open source

3Jul

RHoK 3.0: Toronto Wrap-up

RHoK 3.0: Toronto Projects

Random Hacks of Kindness 3.0 – Toronto was a success due to the volunteers, participants, sponsors, judges and supporters. I am always amazed to see a room full of strangers meet, design and build prototypes for social good. Here’s their great work:

1. Message Carrier
2. Data over Amateur Radio (radio to Ushahidi interface)
3. Wound Classification
4. Not far from the Tree
5. Kit Tracker
6. Bacon – Finding People
7. A Patient reporting app for Drug side effects

The Collaborative Risk Assessment Tool was conceptualized by David Black, a University of Toronto Emergency Manager and RHoK TO volunteer lead). While it was not part of Toronto’s hackathon, a team in Trento, Italy picked up the project and continues to hack on it.

The winner, Message Carrier, went on to present at NetChangeWeek’s GovCamp. The Data over Amateur Radio team set up a Google Group to explore communications with Ham radios during crisis. Yaser Alyounes, Wound Classification, and Aaron McGowan, Not Far from the Tree, teams are also investigating options with their initial RHoK projects.

Event Media and Participant Blog Posts

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/06/03/hackers.fight.climate.change/index.html”>CNN: Hackers Fight Climate Change and ‘Brains Collide’ during Hackathon for Climate Change, Disaster Relief
C’est la vie!: Random Hacks of Kindness
Rock on, Toronto
Humanitarian Innovation and United Nations
RHoK 3.0, A Marvelous Model to Replicate
Ushahidi: My thoughts, suggestions and recommendations
Syncapse Developers Hack for Good
Port 25: Random Hacks of Kindness

5Jun

Competitors build life-saving apps for disasters and emergencies

Competitors build life-saving apps for disasters and emergencies in global weekend challenge

Teams at Random Hacks of Kindness Toronto “hackathon” create new mobile and online tools

WHAT: Hackathon to solve humanitarian problems & pitch competition
WHEN: Pitch competition & judging: Sun., June 5 from 3 to 5 p.m.
Hackathon: Ends Sun., June 5 at 3 p.m.
WHERE: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), 5th floor, 252 Bloor St. W., Toronto
WHO: Experts in climate, disaster, crisis; software, design, Internet, media, more (see below).

TORONTO, June 5, 2011 /CNW/ – Disaster professionals working with volunteer software makers in Toronto yesterday began building a set of mobile and online emergency aid tools whose prototypes they aim to complete today. This evening, competing teams will vie for prizes in a pitch competition judged by a panel of experts.

The teams at Random Hacks of Kindness Toronto (RHoK Toronto) are among some 1,000 people in 18 cities across 6 continents participating in a global weekend-long hacking marathon, or “hackathon,” that unites technologists and humanitarian experts in an effort to solve pressing problems.

“It’s unbelievable that the teams are able to create these mobile apps and online tools in less than 48 hours,” said Heather Leson, lead organizer of RHoK Toronto. “By dinner time last night, one team here had already programmed a working prototype!”

Projects

Competitors at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in downtown Toronto are working on six projects:

  • A mobile app that can use Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and other notification services to deliver emergency messages even when cellular phone networks have stopped working, and can alert rescue workers when someone is alive under a collapsed building
  • A telemedicine tool that would help people in remote or disaster-stricken areas to visually diagnose life-threatening wounds and help them seek treatment
  • An alerts tool that harnesses the emergency response capabilities of the worldwide ham radio community to bridge the digital divide with Internet-based first-responders
  • An app that helps people find and identify food growing in their immediate vicinity
  • A tool that helps relief workers track and manage emergency medical kit inventory in the field
  • A tool that enables people to avoid adverse drug reactions and helps them create a personal digital medical history.

    • The Random Hacks of Kindness volunteer community — founded in 2009 by Google, Microsoft, NASA, Yahoo and the World Bank — has produced mobile and online software tools that were deployed after disasters in Chile, Haiti and Japan.

    Pitch competition Sunday afternoon

    “This afternoon’s pitch competition will let the teams in Toronto show off their work — and give the most innovative ones bragging rights,” said RHoK Toronto manager Melanie Gorka. “The best pitches will also win prizes that include a private lunch with leaders at Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser; high speed computer networking equipment from Linksys by Cisco, security software from Symantec, and more.”

    The Toronto teams will also be able to receive coaching to develop and enhance their pitch and presentation skills, and consult with special guests who are experts in crisis and emergency aid, before they showcase their projects in front of the pitch competition judges:

  • Jesse Brown, host of TVO.org Search Engine podcast; writer for Macleans.ca, Toronto Life.
  • Paul Osman, Mozilla Foundation. Open Web team manager.
  • Karen Snider, Canadian Red Cross national media manager and social media strategist.
  • Julia Stowell, Microsoft Canada open source community and marketing manager.

    • Special guests:

  • Sara Farmer, United Nations Global Pulse chief platform architect.
  • Kate Chapman, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Open global map for aid efforts.
  • Aaron Huslage, SafeCast. Crowdsourced open tracking of reactor-leak radiation in Japan.

    • “The best part of Random Hacks of Kindness is that no matter which teams win Toronto’s pitch competition, all the participants learn, mentor and share in their world. Plus, some projects will continue and maybe become fully built,” Heather Leson said.

    ABOUT RANDOM HACKS OF KINDNESS TORONTO:

    RHoK Toronto is an ad hoc committee of civic-minded citizens with professional expertise across a broad range of industry sectors. The first Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon in Toronto was held in December 2010.

    Community partners new and old have donated space, food, funds, prizes, services and tools to help make the event a success. Donations may be made through the RHoK.org Toronto site or by contacting the organizers. Current sponsors include: Camaraderie, Centre for Social Innovation, CIRA, Cisco, GlobalNews.ca, Jonah Group, Lady Atelier, Marketcrashers, MaRS Discovery District, Aaron McGowan, Microsoft Canada, Net Change Week, Nitido Inc., Rightsleeve, Symantec, Syncapse, Tropo, Tucows Inc., University of Toronto and Yahoo Canada.

    RHoK Toronto is online at: www.rhok.org/event/toronto

    RHoK Toronto on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RHoKTO

    RHoK Toronto hashtag: #RHoKTO

    ABOUT RANDOM HACKS OF KINDNESS:

    Random Hacks of Kindness was founded in 2009 by Google, Microsoft, NASA, Yahoo and the World Bank. The worldwide innovation community has seen thousands of volunteers work on 120 open source software projects, including tools used in the Haiti and Chile earthquakes in 2010, the recent Japan quake and tsunami, and landslide-prone parts of the Caribbean. “Open source” means the computer code is available for anyone to use and build upon.

    Global Random Hacks of Kindness community: www.rhok.org

    On Twitter: www.twitter.com/randomhacks

    Twitter hashtag: #RHoK

    For further information:

    OR TO SCHEDULE INTERVIEWS:

    Melanie Gorka or Heather Leson
    melanie.gorka AT gmail DOT com heatherleson AT gmail DOT com
    Twitter: @melgorka Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/leftbutton

    1Jun

    Prepare to RhoK

    Only 3 more sleeps until Random Hacks of Kindness Toronto.

    I prepared this to help our 90 (!) local participants get acquainted with RHoK and how to make the most out of the event.

    Prepare to RHoK
    View more presentations from Heather Leson

    Our RHoK Toronto team is working hard to get all the details prepared. We are talking to folks in Nairobi, Seattle, Bangalore and Melbourne to see if we can have Ustream dates to meet each other

    Global collaboration for a hackathon is a mash-up. More tonight after our pre-RhoK meet-up.

    We are almost at 3rd RHoK from the Sun!

    Heather

    25May

    Ready for RHoK Toronto?

    With just over a week to go, Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) Toronto is gearing up. We have some updates for participants, potential sponsors and supporters.

    What is RHoK?

    Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is a joint initiative between Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, NASA, and the World Bank, with the objective of creating solutions that have an impact in disaster management and crisis response. Together they hold semi-annual simultaneous global hackathons (marathon coding events) over one weekend. The event brings together subject matter experts from all over the world in software development, open data, project management, graphic design, videography, emergency management, technology, research, knowledge translation, logistics, just to name a few. Also, see the RHoK global press release.

    Before RHoK

    RHoK Toronto has 50 participants registered. Won’t you Join us?

    Pre-RHoK event for participants:

    We invite you to attend our RHoK Warm-up

    Date    : Wednesday, June 1, 2011
    Time: 19:00 – 21:00 ET
    Location: Camaraderie
    Address: 102 Adelaide St E.

    Meet your fellow hackers, ask questions about the event and brainstorm on the problem definitions.

    Recruiting Sponsors:

    Our amazing sponsors are providing food and prizes. We are happy to announce CIRA, Jonah Group, Syncapse, University of Toronto and Camaraderie are joining us as sponsors for the second year. Thanks! And, to Marketcrashers/Hackernest for joining us with a prize donation.

    If you are a potential sponsor willing to contribute prizes or donate funds for food, please drop us a line at rhokto at Gmail dot com or contact heather at textontechs dot com for more details. We commit to account and use all funds for the event. As per RHoK Global guidelines, we will donate any unused funds to the Canadian Red Cross.

    In return for your kindness, we can add your organizational name and logo to the RHoK website, include your name in our media outreach, add postings to our job board and provide you with post event blog content.

    Share a Problem Definition:

    The RHoK Global team and our local curation team are working on problem definitions. You can submit ideas on the RHoK site or for either of these two call-to-actions:


    Calling all Health2.0 Enthusiasts for RHoK, June 4th & 5th

    Calling all Climate Change and Open Data Enthusiasts

    RHoK Main Event Schedule: June 4 – 5, 2011

    RHoK Toronto Location:
    University of Toronto
    OISE
    252 Bloor Street West, 5th floor
    Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V5

    Schedule:

    Saturday, June 4, 2011
    8:00 – 9:00am Arrive and enjoy breakfast
    9:00 -9:30 Introductions and Questions
    9:30 – 11:30 Pick your problem definitions and teams. Start brainstorming
    11:30 – 1:00 Lunch
    1:00 – 5:00 Coding, doing, brainstorming
    5:00 – 6:00 Stand-up – Quick Discussion about your team’s work
    6:00 – 7:00 pm Dinner
    7:00 – ongoing (Optional to stay late. Otherwise, we’ll see you the next day)
    Midnight – home

    Sunday, June 5, 2011
    8:00 – 9:00 am Arrive and enjoy breakfast
    9-11:30 More coding
    11:30 – 12:30 Lunch
    12:30 – 3:00 Go teams!
    3:00 – 5:30 Demos and Prizes
    6:00pm End of event

    What to bring:
    laptop, electrical power bar, headphones, phone and charger, video camera, camera, webcam, demo equipment, coffee mug, a smile and an open mind.

    How to prepare:
    Review the problem definitions on the RHoK website. The definitions are still being created, so keep checking back. Please take a moment and familiarize yourself with all the tools available to you online before the main event. Some of the tools we might use to collaborate are: IRC, Skype, Github, Wiki, Google Docs, Ustream, Twitter, Facebook and Piratepad. All hacks created are open source.

    RHoK Toronto needs some help:

    Volunteer run community events always need many hands to make it successful. Here are some ways you can help:

    • There will be errands for food and supplies. Can you help on Friday evening or Saturday for logistics (registration, food delivery, etc.)?
    • We seek a sponsor or volunteer who can provide standard equipment for demos (including mobile devices), a video camera and microphones. This includes some onsite support and set-up. We want the hackers to be heard and to shine. You could really make a difference by lending your expertise.

    The RHoK Toronto team:

    RHoK Toronto is a collective of talented folks working hard to make this happen:

    David Black, Melanie Gorka, Brian Chick, Christine Crowley, Amy Coulterman, Jessica Hazen, James Walker, Aaron McGowan and myself.

    Also, we are thankful for all our supporters who are sending outreach for participants and sponsors. A special thanks to Greg Wilson for everything he does.

    See you soon,

    Heather

    17May

    Help Feed RHoK Toronto Hackers

    What is RHoK

    Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to humanitarian aid, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. This is about technology helping people. On June 4th and 5th, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA, HP and the World Bank, through their initiative Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), will bring together thousands of people in over 18 locations around the globe to create open solutions that can save lives and alleviate suffering.

    We would love if you joined us: Register for RHoK 3.0 Toronto

    RHoK 3.0 will focus on the issue of climate change. We’re hoping that this year, RHoK 3.0 Toronto is just as successful as our inaugural RHoK 2.0 in December. Over 50 hackers, citizens, designers, writers, researchers and open data enthusiasts came out in Toronto and joined 1000 others, collaborating with RHoK events in 21 cities and Open Data Hackathon Day events in 73 cities, all around the world.
    We could not have done this without the generous support of our sponsors. Last year, sponsors donated space, food, tools, services and funds which helped make the event a success.

    Help Feed RHoK Hackers and give them prizes.
    RHoK Toronto 3.0 is a Satellite event for the RHoK global event. We are responsible to drum up local sponsorship support for food and prizes. This time, we are looking for sponsorship for a pre-event reception, to provide meals or funding for meals to participants and prizes for the top 3 innovative solutions or ‘hacks’.

    In exchange for your involvement in the RHoK initiative, we will do the following:

    • Showcase your logo internationally on the RHoK global website.
    • Mention you in the media and press releases for the Toronto event.
    • Provide you with space at the event for your pamphlets or promotional materials.
    • Offer recruitment opportunities through our job board and your presence at the event.
    • Provide you with blog content about the event






    Sponsorship Options













    Please let me or our contacts know if you have any questions or suggestions. Any donated funds will be used for food and prizes. Any funds that we do not use will be given to the Red Cross. RHoK global requires that we provide full disclosure on accounting for events. We will happily do so. The Donation button is on Brian Chick’s Left Button Solutions business account. Brian is a core volunteer for this event.

    Hope you can join us.

    Thanks,

    Heather Leson
    RHoK Toronto Coordinator

    8May

    Third RHoK from the Sun: Toronto on June 4 -5, 2011

    Third RHoK from the Sun is almost here.

    We’d love it if you joined us again for Random Hacks of Kindness 3.0. On, June 4 – 5, 2011, Toronto is one of 20 cities for RHoK’s global hackathon.

    Register now!

    RHoK is software developers, open data hackers, project managers, graphic designers, videographers, emergency managers, technologists, researchers, idea hackers, storytellers, technical writers, and logistics geeks. We will brain on solutions for humanitarian aid, climate change and disaster risk reduction.

    Sign up and help us share the message love:

    Steal this tweet:
    RHoK is June 4-5, 2011. Hack on climate change, humanitarian aid & disaster risk reduction apps. Join Toronto RHoK. www.rhok.org

    Ben Lucier created a RHoK Trailer:

    Follow us on twitter: @RHoKto
    Share flickr photos

    If you are unable to attend, we’d love it if you would tell a friend or your workplace.

    We have a problem definition curation team working to make sure the hacks are fun and full of win. Some of the hacks will have gaming or open data components. If you want to help us get prepared, drop me a line. We are fundraising, getting prizes and food donations, procuring tech for demos and organizing a gaming/fun room.

    Toronto has a great team of folks working together to make this event possible. Stay tuned for more details.

    Third RHoK

    This is my third RHoK event (Sydney, Australia (June 2010) and Toronto (December 2010 and June 2011). People hacking away at big issues and building prototypes is pure magic. They collaborate across cities, across career stages and disciplines. The event includes training, braining and laughter. It is a complete honour to be part of a global team of organizers who make it happen.

    See my past RHoK event posts.

    More details soon,

    Heather

    15Jan

    RHoK follow-up: Population Centers in Disaster

    At Random Hacks of Kindness 2.0 (December 2010), volunteers from CrisisCamp TO, RHoK Seattle, Humanity Road, Sahana and OpenStreetMap joined to work on a project called: Populations Centers in Disaster. Each of our groups continue to commit time and knowledge to complete this project.

    Three days after the devastating quake struck Haiti, the towns of Jacmel and Leogane were still isolated — no communication or transportation — though we knew people were there: 128,000 in Leogane and 40,000 in Jacmel. A data query tool that identifies high concentrations of population may help volunteer technology communities with their communication efforts. A lack of communication inside a population zone points to a problem and the query tools being developed may help speed up and improve volunteer contributions to situational awareness.

    @Redcrossmom @CNN I know you have lots of crew on the ground in PAP but very little news is coming from outside of PAP – Jacmel & Leogane need help. (Twitter, January 15, 2010).

    Situational Awareness

    At the onset of a disaster, time lost means lives lost. As virtual volunteers, Humanity Road’s first response step is to identify affected hospitals. In an event that impacts a large geographic area, we need to quickly triage the situation and determine which population centers are affected. Part of this decision process involves identifying areas of population concentrations. For this, we have been turning first to Wikipedia to identify and understand the local area. Using this approach to search for information is manual, time intensive and requires multiple keystrokes of the same type of information. Manual research of standard information means time lost and that equates to lives lost. We look for cities within range of the epicenter of the earthquake or event, populations of those cities, hospitals within the impacted area, GPS coordinates, and local government structures for towns, counties and districts. Sometimes the absence of news does not indicate the absence of need.

    RHoK

    (RHoK Toronto, December 4, 2010. Photo by Cynthiagould.com)

    The Project

    We need a tool that would allow us to extract from Wikipedia into a Google Doc – the population centers for a defined area – such as City, District, Country. This would improve our volunteer response time. Humanity Road has previously worked with Sahana, Google, Gisli Olafsson and others to determine project needs.

    The RHoK problem descriptions submitted included an outline for a query tool that would return the population centers within a boundary. The bonus tool would return results of hospitals in an impacted area, including contact information and GPS.

    The RhoK Toronto team focused on the Hospital solution, while the Seattle team focused on the Population centers solution. The teams collected the data into Google fusion tables. By the end of the weekend, they had collected and stored a significant amount data that will help in future events.

    The Next Steps

    Data will reside within Sahana Eden, and be exported (Google Fusion Doc) for directed use by Humanity Road. Google Fusion Doc may have data limit parameters. The tool will help non-super users volunteering for Resource Management. Final product will reside on the Sahana database accompanied by the capability to extract specific hospital datasets.

    The project needs presentation tools to help spontaneous volunteers work with the data. This includes criteria for data updates, to include the notes on impacts of infrastructure, operational impacts (damage, flood etc) of the hospitals query, developing the functional query for the populations center, and determining server space, and file formats for storing the data in open source format for all to access and use.

    How you can Help:

    1. Server space
    2. DB specialist/developer to create query:finds objects (populations, host) within latitude and longitude radius. A query that finds “x” within radius of lat and long within the database
    3. Support for a radius query to Sahana Eden

    Our current project status:

    1. Colin: talked with his Toronto – OSM folks about doing a OSM location hospital query
    2. Heather/Cat/Pat: write a blog post and being outreach program
    3. Terrance/Pat: will work on Sahana Eden component
    4. Cat: will identify primary data fields
    5. Colin/Pat/Terrance: share script
    6. Pat: will start investigating the Final product- Sahana db, but with capability to have a hospital db can be pulled for a specifics.
    7. Willow: Seattle team is on stand-by for the next steps.

    We welcome any help you can provide. Contact: Heather (heather at textontechs dot com) or Cat (PeacefulIntent at humanityroad dot org)

    Post by Cat Graham (Humanity Road) and Heather Leson (CrisisCampTO/RHoK TO)

    1Jan

    Bushfire Connect: An Australian Ushahidi project

    Bushfire Connect is a project to help Australians crowdsource reports about bushfires. The Australian bushfire season is during December and January. The Bushfire Connect team is monitoring the current bushfires on their Twitter account: @bushfireconnect.

    They need help testing their Ushahidi site. In June 2010 for Random Hacks of Kindness 1.0 in June 2010 (Sydney, Australia), I had the opportunity to meet these dedicated volunteers. The project continues to evolve and will be launching soon.

    bushfire-connect1

    Keren Flavell, Initiator and Online Media Producer and Anthony Joseph, Developer on Bushfire Connect:

    What is it?
    Bushfire Connect is an online bushfire crisis service presenting real time information submitted by local community members and emergency agencies. Our goal is to establish a reliable, dynamic and timely resources for people in fire threatened or damaged areas to enhance and extend the utility of official data sources.

    The service has been developed using the ground-breaking Ushahidi platform, a geo-spatial communication system implemented after disasters in Haiti, Chile and, most recently, Pakistan.


    Who is behind it?
    Establishing this tool here in Australia in preparation for the bushfire season has been the mission of a small team of volunteers from a range of backgrounds. Spatial information strategist, Maurits van der Llugt, teamed with online media producer, Keren Flavell, to initially kick start the project. Once it was worked on intensively at Random Hacks of Kindness, technical experts Daniela Fernandez and Anthony Joseph continued to work on the project. ICT strategist and Drumbeat Australia organiser, Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein, has joined the team as an advisor.

    Where are we at now?
    The project took shape after the Random Hacks of Kindness event in Sydney, where the first installation was deployed. Since then, the project has continued to be refined to include features such as submitting reports by SMS and registering to receive alerts in specific geographic regions.

    We are in discussions with emergency agencies and media organisations about potential partnerships. A not-for-profit is being established to receive funds for further development and to keep the project independent from any single agency or organisation.

    What do we need?
    Bushfire Connect needs to funding and partners in order to create a robust and effective tool for community driven crisis alerts during the bushfire season.

    We are looking to raise funds for the pilot testing and fire season preparation phases of development.

    Next Steps?
    The service is now ready for pilot testing by the community. We want to refining the user experience by reviewing icons and wording of the current site. There needs to be load testing of the servers and appropriate server enhancements to deal with high demand. We also need to build a volunteer moderation taskforce through recruitment and training.

    Further Information
    The Ushahidi blog featured their work in October.

    Canadian forest fires

    Wildfires, bushfires, and forest fires are a global problem. Using crowdsourcing, there is an opportunity to use technology to make a difference. What if all the lessons learned from each of these projects were used to build one simulator and one pattern for any country or region to use?

    I grew up in northern Canada where forest fires are a large problem. Learning about Bushfire Connect while attending RHoK 1.0 in Sydney and monitoring the Ushahidi work that the Russian wildfire team did inspires me. Someday we will bring this technology and crowdsourcing to the Canadian north. All we need is a mobile phone (SMS) plan, an Ushahidi server install and a team of people to work with Canadian authorities to make it happen.

    4Dec

    Random Hacks of Kindness – Toronto (Day 1)

    What an amazing first day of Canada’s first Random Hacks of Kindness. We had a great partnership with the Toronto’s Open Data Hackathon team.

    rhok-toronto
    (Photo by Cynthia Gould)

    Amazing post from the RHoK team with Secretary General of the UN, Ban-Ki Moon, receiving his RHoK t-shirt.

    Blog post by Melanie Gorka: RHoKing out in Toronto. She provides highlights on the 7 projects that the ODHD and RHoK teams are collaborating on and captures the solid community vibe.

    Raw timelapse of @rhokto day 1 up by Ade Barkah

    Check out all the Open Data and RHoK videos on our Youtube channel:

    Photos by Ben Lucier
    Photos by Cynthia Gould


    Steady stream of social media content from CrisisCamp Paris

    More details tomorrow.

    Heather

    © Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved