed. The script reads and visualizes using Html 5.
The Arduino demo at the hackbus:
The team:
Inspiration! Mitchell Baker and Cathy Davidson kicked off today’s Drumbeat activities with their thoughts on the future of the open web and open learning.
Baker said that the future of the web means we need to: see, touch, get your hands on it and pull it apart. Mozilla’s goal is to provide opportunities to create your own world. We need to merge the open source software and education world to change the conversation, build connections and merge
common values.
Cathy Davidson: “I’m among my people. Education does not work, we have to change it.” Kindergarten to University education is broken. It is based on industrial revolution/assembly line models. We need to add peer-to-peer university (P2PU) learning and open education. This means triggering the edge thinking a. instrincically for what you do and b. change what we do. The world has changed. We don’t need this old hierarchical structure.
The call to action was quoted best by Davidson: “Create Joyous Insurgency”.
(Note: Throughout the Drumbeat Festival of Learning, Freedom and the Web, I’ll create some brief posts with quotes and topical highlights. Think of it as headline news.)
Barcelona is the perfect location for the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival. With attendees are from around the world, you get the sense of “otherness” and “innovation” by the city and the Raval location.
Raval is a revived district. The Barcelonian city government situated the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) in this area to drive change. How appropriate! Today I adventured in the city with a 3-hour bike tour of various regions. It started in Raval around 11:30am. The MACBA site was just starting to see an influx of Mozillians, Drumbeaters and, best of all, tents which signify a real festival happening. The bike tour took us to the symbol of Raval: a cat. (sculpture by Fernando Botero)
After the tour, I stopped by the MACBA site again. It was 4:00pm and the registration desk was close to ready. I returned at 5:30pm and the vibe was incredible:
Skateboards, Mozillians, Drumbeaters, a Hackbus in the centre, tents, a registration desk with people milling near.
If only we had set up a timelapse camera in the MACBA square to capture the day’s evolution as the Drumbeat Festival kicked off. Incredible. Exciting. We are all here as the change in the place of change. It is such a convergence of like and unlike minds of many disciplines. The common thread is an open mind and spirit to bounce ideas and energy.
By 8:30pm, the Joi Ito was on stage telling us that “the Internet saved my life.” He captured the spirit of Drumbeat for me. Each of us has a corner of open web and open education. We converge. And, he was right on point for me. The Internet has saved my me and changed my life in immeasurable ways.
The Science Fair was so engaging. What a great opportunity to share ideas about open education with each of our organizations. I was happy to share the CrisisCommons story. Every conversation had my head spinning with ideas and questions. It My only regret is that I was so busy at my table that I was unable to tour and meet the other Fair participants.
Here’s to another amazing day.
I’ve read the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival of Learning, Freedom and Web schedule more than once and it is still daunting. Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation, even created a Drumbeat Festival Users Guide for attendees to help.
How to choose sessions, activities or spaces to hang out? I have three days and a flight to Barcelona to finalize my plans. Overwhelmed by awesome the selection. Well, I know I want to participate in badges, open video and open web sessions. These are the ones that will help with my CrisisCommons work and my choose adventure paths. I’m also blogging for the event.
Tents, Robots, MACBA and the Science Fair
Here are some of my schedule picks, but they will change as I navigate and explore. And, the whole schedule is subject to awesome and might be changed by the crowd!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010:
Join me: Sharing the CrisisCommons story at the Science Fair.
Thursday, November 4, 2010:
10:30am Badge Lab:Badges, badges, everywhere
11:30amEducating your Users or the Skills Lab: Learn what you need to hack Open Video (Video Lab)
14:00pm Arduino, Processing and Fantasia
15:00pmBadges, learning and online identity: design jam
16:00pm Arduino, Xbee, Bicycles and the Open Web or Learning accessibility:values and skills
17:00pmCalm after the storm: Yoga for Hacktivists
or the School of Webcraft: use case on Badges
Friday, November 5, 2010:
10:30am Pathways to Open Content
11:30am Encourage Content Reuse: Educate your users!
14:00pm Badges, learning and online identity: wireframes + prototypes
15:00pm Dale Dougherty How Maker Faire works or Build your own Personal Learning Environment Part II
16:00pm The Next Big Thing
17:00pm Build, Make, Learn in the Hackbus and Hackerspace Playground
Saturday, November 6, 2010: OpenRaval classroom, for the community
10:00amBe a GoodWill Reporter
12:00pmCommons Time Traveler
I’m going a bit early to be a tourist. Some of the greatest architects have works in Barcelona: Gehry, Meier, Mies van der Rohe Gaudi, and much more. It is my first time in Spain and I can’t wait to explore and learn at the festival and in the city.
is in Toronto on December 4 – 5, 2010. This is the first Canadian RHoK event and the 3rd global event.
Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is a community of developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders around the world, working to develop software solutions that respond to the challenges facing humanity today. RHoK is all about using technology to make the world a better place by building a community of innovation. RHoK brings software engineers together with disaster relief experts to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK Hackathon event brings together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems.
We will need Hackers, storytellers, software engineers, programmers, university students, marketers, web content creators, emergency planners,international policy and development students, teachers, librarians, videographers, event planners, organizers, project managers and YOU. Creating humanitarian software in a hackathon is a very special collective collaboration.
Participants can select from a number of problem definitions. (These will be posted in the new few weeks.)
Video screens and online tools like IRC, blogs, wikis and more tools will connect the world. You could be collaborating with any of these countries to solve problems and brainstorm. Yes, there is even some healthy competition in store.
Help us make this global event RHoK. RHoK 2.0 is happening in Toronto (Canada), Chicago (USA), Berlin (Germany), Bangalore(India), Mexico City(Mexico), New York(New York), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Aarhus (Denmark), Nairobi (Kenya) and Lusaka (Zambia).
Register for RHoK Toronto
Date: December 4, 2010: 9:00am – December 5, 2010 8pm. ALL NIGHT
Location: University of Toronto, 100 St. George Ave. Sid Smith, Rooms 2015,2016,2019,2020
Tshirts and stickers will be provided.
We are looking for food and beverage sponsors for the RHOK 2.0 event. We will need food and drinks for 30-50 volunteers for 6 meals.
Please contact Heather AT textontechs.com or @heatherleson
Thank you to University of Toronto, Idee Inc, TinEYE and HackTO for sponsoring the event.
Last June I had the awesome honour to participate in RHoK 1.0 -Sydney, Australia. It was amazing to support and promote their efforts. Check out a RHoK 1.0 video from the event
Where did Autumn go? It is conference, event and learning season. Well, learning should always be important, but it just seems the next two months are going to be chaotic and awesome.
Most of my other spare time is spent writing for the Sloan Foundation deliverables for CrisisCommons. We have a stack of deadlines until the Trustee meeting in December. Every time I share this story it helps refine my contribution to the documentation. It is so exciting to focus on this project.
The events:
October 23, 2010:
Social Technology Conference/Unconference (Toronto, ON)
I’ll be sharing some CrisisCommons and Crowdsourcing stories at the Social Tech Conference/Unconference this weekend. Very excited to talk about open source and humanitarian volunteerism on a global scale. My co-presenter will be CrisisCamp Toronto’s Steve Kalaydjian.
November 1 -7, 2010:
Mozilla Drumbeat Festival of Learning, Freedom and the Web (Barcelona, Spain)
November 10,2010:
Emergency Management Conference, Ontario Red Cross (Niagara on the Lake, ON)
I am honoured to co-present with David Black, Brian Chick and Melanie Gorka about CrisisCommons and how social media and Emergency Management groups can collaborate.
December 4/5, 2010:
Random Hacks of Kindness (the world)
I am partnering with technology companies, hackers and software developers to organize a Random Hacks of Kindness event in Toronto. More on this soon. Toronto has a great hacking community, especially Hackto.ca. If you are reading and want to lend a hand, I’d love the help with sponsors, outreach and more.
Back to writing
H
What a month! I’ve been doing some blogging about the Mozilla Drumbeat’s Festival of Learning, Freedom and the Web:
On the Crisis Commons Blog
Community starts with volunteers. CrisisCommons and all the CrisisCamps have been on a massive journey exploring collaboration, crowdsourcing and volunteer technical communities for disaster and crisis response
This path has also lead me to participatory learning and task turking for volunteer technical communities. I am excited to hear about the Mozilla’s Mozilla’s Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival. It will gather teachers, learners and technologists from around the world who are at the heart of this revolution. There will workshops and sessions all about participatory learning and badges. People like Cathy Davidson, Duke University professor and proponent of Open Learning, will be running sessions on storming learning. The Open Video Alliance team will also be attending. What if we had HTML5 videos as training materials to help volunteers learn and create at the same time? Endless.
On Mozilla Drumbeat:
Cathy N. Davidson is the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English at Duke University and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies. She is also the co-founder of HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). Pronounced “haystack”: it is an international network of educators and digital visionaries committed to the creative development and critical understanding of new technologies in life, learning, and society.
In a few short weeks, I will be in Barcelona learning, playing and exploring with the Drumbeat team. More on that in another post.
heather
TechSoup Canada hosted NetSquared Tuesday on October 19, 2010. I had the pleasure of sharing the CrisisCommons/CrisisCamp story with attendees. The second part of the talk was to provide participants tips and lessons learned about crowdsourcing. I also gave people some homework to consider adding Crowdmap to their own crowdsourcing mix for local NGOs and NFPs.
(Wow, I posted this two days ago on Slideshare and it has 118 views. Thanks!)