Mappers

8Jan

Fractual Matter

Matter. One of my core life goals is to help people get involved in their world with technology. Along journey, I am often struck by the participant’s desire to make a difference and to matter. Many of us research and write about how to get to the next million contributors in a healthy and quality way. But are we building communities and spaces that make this possible to matter without fracturing?

It has been 5 years since the earthquake struck Haiti. Last night I attended the Canadian Red Cross photo exhibition of Johan Hallberg-Campbell’s Photos called Haiti Five Years On: An Fom! One of the speakers asked us to reflect on why we do this work and consider each person we help. Rarely do I focus on why or how I got involved, because the mission is bigger than one individual, one organization. But, since asked here is my answer: My sister is a medical professional who once volunteered in Haiti before the earthquake. On January 12, 2010, we spoke on the phone both in tears. What struck me from this conversation was that she has these ‘immediate skills’ which could help someone recover. My brother-in-law, as an engineer, also has strong ‘immediately applicable skills’ with his expertise in water and sanitation. My sense of helplessness was fleeting as I found others like myself who also felt like our technical and digital skills could maybe help a humanitarian and an affected population. Asking what can I do is the first step on a beautiful, complex journey. While the contributions we apply may not make an ‘immediate’ difference, it could be a applied like a layer cake of information insights. Maybe someday our diligence, our time and skills would ‘get to matter’. This tenacity drives many of us. We trial, we error, we get back up and we keep seeking ways to apply technology.

This type of change does not happen over night. Years and hours of brainpower continue strive to solve this problem set: How can we help people get involved and use technology/digital skills to make a difference? At Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), I am working with researchers and computer scientists on human and machine computing solutions. In my spare time, I’m on the Board of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and am one of the organizers of the International Conference of CrisisMapping. Truly, I am fortunate to spend my career and personal time focused on “matter”.

Why are you a Digital Volunteer or Humanitarian (quick survey)?

Fractured and Fractal Matter

Fractals fascinate me. The nuances of shapes surprise the viewer. I often think that communities really are like fractals, all the varieties with complexity and beauty. As Digital volunteers (Humanitarians, FOSS or HFOSS), we aim to put the people and the mission ahead of our story and our needs. But, this where our sense of “matter” becomes very fractured. This year I hope to do more research and writing around digital volunteers and humanitarians in addition to the Community Builder’s Toolkit. How can we grow communities globally and help people get involved? Well, we need to be mindful and address the problem of fractured matter. It really comes down to: How we see ourselves in a community and in our own lives. And, how a community is a place where we can thrive no matter the level of our contribution. In a recent article “Decelerate to Accelerate“, Michel Bachmann and Roshan Paul wrote:

It’s ironic that the people who seek to create a more sustainable world often live the most unsustainable lives of all, sacrificing their finances, their relationships, and sometimes even their health to pursue a broader social mission.

So I am starting the year with some questions:

How can we better support our digital communities to not fracture their “matter”?
What can we do to build large, healthy sustainable programmes and communities?

Recently, I am focused on allocating my time and energy to “matter” on many levels. It has greatly improved my quality of life and mind. This is not an overnight sensation for me personally. In the various communities I belong, I constantly see how fractured matter can actually do more harm to the individual and the community. While we are changing the world and ourselves, it is super important to teach ourselves breathing lessons. I think that the change we are trying to build will take substantial time with some great bright spots and some lows. We should be ready for a long journey and traverse in a more healthy way. Honestly, I think that the communities and goals we are trying to achieve will be all the richer.

Matter to yourself. Matter to your communities. This is how we get to more people involved and how we get to “matter“.

(Photo of Romanesco broccoli, Union Square Market, November 2014)

3Dec

Get Involved: MicroMappers Coconut Expedition

What are you doing this weekend? What if you could spend 5 minutes, 30 minutes or an 1 hour on a Digital Humanitarian Project? As noted before, it is one of my life goals is to build spaces and community activities to inspire people to get involved in their world. As my colleague, Patrick Meier, wrote – How can we get to the next million people. It is up to organizations and communities to make it easy for you to fit these small Tasks into your busy lives. This is why I am excited to collaborate on the MicroMappers Coconut Expedition. Our collective contribution will be used to assess food security in post-disaster zones. Time well spent.

On December 5 – 7, 2014 MicroMappers from around the world will participate on the Coconut Expedition. Join us.

About the Coconut Expedition

The SkyEye Project (based in the Philippines) used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) technology to take 1000s of digital photos. The Qatar Computing Research Institute processed these images, then inserted them into our MicroMapper tool: AerialClicker. MicroMapper tools enable digital humanitarians to interact with text or images. MicroMappers (that’s you!) make decisions about the content. In this case, you will draw or trace lines indicating healthy and damaged trees. Each image will be reviewed by at least 5 different MicroMappers. All the data will be tabulated and given to researchers at Simon Fraser University Computing. This team will create an algorithm to assess damaged coconut trees. In the future, this type of machine computing could be used to assess damage in post-disaster zones. We will also share results with you over on the MicroMappers blog.

Coconuts are the “tree of life” and a key part of the Philippines’ economy. Discover all the ways that these trees are used:

coconut uses infographic

How am I involved?

I am delighted to officially join the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Social Innovation Team to support projects like MicroMappers. You can join this MicroMappers project simply be joining our mailing list and waiting for instructions on December 5, 2014.

See you there!

18Sep

Infusing Ethics into Data Projects

Education, assistance and enforcement are needed to build better, ethically balanced data-driven projects. The Ethics of Data workshop on the Data lifecycle discussed ethical scenarios and key aspects of a data-driven project. This lead to many sticky notes and attempts to create the big asks and some outputs. The participants came from many different disciplines, which helped us quality check and inform our review.

Our group together created 3 asks for further review:

Resources: This should be a center online for people and NGOs to share and find guides on building ethical data driven projects.
Tool/Template: There should be a data risk/benefits/costs template as part of every grant application to build better ethical projects from front to back.
Review: Could there be a non-profit assistance group that provides free, consultation on ethical questions? How would they enforce standards? Could it be like a review board for research projects?

Milestones for an Ethical Data Project:

We created over 100 ideas and grouped them into categories as milestones. There should be checklists for each milestone including key questions for the team. While the EoD team started on the mini-ethical checklists, this really needs more iteration. We also highlighted some milestones that are often overlooked or underfunded such as: a data collection checklist, pilot, quality control, verification, documentation, secondary use and impact/monitoring & evaluation. One other observation in our conversations was proper project management skills to scope many of the ethical minefields in advance of the project pilot.

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Without trying to influence the room, the key project milestones resemble the toolkits we created at Ushahidi. Toolkits, including the Ushahidi one, do need to include more ethical statements/checklists to improve the success of building better projects. But, toolkits are only as useful as those who use and enforce them.

Infuse with Ethical Checklists

We gifted the Responsible Data Forum with a list of 70 questions, terms and ideas for the key milestones. If all the various milestones of a data-driven project are infused with ethical questions, checklists, and recommendations, this resource would be incredibly useful. Participants suggested that the checklists start with very generic items, but be broken out into topical domain recommendations/checklist items. This is to ensure adoption and remix in diverse fields from human rights to health to science. Some of the questions that really drove conversations included:
Data analysis: What do you do when your data analysis provides negative results (from your hypothesis)? Quality Control: Can the data be re-identified? Resourcing: Who can collect the data and why? Secondary data: What is the time horizon on the data and future use criteria?

Ethics of Data – Resource Center / Review Board:

One of the outputs of our first day of brainstorming was the need to have an Ethical Resource and Review Board. The team split off to debate the pros and cons of this idea. They even determined some of the needed services such as legal referral.

More resources:

The EofD team recreated a list of additional Ethics reading. It might keep you up all night with worry, but better to be ‘in the know’.

As well, here is a compilation on Domain-specific digital ethics, practices, and conventions. The one that really opened my mind was the Bellagio Framework: “Big Data, Communities and Ethical Resilience: A Framework for Action.” They provided criteria to consider: Governance, Place, Socio-Cultural Context, Science, and Technology.

Thank you

Thanks to our hosts at Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (Kim Meredith, Lucy Bernholz, Rob Reich and Sam Spiewak) for making the Ethics of Data event possible. Thanks to my co-host Patrick Vinck of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative for great conversations. As always, Aspiration (Gunner and Misty) supported us with facilitation that inspired a collaborative and productive event for all. And, lastly, thank you to all the participants for being so thoughtful and inspiring teachers as we all trundle down this journey to bring better decision-making to all of our work.

(Note: It is my hope that we can infuse HOT with some of this work and trial some ideas in our work. I’ll be sharing it with my fellow Board members and the HOT Community.)

15Sep

Data Cycling: From Choices to Consent

Stanford University has convened the Ethics of Data conference this week bringing leaders from industry, humanitarian, research and civil society together to discuss and build plans for data ethics in all our work. I’m participating by co-leading a workshop on the redefining the Data Lifecycle with my colleague, Patrick Vinck of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and the wider Crisismappers community are discussing and using drones and satellites to capture imagery of land changes, displaced camps and post-disaster areas. Some of the topics we are discussing within these communities include how to include local NGOs and the government. In times of crisis, humanitarians and technologists are moving very fast. We need to have more guidance, research and best practices. At the Ethics of Data event, we will use HOT as an example data project in our conversations.

The HOT community is incredibly committed to helping humanitarians and affected communities with maps. We are frequency discussing how and what types of aerial imagery be shared. What kind of training do we provide for review and use of aerial imagery? What happens to the data after the emergency? What kind of ethical code should we provide for all Digital Humanitarians? As HOT builds Open Aerial Map and groups like the UAViators come to existence, we need to consider data education and use beyond text and include video, photos and drone/satellite imagery. In the US, Mapbox is educating use of drones by creating a map of where not to fly. This work is moving faster than the research. It is my hope from the Ethics of Data event that I will be able to convene conversations within HOT to determine our next steps. Keeping in mind that every humanitarian situation is different as are the jurisdictions in which global, local and remote contributors participate.

What about the Data Pipeline?

Data Storytelling via Infogr.am

All around the world journalists, civil society groups and governments are working on open data projects. HOT is just one of many projects aimed at using open data to affect change. Determining the new data pipeline could be informed by HOT’s experiences. In the past year, I have been at countless events where people talk about the importance of open data, the importance of the data pipeline and the impact of data storytelling. I also believe that data needs to be open, when appropriate. But, I am wary about preaching about open data without including a clear ethical compass. One of the main reasons that data is not open is that people do not trust how the data will be used. And, frankly, it is very unclear what constitutes a clean dataset. Over the past years, I have worked with Geeks without Bounds, Ushahidi and Data Science for Social Good to try and solve this challenge with checklists or tools. Every dataset begets new questions. All of our work needs to be infused with questions about data accuracy and data ethics. It is misplaced as an afterthought.

Processing the Data Pipeline

This is a Data pipeline via OKFN:

We need to create communities and tools with the data ethics checklists embedded into every aspect of projects from inception to funding to creation to education to analysis and to impact assessments. I’m truly looking forward to rethinking data project lifecycles and sharing the outputs with various communities to discover and remix together.

How would you rebuild the Data Lifecycle?

(Thanks to Nika Aleksejeva from Infogr.am for the Data Storytelling diagram.)

15Jun

Batman, Foodies, Fashion + CrisisMaps at Next Day Better

Building a common good unites us. This Thursday I’m participating in Next Day Better in Toronto. This is such a special event combining fun, food, art and technology to inspire people to make the Next Day Better. I’ll share the story of Crisismappers highlighting the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team response in the Philippines.

How will I make the Next Day Better?

I help people get more involved in their world. One example is supporting an open community-driven digital humanitarian response.

“We are a culture platform that builds and activates diaspora communities to create a better future. We believe that diasporas like the Philippines global community are hubs and inspirations for social innovation, incredible design, and world changing ideas. We bring these doers and change makers together to share their stories and make the next day better.”

Tickets are only $20.00 with amazing talks and food! Please join us.

Help Share about Next Day Better

Facebook updates:

We’re partnering with social innovation group @NextDayBetter to celebrate their launch in Toronto on June 19. It will be a night of inspired talks from changemakers – the #Philippines is ready for open-source mapping! If you’re in Toronto, RSVP here.

Amazing things are happening June 19 – board member/idea hacker Heather Leson will be @NextDayBetter’s launch in Toronto as they bring big-idea thinkers, amazing work doers and changemakers together. Get your tickets here.

Tweets:

We’re partnering w/ @NextDayBetter for their launch in #Toronto 6/19! Learn more: http://www.bit.ly/NextDayBetterTOR

The #Philippines is ready. Join us @NextDayBetter Toronto launch | 6/19 7pm | RSVP http://www.bit.ly/NextDayBetterTOR

About NextDayBetter

NextDayBetter is a platform that spreads ideas and actions that make the next day better. Ideas and actions are Philippines-flavored and rooted in design, entrepreneurship and innovation.

We invite innovators entrepreneurs, designers, do gooders — both Filipino and Non-Filipino—to share their stories about creating a better future.

Visit www.nextdaybetter.com for more information.

I found out about the Next Day Better group after engaging with folks around Hacking PH: focused on rebuilding a resilient Philippines. They really inspired me with their approach to building community locally and globally.

How will you make the Next Day Better?

2May

Murmur: SMS, Badges and Location

Butterfly Bridges, created by Natalie Jeremijenko’s X-Clinic, have spun me into idea flurry. Last night I attended her Strategic Lab (Slab) presentation on Measuring the Common Good in Smart Cities. She is teaching and shaping biodiversity in new urban frameworks. Civic action activities like this and placemaking really show the potential of how we can build community in new and creative ways.

Murmur, SMS + Badges + Location

It is no secret that I’m location-obsessed. While maps are storytelling devices and are not an end in themselves, there is a connectivity to how location and storytelling provide us with common space. The Emergency Hack Labs project attempts to connect SMS, Open Badges and Placemaking to help people during times of emergency. The goals include providing volunteer engagement and peer-to-peer thanks. I wrote about this previously in Open Badges in a Crisis.

Map/Location projects with a true plan to connect the online to the offline are the most sustainable. It is more amazing some of the creative SMS campaigns that give voice. These projects during times of crisis are busy and important windows into what is possible and where some of the opportunities exist. But, we should be building them outside of emergencies and morphing them to local language and context.

Murmur is a Toronto project that uses SMS to connect people to location for stories. You can simply call a number listed on a sign in a particular place. The recording places a story or poem. The thing that has always struck me about this project is that people share and they learn the power of location. What if Murmur was installed in post-conflict zones or risk-prone regions? Local communities could curate the stories and teach in community centres. And, what if Murmur existed when a disaster or emergency happened? Would there be a difference in the community if people already felt comfortable with that style of non-threatening, trusted network program? It could start as a creative and art project, but then change gears to be a recovery and healing project to help with storytelling, remembrance and support. This is all theoretical. Technical, privacy and security issues would need to be addressed. But, expecting people to trust location and report stories with no historical community process for this is always a hurdle. Another scenario is: What if Murmur or its SMS kin was turned into a Volunteer peer-to-peer thanks model like Emergency Hack Lab?

Surely, this has all been done before? What examples can you share? I want to dig in more to understand how we can make location and online storytelling tools realistically connect online and offline during times of crisis.

So, thanks to Butterfly Bridges. With all this thinking, I am going to the park.

12Apr

State of the Map US: Building Community

What can every community learn from OpenStreetmap? Often community managers particularly in OS communities cite OSM and Wikipedia as the top models to compare.

At State of the Map US, there is a whole track to share best practices. John Firebaugh (Mapbox) and Kathleen Danielson (OSM US) gave great talks on their experiences. It is a good thing they are recorded as I’m adding them both to my list of Community is hard and beautiful resources.

Community management and stewardship

In the past year, OSM has incorporated a number of big changes including implementing ID and changing the look/feel of the website. While paid staff (John) helped curate and design the process, the projects were community-driven and transparent. Listen to the talk for more in depth context and outside resources. Here are some of the core points:

Work in the open and be transparent

Over communicate

consult, consult

Set bounds

Call for cloture

Be patient

So, at a time of change in a number of communities, we should really heed John’s sage guidance, and, of course, remix for our own context.

(Side note: organizations need to hear this loud and clear. I am very keen to see this actually occur in every community. Over the years, I’ve seen so many teaching moments. As community managers and organizers, we can only do our job to the truest form of this type of feedback if allowed to be free.)

Resources:

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Building offline and online

Community starts with us online or in a room. A few hours into SOTMUS and I am even more bonded to the project, have caught up with old friends, met some new ones and feel inspired to learn/do more. Kathleen spoke about the importance of getting together locally. She provided tips and guidelines for community building and event planning. A few key points:

save community, save world OSM
Every community is unique
Take care of yourself
Community scales -up or top down

One topic that Kathleen raised is her distain for discourse loops via mailing lists. Another commenter mentioned their dislike of wiki(not always updated). I guess we could call this the old wars for communities(as one friend opines): mailing lists vs. x (x=forums, irc, wiki etc). As far as I am concerned there is no one source of truth. We need to use all communication tools to reach community where they are. Tall order, but as John rightfully pointed out: over communicate.

12Apr

State of the Map US: OSM in Biz and Map Roulette

Finally, it is spring. What better way to wake up brain cells than spending the weekend with maps, map nerds and ideas.

For the morning sessions, I attended sessions to consider the true potential of business and technology in the OpenStreetmap community and the wider network.

Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Designs uses OSM for half of their map projects. Giving back to the community, Stamen provides some of their beautiful designs for free (eg. Watercolour). They served 250 million free tiles in March 2014. An example of the extensibility of OSM is the potential to add a layers of useful information on a map highlighting the park than just the roads. (They did a National Park project which used OSM which included custom pins.) The potential of OSM in business, according to Rodenbeck, is to financially viable, more exposure and paying it forward.

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If I was a funder or a developer with spare time, I would invest ASAP into helping MapRoulette.org build a mobile and localized process to grow it internationally. Imagine the potential in a very mobile, global space. Every community should learn from them: easy interface, small task, clear and solid mission. The tool serves easy errors/bugs to fix. They focus on accomplishment and rewards. As we think about how to grow community and support for OSM, the window to success can be seen from the recent Connectivity errors map Roulette. The tool served up 40 000 map errors which messed up the intersections and the ability to create routing maps. The community repaired these within 6 weeks. In the future they may do a leaderboard or better stats in the future. Right now there are two core developers and they could use help

Martin of MapRoulette advised that the following are key to creating a good challenge:

1. make it armchair: Tasks that can be resolved by just looking at data no local knowledge

2. Small ask, brief time allotment: Tasks that can be easy to fix -taking seconds not minutes

3. Watch the tangents: Fix one thing, load and move onto the next task

Contribite:
GitHub.com/osmlab/maproulette

About the Event: Stateofthemap.us

All the sessions are being recorded so you can watch the talks after Monday.

(Photo: cat in Cherry Blossom trees (Washington DC), April 2014)

9Apr

Toolkits Sprouting up

Toolkits are important for any project, but should be embedded into software or on a usable website. The other day I was shopping for personal business cards, so I hopped onto Moo Cards. As any software developer or community manager knows, you are always “on” when it comes to great work. What do you see in other products, communities and programmes that you can learn from and potentially grow your own projects better. Moo Cards really inspired me by taking a process and making it user-friendly and fun. Simplicity at its best.

I’ve created, reviewed and advised a number of toolkit projects. While at Ushahidi, we helped take the important toolkit research and embed it into the design for the next Ushahidi version. End users can and should contribute to and ever change software to serve their purposes. We took the Ushahidi toolkits and remixed them for the Kenyan elections using Atlassian Confluence wiki software. This way the documents can be more sustainable and remixable.

Toolkits everywhere

Lately, it seems that every ICT or social technology programme is booting up a toolkit project. Why? Well, there are gaps in process, gaps in software and, most of all, big opportunities to learn and share. I like to think of toolkits as the new handbook, but often well-written in clear language that is easily translatable across domains of knowledge. We are in a toolkit frenzy. Even I’ve even written before about the Community Manager toolkit.

I think that we have a lot to learn about building toolkits that have the following attributes:

Easy to use
Translatable/Localize ready
Remixable (on github or a wiki)
Plain, Clear and concise text (eg. web copyediting)
Easy to learn
Delivers to many audience levels across domains (eg. types of users from different fields)

The next time I am building a toolkit, I am going to use the Moo Cards Test. If it can address those elements, but still serve the end goal, then great. It is hard to serve so many masters and audiences. Given some of the core missions of development or technology for good toolkits, it is worth the effort to communicate right.

Recent Toolkits

There seems to be a launchfest around new toolkits lately. It is super exciting to review them. From open data to open development to evidence-based research to building better social innovation, these projects have you covered. The best part is that all the projects are open for feedback and continue to improve based on community input.

DiyToolkit by Nesta – designed for development practitioners to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results.
Open Data for Resilience Field Guide (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery)
Info Activism shares best practices in Evidence Based Research and activism (Tactical Tech)
Guide to Safer Journalism from Internews
Open Development Toolkit (School of Data) (Disclosure: my Open Knowledge colleague is working on this project)

Happy learning and doing.

(Photo: Tulips from my garden (last year and soon to be this year.))

20Mar

Faith in Using Technology for Good

Have a little faith is what Neelley Hicks and the United Methodist Church remind us. Today they have launched their paper about their experiences in using Tech for Good.

“Technology is a tool for economic and social development that can aid in the reduction of poverty and change lives.” – Larry Hollon, Chief Executive, United Methodist Communications

I’ve talked with Neelly and her team a number of times throughout the last year regarding their Crowdmap. The experience taught me that we should all be partnering with faith-based organizations to help them learn and use technology for good. The United Methodist Church is using Ushahidi, Frontline SMS and other technical tools. Community organizers, especially CrisisMappers or ICT4D programme managers, know that the best projects include matching offline and online networks, training and planning, testing/iterating, having a strong infrastructure, taking care of your volunteers and doing something meaningful. As the United Methodist Church proves, faith-based organizations and technology are a great match. Neelley’s team taught me much about their sense of community and dedication to do great work. They have global, active community members who give their time and energy. Great community programmes should consider collaborating with local community centers (eg. Harassmap’s best practice) and local church groups (eg.United Methodist Church’s best practice).

Need convincing? Here are their #ICT4D Best Practice – 10 Tips: (follow their hashtag #ict4dBP)
#1: Put people first.
#2: Understand the local landscape.
#3: Design using appropriate tools.
#4: Prototype, fail, iterate, succeed.
#5: Build in #monitoring & #evaluation.
#6: Consider privacy & security.
#7: Enable user feedback loops.
#8: Remember community is critical.
#9: Build for sustainability and scale.
#10: Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.

Congratulations Neelley and UMC team! Keep inspiring us to do good with purpose.

Resources

Get the full Using Technology for Good report.

The United Methodist Communiciations Press release.

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