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3Apr

Dispatch: Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp

On behalf of Qatar Computing Research Institute, I have the honour to be a guest trainer at the 6th Annual Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp. This 10-day event (March 31 – April 9, 2015) includes training, scenarios and humanitarian keynotes. Participants are from all over the MENA region including students, staff of the QRCS, partner Red Crescent members, UNHCR, IFRC, ICRC, civil defense (various) and special guests.

Ali and Heather training close up (April 2, 2015) copy

Over 6 days, I will train small groups on social media, new technology, digital humanitarians and how QCRI is working to make a difference. These slides contain my talking points and extensive notes. As the camp is in Arabic, Ali Moustafa El-Sebai El Gamal of QRCS provided translation. Together we are providing an interactive session. Yesterday due to the sandstorm, there was a power outage. This is a perfect example of always be prepared. I delivered the training without slides. Truly it is always fun to train folks, but it is especially powerful to collaborate with humanitarians. This is my first full Disaster Management Camp. I’ve participated in many digital simulations but this is a great way to learn and share.

Learning by doing

The second reason that I am at Disaster Management Camp is to analyze how participants and staff use software and social media. At QCRI, we are very interested in taking the lessons we learn internationally and supporting Qatar. The Qatar Red Crescent team has been very welcoming. Over the coming months, I will be sharing my embedded research outputs.

Meta Level action

I’m a digital storyteller. Every event, I curate photos, quick vignettes and try to capture the mission and spirit. Together with my colleagues we are using Storify:


Thanks again to Qatar Red Crescent Society for the kind support of Qatar Computing Research Institute.

(photo credit: Amara-photos.com)

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.

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.

Tulips

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.

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).

ict4d-sustainability-3

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.

17Dec

Canada’s best Geo Start-up: Jump2Spot

I wanted to create an “atlas of inspiration.” Chung Wong, founder of Jump2Spot.

Jump2Spot is a hot Canadian geo start-up, founded by Chung Wong, with the mission to map stories from books, music, arts and beyond.

35, 853 iconic moments mapped

Jump2spot

Some of the astounding Jump2Spot highlights:

  • It is the world’s largest GPS atlas mapping stories
  • It currently has more than 2 million words
  • 35,800+ iconic stories are stitched together at 20,500 places
  • It’s larger than the 1st digital encyclopedia
  • It’s the 1st GPS app to geo-tag books including the Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Daniel Lanois’ Soul Mining & JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye. You’ll see when you cross a book scene with GPS.

Imagine being a super fan of a novelist, performer or artist. You are walking around a city using Jump2Spot to discover the finer details of the city beyond what a guidebook or specialty tour can provide. See how Jump2Spot Profiles can make a difference in this meander:

Profiles

  • 16,670 notable profiles have been tagged where they made history
  • Timelines of icons have been geo-tagged – Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Sylvia Plath, Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Apple and more.
  • Notable portfolios have been geo-tagged: Frank Lloyd Wright & Frank Gehry buildings, Berenice Abbott photos, Monet paintings, every notable Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro movie scene, New York album covers, the world’s most expensive photos and more
  • Top YouTube videos have been geo-tagged in New York and notable music venues
  • New Scenes – we have a lot of contemporary street artists, digital artists and musicians profiled…showcasing leading-edge creative work.

Download

Jump2Spot is available via web and ios at the moment. Future releases are planned for android.

Download from itunes

Jump2spot is Hiring

Are you looking for a new and exciting contract?

GEO-DESIGNER: For people on the go, make front-end less text-heavy & more visual so it is easier to see. I find when i show the app, i need to show the pictures (they can’t see the text).

GEO-SEARCH DEVELOPER: For people going to the same places, we need to add search stories by address or name so they have new content.

RANKING GEO-STORIES (DATA VISUALIZATION ARTIST): We need to make the most interesting stories accessible….ranked content, filtered by topic, new to the user. We have more than 2 million words and 35,000+ entries and it’s hard to find people who’ve worked with this much data.

If you are an investor, please contact Chung to discuss options.

(Disclosure: I am an adviser on this project.)

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).)

4Mar

Speaking events: Mobile and Mapping

AMREF : Mobile Africa

I’m honoured to talk about the rise of Mobile and Ushahidi at this week’s AMREF coffee house on Wednesday, March 7, 2012:
AMREF logo
Mobile Africa: How Technology is Reshaping the Continent

AMREF’s Coffeehouse Speaker Series on global development. Join us at Urbana Coffee on the first Wednesday of every month at 6:00 pm.
Technology advancements are reshaping Africa politically, socially and economically. Join us to explore innovative technology solutions being used to make a lasting difference in people’s lives.

African Medical & Research Foundation (AMREF)

York University Symposium on the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

The online response to the Japan earthquake was an incredible surge of volunteerism. I’ll present the story of Hal Seki of Sinsai.info and his team’s mapping experiences in response to the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

“The Japan’s Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011: LESSONS LEARNT”: March 9th, 2011, 9AM -5 PM

Organized by: Disaster and Emergency Management Program

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