Events

26Jun

Camping with Info Activism

Lake Orta, Novara, Piedmont, Italy.

Eddie, the peacock, is in the courtyard at Centro d’ompio. We are eating breakfast and getting ready for another day of learning and sharing. I’m at Info Activism camp with 138 other folks from 48 countries. Participatory sessions range from Documentation, Curation, Investigation and Beautiful Troublemakers. I’ve joined documentation because I want to focus on storytelling with purpose. Afternoons are full of skillshares. So far I’ve been in a PGP and digital security learn-in as well as a Data cleanup workshop getting regex 101. Sublime Text and I are are now friends.

infoactivism

Every day I send the Tactical Tech’s Security in a Box to community members. I’m here to polish up and learn new skills to keep on that journey. Global events really inspire me. We, the beautiful troublemakers, work around the world to connect humans and tech for social good. It is sometimes lonely path, so these times that we are together are precious from sunrise to sunset.

5Jun

Personal Democracy Forum is 10!

Personal Democracy Forum is one of my favourite events of the year. Geeks and political savvy convene in NYC for this 2-day brain feast. Last year, I had the honour of being a Google PDF Fellow.

Why PDF?

PDF sessions, keynotes and, most importantly, the chance ‘lobby conference’ include a high caliber of local, national and global thinkers who are keen to discuss the intersections of politics and technology.

Meeting or reconnecting with bright minds who work in the global tech for good space, is one of the best parts of PDF. Ichi, one of the founders of sinsai.info (a crisismap in response to the triple disaster which affected Japan in 2010) is in town from Japan:

Hiroyasu Ichikawa with his Social Good Guide

Hiroyasu “Ichi” Ichikawa with his Social Good Guide

Talking with strangers is very much encouraged. You never know where it will lead. Last year over lunch, Meighan Stone and I had a long talk about changing the landscape of who can attend events. She went on to build GlobalXGood, which Ushahidi sponsored. Meighan truly felt passionate about this gap and made a huge difference by addressing it.

To summarize – have an idea, network with like minds, build it. I wonder if anyone has ever done a trackback on the power of connections related to PDF chance experiences. This is part of why I am so excited to attend and brain collide.

If you can’t be in NYC, you can watch the hashtag #PDF13 or the livestream. Check out the PDF agenda and don’t miss out.

See you soon! (Look for the bright red hair, if we haven’t met before.)

11May

Go Open Data


Futures Panel @ Go Open Data

Notes

Slide 1:
What is our Open Data Vision for Ontario? Canada? the World? 
How will we get there?
 Last year at OSCON – Tim O’Reilly told the participants that “we won”. After 14 years, open source is often a default.
Last year at Mozfest – Mark Surman told participants that Mozilla “won”. The Browser is now competitive. Our next mission is the “Open Web”.

What are our versions of this for Open Data? How do we get there?

Sunglasses by Sunlight Foundation for http://transparencycamp.org/

Slide 2:
Ushahidi is information collection, data visualization and interactive mapping software. We are used for election monitoring, city building, Civil society work such as anti-corruption and harassment reporting. Plus, we are used for environmental actions.

Uchaguzi was our partnership and community driven project for the Kenyan elections. (March 2013)
We tried to incorporate both citizen and official data.
uchaguzi.co.ke

http://sitroom.uchaguzi.co.ke/

Slide 3:
The Uchaguzi project started with base layer information of all the counties, all the polling stations and an offline communications strategy. We had radio announcements, grocery store screens had TV ads with our short codes. Next, our team and partners trained people from partner organizations collected information via SMS (primary channel), email, web forms, mobile apps, and, of course, social media. We received 1000s of messages, we had strategies to verify and escalate issues to official organizations. But the partnership with the government was not possible. A citizen program of communication and voice is this much closer to being tied to official action. Someday.

Some of other ways that data science mattered – we had a QA Integrity team to doublecheck for private information and tribe information. We were prepared to have visualization around the Results, but the electoral commission (IEBC) had technical failures. In the end, they did manual counts.

Slide 4:
Around the world organizations like Oxfam, ICT4Peace, World Bank, ICRC and the Woodrow Wilson Center are working to build research in the area around new technology and humanitarian work. When we are building projects and using data to tell stories and help people, we need to mindful of these and incorporate these in our strategy. If we can protect the people most at risk, we build trust with our fellow citizens, institutions and governments.

The ICRC, hosted by the International Crisismappers community, provided this framework for data standards.

Some of the Key Standards for Data management they outlined included – 1. necessity & capacity 2. data protection laws, 3. do no harm 4. Bias/non-discrimination (objective information/processing) 4. Quality check/reliability

http://blog.standbytaskforce.com/data-protection-standards-2-0/

http://acmc.gov.au/2013/04/in-search-of-common-ground-protection-of-civilians-in-armed-conflict/

http://ict4peace.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/The-potential-and-challenges-of-open-data-for-crisis-information-management-and-aid-efficiency.pdf

http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/publication/p0999.htm

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Privacy_MissingPersons_FINAL.pdf

http://www.unocha.org/top-stories/all-stories/humanitarianism-network-age

Slide 5:
Rhok.org
datakind.org

http://spaceappschallenge.org/

http://spaceapps.tumblr.com/

http://codeforamerica.org/

http://www.ci.uchicago.edu/datasciencefellowship/

http://opengovhub.org/

http://www.ihub.co.ke/

Slide 6:
How will we connect our mission for data to what real citizens need? How can we involve them in our plans? Even more so, how can we be guided by them and be excited for this common journey?

24Feb

OSM needs you: join the OSM Hack Weekend

At Toronto’s International Open Data Hackathon event this past weekend, it struck me how many folks would love to know how to use and how to build tools to support the OpenStreetMap community. Conversation after conversation folks mentioned that they wanted to learn more, do more.

Well, this is your chance Toronto.

The Toronto OSM community is a dedicated group hosting their second Developer Hack Weekend from March 8 – 10, 2013. An OpenStreetMap “Hack Weekend” is a local event for technical work to improve OpenStreetMap. They are holding intro sessions, socials and a developer focused hackathon.


Full details about OSM and this event can be found on the OSM wiki. If you haven’t created an account yet, anyone can join OSM. There are many ways to start contributing. Just join and start connecting.

OSM
(Photo from Toronto’s OSM 8th Birthday party. Cookies courtesy of Meg the awesome.)

Three ways you can get involved:

1. Join one or all of the events.
There is a great mix of learning, social and developer action events. OSM is supported by developer projects that make the mapping possible. I’ve added the links and some details below.

2. Help spread the word
“Support OSM globally and in Toronto. Join the OSM Hacker Weekend: March 9 – 10, 2013: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Toronto_Hack_Weekend_March_2013#Who.27s_coming.3F”

3. Help Sponsor
Like every hackathon, OSM could use a hand with food and drink. If you or your organization can lend a hand. The contact and event organizer is Richard Weait. Ping him:RWeait at Gmail dot com.

OSM Intro Session and OSM Social

There are monthly Toronto OSM casual mappy hours to meet and connect with other OSM users and fans. I’ve been attending for awhile and always learn something new. Getting an introduction to OSM is really the best place to start, so take a break on Friday afternoon and check out the session. If you can’t miss work for the sake of mapping, you can catch the Friday night Mappy Hour. It is my understanding that guest mappers and hackers are coming into town. This is a chance to learn about OSM plus get a deeper understanding of the Hack weekend opportunities.


Register for OSM Intro Session (Friday, March 8, 2013 14:00 pm EDT)
Register the OSM Evening Meet and Greet Mappy Hour (Friday, March 8, 2013 18:30pm EDT)

Your Weekend is better if you Hack for OSM

These are the core of the event and are cast from the same OSM Hack Weekend alloy that has lead to important advances in the OpenStreetMap infrastructure and tools. If you have wanted to know how to become a developer – contributor to OpenStreetMap, this is your best opportunity to learn from and share with the experts.

OSM Saturday and Sunday Code Sprints:

Join Saturday’s code sprint
Join Sunday’s code spring

There are many mapping projects that you can get involved in within the greater OSM community. It has been such a pleasure to get to know them via the Humanitarian OSM community. I’d encourage you to find your special niche and map away!

4Feb

Harassmap in Canada

How often can you say that you are proud and excited that your government funds something? The International Development Research Corporation (IDRC) funds many important technical, research and social entrepreneur groups that I respect and admire. This includes Citizen Lab based at University of Toronto and Harassmap, a social entrepreneur and civil society group based in Egypt.

Today I had the great opportunity to meet the visionary Rebecca Chiao of the Harassmap Team. After two years of admiration and professional correspondence, it was an exciting exchange about program management and mapping strategy for online and offline campaigns. The Harassmap Team are leaders mentoring others in over 19 countries including Bosnia, India, Syria and more. Their Ushahidi deployment is one of the most successful deployments of the software. As such, I frequently recommend that new mappers review blog posts, videos and annual reports from the Harassmap team.

Rebecca is touring Canada to share the Harassmap story.

You can hear her stories in person:
Toronto: February 5, 2013
The Vivian and David Campbell Conference Facility, Munk Centre for International Studies
1 Devonshire Place, University of Toronto.
Register at http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/events or watch the live webcast .

Ottawa: February 6, 2013: 10:00 a.m. to noon
Lecture: “HarassMap: Social Mapping Sexual Harassment and Violence in Egypt”

When: Wednesday, February 6, 2013, from 10:00 a.m. to noon
Where: IDRC, W. David Hopper Room, 150 Kent Street, 8th floor, Ottawa, ON

Montreal: February 8, 2013: 12:30 – 14:00

McGill University, NCDH 202, 3644 Peel Street, Montreal
“Women’s Rights – Egypt Combating Sexual Harassment”

She has been featured on CBC The Current and CBCSpark. On Wednesday, she will be on CBC Power and Politics.

I’m looking forward to attending tomorrow’s talk at UofT. Hope you can join some of the events.

24Jan

Planning for the Kenyan Elections

Nairobi, Kenya

Since I arrived in Kenya at the beginning of January, I’ve been deep in Uchaguzi (Kenya Elections 2013) Planning. There has been deep dives in crisismapping strategy, local political ecosystem and, of course, many community events. It is a pleasure to host events bringing like minds together for a common purpose.

I’m blogging on the Ushahidi blog about the project.

Uchaguzi Community Meetups


(Picture by Jonathan Kalan)


(Picture by Jonathan Kalan)

I organized a community map word exercise during the meetup. Kenyans described the regions of their country based on perceptions. It was great to get people interacting and thinking about location:


(Picture by Jonathan Kalan)


(Picture by Nekesa Were)


(Picture by Nekesa Were)


(Patrick Muniy created this infographic from the session)

Also, I did take a break to visit the elephants:

Swahili Lessons

4Jan

Coining Global and Hurricane Sandy

In December, I had the honour to present at the United Nations Spider meetings in Vienna. Here are those presentations with details notes:

Coining Global is a state of community for where Crisismapping and Digital Humanitarianism should grow:

Hurricane Sandy saw the rise of many Crisismapping projects, including the great Hot or Not test of satellite imagery. There was also a large number of Crowdmaps launched:

14Nov

Anti-Corruption Fighting -15IACC

Anti-Corruption and Transparency activism is merging with hacks and maps. In the past year at Ushahidi, I’ve met a number of mappers who are using the open source tools to activate and organize around these topics.

As part of the 15th Annual International Anti-Corruption Conference in Brasilia, Brazil, I met these mappers and held an Online Tools Game Changers Session about their work. The Transparency Hackers movement in Brasil, lead by Daniela De Silva, held a simultaneous hackathon. Let no topic go unturned.


Here are some snippets on this work:

An Interview with the IACC team


An interview with BBC Brasil

“Por trás dessas ferramentas online que servem de “atalho” para se denunciar corrupção está uma multidão de jovens internautas.

“A juventude está mudando as táticas do ativismo anticorrupção. Eles trazem consigo um incrível entusiasmo por tecnologia móveis e novas mídias, como vídeos”, diz Heather Leson, uma das diretoras da Ushahidi, à BBC Brasil.

“Esses jovens ativistas agora atuam e compartilham, ininterruptamente, em suas redes sociais. E assim eles não precisam mais usar arquivos em PDF de 50 páginas para lutar contra a corrupção. Estão livres disso. ”

Some of the Corruption Mappers:

Heather

11Jun

This means it’s Personal: PDF

What if? This is a question that drives me daily. What if people are connected to affect change with technology? I am very honoured to be selected as a Personal Democracy Forum Google Fellow 2012 among a distinguished list of accomplished fellows.

Learning about the struggles to give voice and have free elections around the world, I’ve encountered a few shining lights that we could learn and remix in North America:

Qabila.tv from Egypt has an amazing program of digital literacy accessible videos to teach people about democracy and the principles. It is in common language. The team used these in their community-based organization outreach campaign to reach the youth. In order to succeed in mandates for elections, we need to start thinking better about how to use the power of the Internet for true engagement. And, then take it offline to communities, listen and remix:

At Ushahidi every day I work alongside election monitors, corruption mappers and other civil society activists. I’m on a mission to ask “What If” citizens could give voice to their causes, their passions, their communities. These people are disrupters doing the heavy lifting. I simply have the honour of sharing their stories as Ushahidi is a vehicle for people’s change. And, I have the responsibility to find ways to augment and surface their work globally while supporting it with documentation and training.

  • Trust of citizens can only be acquired with long programming for safe elections. The Ushahidi Liberia team is a strong example of continuous planning and relationship-building.
  • Civil society and community-based organizations are core to real engagement. The Harassmap team has a strong offline and online program which could be applied to elections
  • Why people vote and don’t vote might be analyzed by Sentiment Mapping. Last year, my colleague launched I Vote Because for the Canadian elections, It was a small act to bind people to the “act of voting” and to spring discussion. I look forward to seeing more evolution in this area.

election hack

On Saturday, June 16th, I will participate in a Free Election Hackathon with a number of groups. I plan to use my PDF experience to assist people who will be doing election monitoring around the world in the coming year. I can’t wait to hack on ideas, then test them into action.

Here’s to happy braining,

Heather

4May

Map it, Change it! [video]

As much as I love talking about deployers, digital volunteers and mapping, I still get a bit nervous seeing videos of my talks. I was honoured to speak at TedxSilkRoad on April 11, 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey.

You can tell I was talking fast when “Non-government Organizations” suddenly got renamed “Non-Government Associations.” The presentation has 2961 views.

(Also see: Map it, Change it (blog post).)

© Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved