Mappers

18Mar

Community is hard…and beautiful

We are polygamists. Seriously, do you belong to one community? I like to think that a number of us are all involved in many communities both locally and globally. For community leaders, we know that this journey is both beautiful and hard. We want to encourage active participation in a collaborative method.

Community Management – my top 5 go to list

Montreal Lights

Over the past months, I’ve had a few conversations with folks just starting out in Community Management, especially HFOSS Communities. They all ask for resources on how to get oriented and meet others. There are Community Manager Linked In groups and regional organizations. This is my top 5 go to list for community managers:

1. Community Roundtable
While the audience is focused on corporate Community Managers, they provide rich data with regular Roundtable newsletter and annual community survey.
2. Community Leadership Summit
OSCON is the largest OS conference in the world. The Community Leadership Summit happens right before it. I find that HFOSS groups still get a ton of value. You can read our notes from last year.
3. The Art of Community
Jono’s book, The Art of Community, is fantastic.
4. Dave Eaves – Django talk
Community is negotiation. I tend to re-listen to Dave Eaves’ Django talk (video) at least once a year. There are books on negotiation, but he really nails the nuances of global open source community.
5.Opensource.com
There is a wealth of articles on here about community engagement and open source projects.

Tech 4 Good Organizers

I started a google group for folks who lead in HFOSS or Business (corporate social responsibility) who run tech 4 good events or communities. There are a number of groups out there, but I feel like there is a gap for leaders in Tech 4 Good. It is just getting started but you are welcome to join: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tech4goodorganizers. We are stronger if we learn and engage together.

How to analyze and build a community:

Another question I often get is how to activate community. People have a finite amount of time and energy. If you build spaces and interactions, they will stay. To me the basics of service design are core to building community. Do something that is relevant, build ‘With‘ the community not only ‘For‘ your goals, and plan for the community to change you and your organization.

Everyone has their own methods, but here is a list that I tend to share:

1. Collect Data
What is the current state? Do some interviews with stakeholders, ask questions, ask to talk with people who have left the community, survey and use the stats (website, newsletter, blog, social media).
2. Do analysis and decide future goals
Assess the community maturation model. Decide what the community wants and build goals of organization with that in mind. Here are some tools to help: Diytoolkit and Reboot’s Service Design model.
3. Test ideas with the community. Prepare to adjust.
4. Start small for wins for engagement. You will know what these are because you’ve done your research and tested out the spirit of the community. Think in the frame of Dan Pink’s model of Drive: Autonomy, mastery and purpose.
5. Prioritize, co-brain and deliver
6. Delegate and co-lead
7. Global means that translation is part of your plan, not an afterthought.

(ps. Foxclocks and timeanddate are your event planning friends.)

Some Tech 4 Good Issues

I’ve been in a number of communities both volunteer and paid. These are some of the harder issues to consider. While I don’t have the answers, I think it is appropriate to share and see if we can learn to solve and adapt together.

  • How do we get to the next 1000 active community members. We know that the potential of small asks, big tasks is the key to community engagement. Communities like Zooiverse are schooling us on capacity, value and relevancy. How can we learn from them? (See Patrick Meier’s post on this topic)
  • Early adopters can sometimes scare, deter new strangers by their sense of ownership and entitlement. Building a community that serves all the types of community members, cultures, languages and, personality styles, is a tall order. But, it is necessary.I have been thinking of ways to build to the silent doers. (see my post on the Welcome Committee)
  • I think the social economy/social entrepreneurship model of NGOs builds accountability and transparency. Maybe it is my tech start up background, but I think that NGOs need to consider shaping to serve citizens with feedback loops and new funding models. In the last while, there have been a number of coalition and partnership funding programmes. This gives me tremendous hope in the adage that we are stronger when we build together.
  • There is an uncomfortable digital scramble for open territory which sometimes goes against the values of open and global collaboration. While it may be naive, I think there is enough digital space for everyone. This is not a gold rush. Being open and sharing will win. I trust in the Economic Impact of Open Source (Business model) transferring to other open communities. (see my presentation: Coining Global(especially the notes))
  • Building duplicate efforts hurts the opportunity to build with each other. Remember: Community is a beautiful gift in which people share their intellect, time and energy. We owe these folks so much as their interactions and contributions are a gift. The key is that they add value and that we, in return, reciprocate and thank them.

What are some of the community building conundrums you have encountered? Solutions, Ideas?

(Photo: The Lumiere path in Montreal, Heather Leson, January 2014)

13Mar

Map Library

In my first year of university at Carleton University, I found myself drawn to the Map Library. I would spend hours scouring maps. That Christmas my gift to my grandfather was a series of photocopied maps and town directories of Western Ukraine (Bukovina, Chernivtsi) for a 100 year period. We read through town names together. It is a beautiful memory of how much the maps and data can be so personal for us.

Today I hosted Max Richman on a Community Call to share his Open Maps talk which he previously presented at Open Data Day DC. (His slides). In our chatting, which spilled over to twitter, we started to collect a list of map books that we love and that we recommend. I have too many that I haven’t read, but some that I have.

Here are some of the ones suggested:

stack of map books

What’s in your Map Library?

In an effort to keep tracking, I created this open Hackpad to build a fun Map Library. Recommendations welcome.

5Mar

A Forward Looking Board with HOT

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team community membership has re-elected me as a Board member. I am delighted.

The announcement on the OpenStreetMap wiki.

We have a strong mandate and an engaged membership. These past few weeks have included many discussions about the role of a Board and the changes that we, collectively, need to make. It is a true honour to be charged to continue support HOT’s mission.

On that note, I found this Mckinsey Report on shaping a Board. If you have any resources on how to help a new Board, being a Board Member and organizational change in the Humanitarian and Open Source fields, please do send these my way.

“Governance arguably suffers most, though, when boards spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror and not enough scanning the road ahead. “

The McKinsey Report on Building A Forward Looking Board.

To my fellow Hotties, thank you for the trust to continue my supportive role.

19Feb

Open in Protest and Crisismapping

Protest and Crisismapping are intertwined with voice. I think conflict mappers, videographers, data analysts and storytellers are incredibility brave and important to our future. But, local knowledge, local language and local context must guide decisions. There are some tough questions to ask about what should be openly shared or why not have something as open data?

Videos, imagery layers, pictures, reports, maps, stories and datasets are used to both give voice and collect evidence on human rights violations. From the comfort of my home in Canada, I have not lived in times of civil war in Syria. I have not stood in the freezing cold in Kyiv alongside protestors. We can, in solidarity, write about it, share links online, become crisismappers (Digital Humanitarians), petition our governments, but for the most part, we are a world away. No matter how connected we are via the Internet, we can be equally disconnected.

On Protest

At Info Activism Camp, I joined the protest salon. Speakers discussed their activism in various global contexts. You can download and watch the discussion, read the protest mini-magazine and listen to the protest soundtrack.

There is a big difference in marching down to Queens Park (Toronto) vs. trying to feed your friends in Taksim Square in Istanbul or keeping your friends safe in Brasil. The stories of people’s lives, their efforts to protect rights and collect evidence gave me a profound backdrop for how I observe the world. The videos and livestreams from Ukraine tell a story of another country’s people in protest. There have been over 3 million views for the video I am a Ukrainian. The first time I watched it I cried. On the second view, it hit me how powerful video and Internet remains. Then and now: I fear for their safety.

Crisismapping Syria

Talking with Brown Moses, Women Under Siege Syria, or Syria Tracker, I have come to learn about the tenacity of humans and potential of digital forensics. These projects and their leaders are the forefront of asking questions: what should be published or not published. Their verification methods for video, pictures and reports are mapping new ground. They work very closely with people in the affected regions alongside global helpers. Brown Moses is meticulous in his analysis of social media (how Facebook is destroying History), weaponery and videos. Lauren Wolfe has built the Women Under Siege project to give voice to women who suffer brutal violence in times of war. Her methods in research, journalism, online engagement and verification highlight how a map can be one corner of a larger, more extensive project. Both the Syria Tracker and Women Under Siege teams do not publish all the details outright. They review, debate, curate and anonymize. Brown Moses has a unique talent of identifying and teaching methodology. These digital skills show us how crisismapping has evolved. Evidence and data collection happens in real-time. People are using these tools to make decisions. This is the nature of data and information. And while data can and has been used as a commodity and a power device, these types of projects show focus on those we serve – the survivors and the affected.

From Aleppo


“We struggle with this challenge, balancing between the imperative to do no harm with the virtues of transparency and openness.”

All of us seek information for evidence or even to help guide humanitarian decisions. This week First Mile Geo released it’s detailed case study on Aleppo complete with a set of open data. Collecting data about bakeries, locations and, potentially, movements in a conflict zone and then releasing that data will surely bring on questions. But, the First Mile Geo is already asking them with us:

Matt McNabb: But the principles underlying open data have their limits in conflict-affected areas, where the contest of information can –and often does –emerge more frequently to support actions that may have a deleterious effect on citizens’ safety or well being. Perhaps obvious to say, data in war can be a dangerous thing.

I firmly believe that the next future of open data is collected by citizens for whom the data is about rather than only stored in a government or business sanctioned data portal. We need both. The success or failure of Open Data will happen in the “majority world” (or as others call it the Global South or Developing world.) It is great to have Open Data events in over 110 places around the world on Open Data Day. One day is a start, but I think the penetration of Open Data will only happen if it follows the lead of OpenStreetMap. People need to be involved at a local level. Simply put: people don’t trust government and want to be part of the process (have agency over their data.) So, it is with this that I think methodology of First Mile Geo is at the forefront of combining offline community engagement (paper and pen) tied with maps to build local help. Crisismapping shows us that the raw questions alive in the field and being shared openly by folks like the First Mile team, Brown Moses, Syria Tracker and Women Under Seige. We need to consider what they have learned and how it can apply in conflict, crisis or developing areas.

Also see the Wired article on Mapping Aleppo

****
And now for more questions:

What does it mean to be “open” and “collaborative” in a conflict or crisis zone? What does it mean for protestors? When does the affected population get a voice in what video/picture or imagery gets used and for what means? What are the new ethics for the digital crisis? In January of this year, I joined a round table and said: we need an imagery code of conduct (for satellites and drones). I advised them that we can’t wait for 4 years of research. This is happening now. People are being affected now and digital humanitarians are having these discussions now. I shared some of the example discussions we have had within the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. As security analyst Bruce Schneier rightfully points out, location is being used and we need to prepare for the new level of privacy and security discussions. While we race to share, collaborative and open up information, we need to build stronger data guidelines and data training.

Please go to: RightsCon and Responsible Data Forum to talk among peers. I’ll be watching via the Internet trying to catch snippets.

11Feb

The Day We Fight Back

The web is the biggest global community we all want to protect. My career has been an OSI one – from Internet ISP to domain registrar to online citizen voices via open maps/data/technology. In that time, I have worked on projects involving domains taken down, data center outages and activists threatened for simply trying to tell their story.

I am shaken by the brave people who use the web to give voice to the disposed and cite the horror of atrocities. As part of the Ushahidi community, I have had the honour to work closely with the folks from Harassmap and Syria Tracker. They are my teachers in why an open web matters. They are my teachers on why we want an internet that is not crippled by fear and surveillance. While I am based in Canada and many people I work with are not in the US, we are without a doubt affected by the laws and activities of the USA (NSA). As well, I look to the Canadian government and other governance bodies globally to do better.

More about the Day we Fight Back.

10Feb

On the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Board

For almost a year, I’ve had the honour to be a member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Board. HOT is one of the most important Digital Humanitarian /Crisismapper communities. As a community advocate and organizer, I joined to support and be in service of these efforts. A Board member serves the strategic interest of the organization and her members. Today I ask the HOT membership to consider renewing my Board Membership so that I can continue to collaborate and help HOT grow.

For my fellow candidates: HOT is a young organization. Being a HOT Board Member often required more than 10 hours a week. If you are nominated to join the board, you should be prepared to contribute this level of time. I’m writing this to help outline what I think the HOT Board needs to do in the next term.

Boy and the world image

When I joined the Board, I began researching Board best practices and reviewed many other organization’s Board composition, bylaws and strategic plans. I also asked colleagues from other organizations what makes a successful board. I determined that I could contribute work on fundraising, communications, strategy and outreach. These are items that I felt were missing from HOT’s strategy.

My first board term involved more organizational development issues, which delayed my original goals. HOT is a Working Board. But, there are some differences between what a Board does and what items are for Operations. This continues to be a growth opportunity for HOT. A Board ideally should not be involved in the day-to-day operations operations of the organization. Some examples include: staffing decisions, receipt management for projects, and HOT activations. I think it is important to also distinguish the Board, Operations and what it means to be a valuable contributor/member of the community. Every organization needs these components, but each is often its own entity.

By definition, a Board Member key role is to support the strategic growth and ongoing success of an organization. The following types of skills would be needed among the composite board. Every individual on the Board brings different skills, so consider this a sketch:

  • Networks (Fundraising, Humanitarian)
  • Technical Expertise
  • Legal Knowledge
  • Financial Acumen
  • Business and Organizational Development Strategy
  • Fundraising and Communications Strategy

The HOT Board should focus on the the above noted tasks to contribute to the success of the whole project.

Some Resources:

For friends of HOT, I am collecting resources on Boards and how to help shape with examples. Please do share any resources on Board leadership or Board Best Practices. This is a journey and I am learning as fast as I can. (Thank you in advance.)

On this topic, I want to thank Aspiration Tech gifting mentorship on the Board journey.

  • Chronicle of Philanthropy
  • Plone: (an example of a “Working” Board)

    “This is a working board. Be ready to regularly take on and complete responsibilities for board business.

    The board writes no code and makes no development decisions. It is much more concerned with marketing, budgets, fund-raising, community process and intellectual property considerations.”

  • Open Stack (Board example)
    “The Board of Directors provides strategic and financial oversight of Foundation resources and staff.”

(Photo by me: San Francisco, February 2014)

26Nov

Data Soup Ingredients (feelings, methods and next steps)

I’m a big fan of soup. Really, it is magic, you add all kinds of ingredients into a pot and hopefully get a “worthy soup”. Sometimes I think we should take the cooking smarts and apply it to our work. What are the key ingredients and tactics to activate Open Data? Surely, you’ve had a sad pot of soup before (eg. too much salt, not enough spice, etc.) It is really some new ground, but I think there are some common sense practices that need to be discussed. So, instead of ‘nuts and bolts’, let’s talk about how we get to the ingredients to make a decent plan (a pot of great soup) to feed our brains and guide our decisions.

Tonight I’m participating in the ICT4D London Panel:
Eliza Anyangwe of ICT4D London Meetup/Guardian Development asked that we prepare the following:

…go beyond gushing about how great open data is and stimulate thought about areas in need of improvement and strategies to get us there. The topic: what would happen if data quality is not addressed?

What do you see as the challenges of open data for development? How can we as a community get around them?

I decided to focus on challenges and things that we can do to build community:

Feelings

It might seem really ‘off’ to talk about ‘Feelings’ when we talk about open data, but we should. Do we Trust the data? Do we trust the sources/collection methods? Do the consumers/users understand the data and, most of all, can we ‘believe’ that we can base our decisions on big issues like nutrition planning or humanitarian responses? If we don’t talk about assumptions or talk about ‘data corrupts humans and humans corrupt data’ feelings, then we might be setting ourselves up for data fail. How do we build ‘trust’?

At the Open Government Partnership Summit, I had the chance to meet Chuks Ojidoh of ReclaimNaija project from Nigeria. He challenged assumptions about data collection and how communities ‘on the ground’ who were supposed to be served by ‘data’ felt about it. To sum: people don’t trust the data and won’t trust it unless they are involved in the data collection. And, the concept of central ‘firm’ datasets on, for example, budgets, needs to be community sourced council by council. Plus, people want to give feedback on the data and interact with it. This is a good reason to share, whenever possible, the datasets in an open fashion. It helps us be accountable and transparent plus gives us the ability to remix and use data.

So, there we have it: feelings! Until we talk more about how we will help people collect basic datasets and involve citizens (including digital literacy), then we won’t really get an accurate open data picture. I firmly believe that the ‘open data movement’ as it stands today will be greatly reshaped by folks like BudgIT from Nigeria and ReclaimNaija.

(Chuks shared this research with me this great article from Dr. Steven Livingston on Africa’s Information Revolution.)

Method to Madness

From data collection methods (sms, maps, spreadsheets, analog paper) to data ethics, privacy/security and protection, we need to grapple more with “methods to our madness’. This also includes the heavy topic: How can we have feedback loops and iterate/improve data. Of course, I fall into the category of “open data” allows people to use and remix data, but this does not come without a heavy filter of common sense.

engagedethics

What is a clean dataset?

After working on the Uchaguzi Kenyan Election project, I was on a mission to find a way to open up the Ushahidi datasets, I started to research how to create a Clean DataSet Guidelines list (created with help from Okfn, Datakind and Groundtruth Initiative). I think that there are many people trying to figure this out. If we had some standards and means to clean data, then people may be more comfortable sharing it. This does not minimize the risk of human error. A quick summary of how to get to a cleaner dataset: remove names, phone numbers, geolocation, and sensitive information. Challenging isn’t it? What happens when you remove this and it affects a decision negatively? (See some resources on this topic.)

One important thing that we did during the election project was to have a Data quality team reviewing the data in real-time. This team involved researchers, software developers and subject matter experts. Most of these people were community participants. While this might not be possible for all projects, it is a road forward on short sprint ones until organizations reorganize to do it themselves.

To the machines

Along with the Data Science for Social Good Fellows and my (then) Ushahidi colleagues, I spent the summer assisting a Data cleaning project. How can we use machine learning to help us build clean data sets? How can we clean datasets to know include personally identifiable information? What are some of the data ethics that we can infuse in our methods?

Details on that project:

Project background
Documentation
Code

While machines cannot replace the Human API (your eyes), it is a start. There is much improvement to be done on this.

********

Improving the Recipe

The biggest ingredient that I think needs to be addressed is the “how’. A widespread group of people from various disciplines and regions need to have the capacity to be data makers. This means that we have digital literacy barriers combined with data literacy. At OKFN, we have the School of Data to help with this.

Last week, together with my colleague, Michael Bauer, and a few community members, we held an experimental training workshop. Our goal was to give people of menu of data skills from data cleaning, how to use spreadsheets, data visualization 101 and how to geo-code. These are really tough skills to integrate into all our workflows. For early adopters, I am sure that these are easy, but how to we get the next 1000 datamakers in civil society and governments? I was actually approached by someone thanking us for giving them a safe and equal space to learn these important things. Datamaking should not be some magical thing that is inaccessible to average people doing great work. It should be every day soup making: given the ingredients, some basic skills, and time to learn/test/iterate, there is a chance that we can fill this gap.

Steve and SCODA
(Steve of Devint training folks at the International Crisismappers Conference)

****
When we talk about challenges and opportunities, there are some important next steps to consider: Spaces to learn for free, mentors to help us on our data journey and checks/balances on data curation/quality.

19Nov

Community brainstorming: The world needs more Crisis Mappers

Every organizer dreams of that perfect mix of location and glue for their work. There is this moment that an event gells and you can breath. Running the International Conference of Crisis Mappers pre-conference training was a true pleasure. I curated 4 tracks: mobile/security, maps, data and knowledge. Then, I recruited some of the best talent both already in the CrisisMappers community and groups/areas that there were gaps. Thanks to all my fellow presenters, trainers, ICCM organizers, sponsors (Ihub and Ushahidi) as well as all the participants.

We did not take full notes for all the amazing sessions. There were 105 participants split across all the various areas. It was an honour to have long time community members and new folks blend to build. The closing session was a group brainstorm. (See the ideas captured below.) To be honest, we were super exhausted from jetlag and learning. Here are some of the key questions or statements that everyone had at the event – in analog form. While is it a stream of conscious list, I think it speaks volumes about some of the other gaps / opportunities that we need to discuss. It is a window into a time and place.

On a more personal note, Ihub and Ushahidi gave us an amazing space and food sponsorship to help make this day a success. It was great to have the community together in the place that really ignited the movement. ihub is also one of my favourite event venues. It has this pulse that brings people closer together in a casual way. It was perfect for a very mixed crowd to really bond.


What questions do you think we should be discussing? What are some of the conversations you want to be having?

ICCM COMMUNITY

Community

  • Create a forum for humanitarian innovation forum
  • How do we reduce duplication of the same work by different organizations?
  • How do we collaborate with each other more?
  • How do we open up the crisis mappers community in Africa
  • Design challenges to make GIS Ouputs look good
  • How do we make innovation and its disruptive power more palatible to actors and governments in more politically/confict-affected settings
  • How do we involve community in mapping?
  • Find common projects so that we can collaborate
  • how do we connect crisis mappers to response organizations
  • Can we have a community code of conduct?
  • Capacity building team
  • Tech in itself does not solve any problems. We need to plug it in to existing processes
  • The world needs more crisis mappers
  • how do we make good community projects like the Sms in the neighbourhood yesterday work for larger areas?
    voice to the little community projects
  • post disaster anti-corruption management of funding and relief / rebuild “citizen” reporting

    • Cowboys : Humanitarians and Technologists

  • How do we involve community in mapping?
  • how do you build capacity of local community for learning how to read maps?
  • Humanitarians ethics in the information age

Data Ethics

  • What data ethics?
  • Privacy
  • Managing data security in a security-sensitive environment

Technical

  • Data analysts needed
  • Crisis mapping (is a social media)
  • When does geodata need data models? When can they be adhoc?
  • Best url for 101 on regular expressions?
  • Support mapping through satellite communication systems
  • How do we use the info we collect/ what is the purpose and impact?
  • Big data – identification and analysis
  • What is relevant data?
  • Why is there such a gap between web mapping and GIS on the desktop?
  • Data sharing and coordination
  • SMS or IVR for monitoring for education services (Primary) – eg. teacher attendance
  • Mobile delivery
  • How do you get structured data from a large illiterate user base speaking local dialects
  • How do we avoid stovepipes of innovation?
  • How do we leverage donor funding without competing for the same funds?
  • How can we use sensors?

Future

  • Will anyone their passport tomorrow
  • How to remember all the stuff we heard today?
  • Follow-up forums
  • Online training for this group
  • Psychological Crisis
  • Evaluate the context
  • how do you manage expectation of people who provide data on maps? (response capacity)
  • 1 kill = or does not equal 20 000 kills
  • How can crisis mapping contribute to reach out and help urban refugees?

Thanks everyone!

15Nov

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.

***********

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.

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.

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

********

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!

© Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved