open source

18Nov

Heart of the Matter

Matter. Difference. We use these words with varying degrees of weight, responsibility and, dare I say, ego. My inbox is full of collaboration. It is breathtaking to see governments, NGOs, technical communities and digital humanitarians work together. New ground has been broken. Alliances are being formed. People are contributing tech and analytical skills. Folks are trying to apply lessons learned.

Enroute to Nairobi for the International Conference of CrisisMappers I watched a film about humanitarian workers in complex conflict environments called Beyond Borders. There was a scene where “secret maps” caused a series of violent consequences.

Well, we don’t live in a “secret” map world right now. We live in a world that open communities, NGOs, and governments are truly seeking ways to build and to work with common goals and language.

Maps are love

In the past weeks and a half over 1100 amazing individuals have contributed over 1.7 million edits to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap activation in response to the Typhoon Yolanda which struck the Philippines. There are a number of unsung heros who are volunteering hours to negotiate, to map and to plan using OpenStreetMap. From the folks who made it possible to get satellite imagery to those who have been tirelessly mapping. Andrew Buck and Pierre Beland have been spearheading the online coordination. They seem to be on every hour answering emails on the HOT mailing list or on the HOT IRC channel. Mapping Parties have been held around the world to support this. (Sam Leach’s post).

The American Red Cross joined the HOT community and board last night for a special call. They shared their story about how HOT OSM work is being used and what are some of the future requirements. Some of the organizations that got a shout out included Digital Globe, US Government, NGA and Mapbox. (With apologies if I am missing more, but others have provided imagery and fielded support.)

There was an ask to collect impact stories. Can you share yours?

Continents away I think about “matter”. For some of us, it is pure instinct. We spend our spare hours coordinating, documenting, sharing and trying to bridge this. Hats off to those who continue to “do” with Open.

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

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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!

31Oct

Connecting the open dots

When I think of open, I think global. A number of us have the privilege of collaborating on large scale global open communities. We all see the potential of combined efforts and dissolved borders/barriers to all our common success. What have we learned and what are the next steps?

This week I’ve had the honour to participate in both the Mozilla Festival and the Open Government Partnership. The conversations have really distilled the question: what are we waiting for? OGP is a common language building forum for governments, business, civil society and the technical communities. Yes, we do have some different priorities and agendas. But let’s dream big then build it. Policy discussions should and must beget action. How can we get there for more open and very global communities? How can we better support each other? At heart, I am a maker. I need to see and be part of evidence and impact.

20131031-115145.jpg

Here are some key actions and win suggestions:

1. Master search
There are open data portals and github repos. Yet, there is no master search of which open data and which code is available and remixable. This will help us build on The pain of duplication and vanity ware (creating software for the sake of “new” rather than sustainable, built-on efforts).

We need this to help anyone build on the open source ethos. We need common standards in creation. This is not to stifle great new ideas but to end the “reinvent the wheel” model that is causing us to stall. If people can find the existing work, irrespective of country, perhaps we can build faster. I realize that software and data really counts on local needs, knowledge and language, but have we asked what are the common needs that we can remix.

I ask: what are the top 10 software topics that we can focus on as open source communities and civil society communities collectively need or want? Can we use the power of agile software development to guide us?

20131031-120300.jpg

2. Code of collaboration
Last year I spoke with someone who apologized to me: “I received funding for x and even though it is duplication of efforts on existing software, we need the funding and have to do what they funder wants.” This conversation made me realize that the funding model also needs a shift. If we are funding without building on existing work and existing knowledge, are we regressing? Are funders funding only new ideas and potentially shiny ideas? Are the funders sharing data? Believe me I want to eat and really respect how hard it is to find the bright spots and the right things to fund. I am really learning as I go, but am struck with this dilemma.

For those who lead in civil society and open source communities, including hackathons, are we encumbering the open growth? Leaders need to build on the open source methods, encourage good practices and encourage mission before branding. By means, fork the code/idea. Please. But, document and collaborate, be responsible and stop duplicating. Who are we serving and what is the real demand/citizen need? Sometimes we are not building priorities based on feedback and real people. And, sadly there are examples of chasing the shiny and quick without considering privacy and risk. Really, this is new ground and we are all trying to figure out the way to get there.

The Crisismappers community created a community code of collaboration. What would a funder, civil society and open source community code look like for open government and open data?

I propose that we build a code of collaboration beyond the policy aspects.

20131031-120703.jpg

3. Open community leader collaboration and census
Who is doing what where and how to collaborate? What can an open data hacker from Kenya teach someone in India? I’ve seen this power of global with Random Hacks of Kindness, International Space Apps Challenge, Mozilla, Ushahidi and more. We don’t see borders, we see and build on ideas and skills.

At Mozilla Festival my colleagues at Wikipedia, OKFN, Creative Commons and others hosted a session about Building an Open Community. A followup session was held at the Open Government Partnership Civil Society Unconference. How can we keep the momentum of this? We need to continue to learn and share these ideas. Are there other examples out there?

Often I am asked to do introductions to open community members around the world. What I would really like is an open community footprint of who is doing what where? Apparently, the legacy icommons.org served this need. We build our open networks and relationships. Great. If communities shared their networks, best practices and commons goals, we could move this ball forward.

Who is already working on this idea, especially in the tech for good and social good space? Can we collaborate? My goal is to start finding and connecting all these leaders. We are stronger together as we teach and share.

Thanks to my colleagues at Mozilla, OKFN, Wikipedia, Second Muse, Random Hacks of Kindness, Geeks without Bounds and Creative Commons. We’ve had a number of conversations in the past few weeks. In the spirit of open, some of you directly contributed to this text.

Moar is more.

20131031-120534.jpg

(All photos are from events that I’ve attended or coordinated in the past year).

29Oct

What are you doing at OGP Summit?

The Open Government Partnership Summit is this week: London, UK from October 30 – November 1st. I’ll be participating and hope to meet you.

Hope. Optimism. Those of us who believe in the open data movement are building on these concepts. I truly believe that UNESCO WSIS program (PDF) has it absolutely right in stating that open data movement can learn from the world of Open Source. The OGP means an avenue to build a common language. While I am excited to meet people and learn from them, I am very focused on how we can activate and build tangible results. The policy and networks are first part of that picture.

words on metal
(Photo: Wall at the Sustainable Cities exhibition (London UK))

The whole Open Knowledge Foundation team has a slew of events. We’ve blogged about it here.

Which sessions are you going to?

As with any event, you make a plan for sessions with full intentions of keeping this schedule. I know that conversations and networks may inform my remixing. But, for the time being, here’s my plan:

Wednesday: Open Government Partnership – Civil Society Day I’ll be helping coordinate the unconference.

The Open Data Working Group has a preliminary session in the evening.

Thursday:

Harnessing data to drive Citizen Engagement – 11:15- 12:45
Open Data Working Group – 14:15 – 15:30
High and Lo Tech Approached to Open Government – 15:45- 16:45

I’m working on at OKF on the Open Data Partnership for Development. I’ll be hosting office hours in the OGP Summit room (3rd floor) at 17:15- 18:45pm. (Please stop by the Open Knowledge Foundation booth and say hi.)

Friday:

Opening Aid flows: progress with implementing a common information standard – 9:30 -10:30
Broadening Civil Society Engagement in OGP – a Town Hall Conversation – 11:15- 12:30
Open Cities and Smart Citizens – 14:00 – 15:15

See you soon (If we haven’t met, I have bright red and pink hair.)

22Oct

Global Community: the road to learning

For the past 3 years, I have focused on building global community via maps, hacks and data. The journey has introduced me to a number of communities plus I’ve been fortunate to lead efforts in a few great spaces.

For the past month, I’ve been head down at Open Knowledge Foundation working on the Open Data Partnership for Development project as well as learning all about Open Knowledge Foundations’ communities and networks. We have the amazing opportunity to activate everything from open data to open government to open science to open glam (galleries, libraries, archives and museums.) Having library training background, I’ve always thought that the Internet opens up large borderless communities, much like the old Mechanics Institutes*. It gives us a chance to connect with fellow leaders and support the unusual suspects who want to use new technologies to disrupt and activate change.

stools aiweiwei
(Stools by Ai WeiWei)

Some might consider it a tall order to involve citizens and technology to activate change. I see it as an art. What if we looked at it differently? Many of us are focusing on building stuff and showing the potential of opening data, creating apps and convening at hackathons/sprints. Others are focused on analyzing our methods. Great! We need to have real-time analysis/research in all our projects. Giving evidence and showing impact is mandatory as we move forward. ABC: Always be communicating/changing. Some folks make a career out of highlighting the faults in the old systems and faults in attempts to use new technology to see the world and the information overload in a new way. Also, great. The truth is: None of us are getting it right, yet. But, we are trying.

Meeting, Making and Showing

In the next month, I am going on a whirlwind of meeting, making and showing. Each of these spaces involve communities of folks trying to use policy, information, maps, hacks, data and more to open up our world. It is a huge privilege to participate and learn. I’ll try to post some ‘Dispatches’ as I have done at previous events:

1. Mozilla Festival – London, UK October 25-27, 2013.
MozFest is a home for me. I’ve attended each of the fests including its predecessor (Drumbeat). Imagine rooms full of brilliance in everything from Open Hardware to Open News to Open Internet. My brain and heart will burst with happiness in seeing old friends and digging into learning while making stuff. There are few events that are this interactive. The Open Knowledge Team will be hosting a few sessions (Building collaboration across the open space and a Data Expedition)

2. Open Government Partnership Summit – London, UK October 29 – November 1, 2013
The OGP summit connects governments and civil society communities to discuss policy and demonstrate the latest actions by country, topic and movement. The Open Data Partnership for Development is focused on helping connect governments and civil society folks. My goal will be to meet others on this journey and see how I can help support their efforts. As well, the Open Knowledge Foundation team will be supporting the Civil Society Day.

3. International Conference of Crisis Mappers – Nairobi, Kenya November 18 – 22, 2013
The Crisis Mappers community is one of the most amazing ones that I’ve encountered. Each of us from business to open source to government and academic want to learn the best ways to use data, mobiles, informatics and maps to aid crisis response. We will meet for a week of training, ignite talks and collaboration/simulation. The opportunity to do this in Kenya is amazing. My heart remains in East Africa. Ushahidi was born there and has inspired so many of us to consider how citizens can and should be involved in the conversation. I’ll be running a full day training session with 4 tracks: Maps, data, mobile and knowledge. There are many community leaders helping out, including my colleague Michael Bauer of the School of Data.

I am really look forward to involving more people in each of these communities.

Here’s to amazing building and making. I am more than certain that the next weeks will shape the coming year and far beyond!

*On Mechanic’s Institutes: I had a membership at the Atwater Mechanic’s Institute in Montreal, Canada. I loved that I could use a library and get training. It is the way forward: we need to train a digital network of new leaders to use the power of technical skills to tell stories and use data/software to activate new ideas/change in their communities.

9Oct

Social Sculpture: According to What?

Ai WeiWei’s According to What? exhibition and Forever Bicycles exhibition are both currently showing in my home town. As I contemplate community development, I find myself profoundly influenced by his art and thoughts.

Forever bicycles

In the book, Ai WeiWei speaks he considers our online world a Social Sculpture. Often I like to think of online communities like digital small towns on a large map. With this, I think of open source like my local childhood credit union or CO-OP grocery. Imagine my joy when I moved to Quebec to find the Caisse Populaire network. Really, it struck me that my prairie childhood was not dissimilar to that of a Quebecois, it was just local language, local knowledge and local culture. His writing left me wondering: Are there really molds of ‘Social Sculpture’ or is it hopefully organic? Do we sculpt online or does it sculpt us? Is there a difference? Be.

China aiweiwei

Community Values

How can the values and creativity of art be used to inspire our work? What values do we want/need to build great community? What is the glue?

Last year a number of Digital Volunteers got together to write a Community Code of Conduct. I took this and remixed it for Ushahidi.

Some of the core values that I have learned from my time in open source communities:

  • Do your research, don’t duplicate efforts, build on OS values
  • Welcome. Collaborate and build community first
  • Be kind and open to new ideas, perspectives
  • Be ready to change or pivot, because your community will change you
  • There are many definitions and activities (versions) of “open”.
  • Coining Global: Mission first, not gold rush mentality. Be participatory, there is enough space and work to do for all of us
  • Be a member of your small digital town

As they say in tech: MORE IS MOAR. What have you learned? What are your core values? How can we collectively open up our worlds and be true?

What I’m reading:
The Future of Open Systems Solutions, Now (Stephen Kovats, UNESCO) (PDF)
Treat Data as Code
Managing People

11Sep

Serving Data @ NetTuesday

Thank you to TechSoup for inviting me to participate the Net Tuesday panel all about Open Data. I’ve collected some discussed reasons for and against Open Data, plus provided a resource list on privacy and security research into data sharing. During the chat, we also dug into the roots of ‘data owners’ and ‘consumers’. I think we need to talk about some barriers in models and organizations, before we can ask folks to be more open.

In Service….

It was mentioned at the event that some non-profits workers have bias: Citizens who ‘consume’ their services don’t have the ability to measure, give context or give feedback with the level of comprehension or respect required. For me this was a culture shock moment, I asked back:

“what is the mission and why are people so removed from whom they are supposed to be serving”.

Enabling citizen voices is a huge theme in my open career. The idea that a ‘citizen’ as a ‘widget’ and not a participant in this journey is archaic. This model or perception that a ‘citizen’ is only a ‘consumer’ of some product of an ‘non-profit’ or ‘non-governmental organization’ is shocking. Who are we serving? It sounds like a case of the brand coming before the mission. This is why I am a passionate about Open Knowledge via OKF, an Ushahidian fangirl and increasingly excited about projects like Feedback Labs. I think that open data is part of that journey of leveling the field and making it a conversation with participants. Simply put: citizens can and should be the participant, community, the partner, the funder, and the data owner/remixer.

There was a great blog about leadership and humility posted to the Harvard Business Review. (I think it applies to our work.) We need to have some humility and honour those we serve.

When we think about the way forward for small budgeted non-profits and how they can take advantage of open data and even share their data, it means other changes in how we work. Every organization has the ability to build their own open data community helpers. This means building a plan to find and on board these types of participants. It is a knowledge gift.

Why Non-profits won’t share

Bill Morris (211ontario.ca) shared thoughts on what are some of the barriers & responses to sharing Open Data.

  • Competition
  • Complicate data structures
  • What’s in it for me? What is the Value to a NFP to share data
  • Turf
  • Time, resources and focus
  • Perceived ownership
  • Licenses
  • risk of privacy and security issues

Our list of why to share

  • Use the best collective brainpower
  • Avoid duplication of effort
  • Cross-check your assumptions, bias
  • Obtain complimentary datasets to provide nuance
  • Identify gaps
  • more info could help with better decision making
  • tell the story

(And, of course, all the beautiful items like – inclusive, transparent and accountable.)

(NOTE: I purposely did not review the Sunlight Foundation list until after the event so cross-check our thoughts. See the Reasons not to release data gdoc.)

Thinking about Privacy and Security with datasets

For the past few months, I’ve been working on Data Cleaning Guidelines for the Ushahidi Community. At Info Activism Camp I was able to get some help testing my assumptions with folks from Datakind and OKFN. Then, I reviewed the following documents to help consider what recommendations we should collectively give citizen mappers:

Standby Task Force: Data Protection Standards 2.0
ICT4Peace – The potential and Challenges of Open Data for Crisis Information Management and Aid Efficiency
Oxfam: Evolution of Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
UNOCHA – Humanitarianism in a Network Age


ICRC: Professional Standards for Protection Work Carried out by Humanitarian and Human Rights actors in armed conflict and other situations of violence. This list really struck me as a way to consider what types of data we can share.

  • Necessity & capacity
  • Data protection laws
  • Do no harm
  • Bias/non-discrimination (objective information/processing)
  • Quality check/reliability

(This was my third time at a Net Tuesday speaking. They are fantastic growing community. I hope my notes are helpful.)

5Sep

Thank you, This Community Rocks

[Cross-posted from the Ushahidi blog. Ed. note: I am honoured by all the comments, tweets and notes I've received. Thank you.]

Community is a gift in every way. At Ushahidi, we are truly lucky to have each of you contributing, using our software and supporting each other. Thank you.

For over the past two years, I’ve had the pleasure of building stuff, answering your questions, helping you flourish, giving you thanks, and, most of all, shouting from rooftops about each of you and your projects. It with sadness that I share my news. I’m making some personal changes and will moving on to the Open Knowledge Foundation. While it will be tough to leave the Ushahidi team, we all agree that it is great that I am moving to an organization that shares so many of the same ethos, mission, and friends. Truly, as I believe in the community, team and projects, I’ll continue be involved as a community member. (More about my future plans and journey on my personal blog.)

Ihub Event with Jessica and patrick
(Uchaguzi Event with Jessica and Patrick (January 2013), Photo by Nekesa Were)

To Fellow Community members:

You inspire me. Your map projects, ideas and strength to amplify citizen voices. We’ve talked from the inception of your map project ideas all the way to a full implementation with feedback loops. You are the unusual suspects: the people who are trying to use and analyze new technology to make a difference in your community and world. Don’t stop, ever. This drive to make a difference is what makes you special. A free and open Internet means we can collaborate globally and tell our stories. Leveling the data and map playing field has been a joy. I know you can help us all keep up that mission. You are building this one map at a time.

Angela Odour, Community Developer Liaison, and the team are here for you to keep answering your questions and guiding your Ushahidi experiences. We will provide more details on who to contact for what in the coming days. (This will be on the wiki (naturally).

To the Ninjas and Pirates:

You juggle code and business like no other I’ve ever seen. We started calling the tech team Ninjas for a reason. Seriously, folks, please keep on creating, building, and making. To team Pirates: you keep the air and juices flowing. It is breathless to see the ideas and drive. Each of you have touched my life in ways that I cannot even begin to measure. I will miss working so closely with you. But, I can’t wait to see what you do next. From the sidelines, I hope that I can continue to help, and cheer. #fanclub

On Community Management

The base layer of Ushahidi’s community framework and strategy has been built. Now it is time for the next Community leaders to join Ushahidi, remix it and make it better. Community Management is a career and a journey not for the light of heart. You will be a translator for technology and human. Navigating, creating, mapping, documenting, sharing, mentoring, conversing, writing and distilling are your forte. If you think you are up for the task, let Erik know. (Erik at ushahidi dot com). Honest, I am a bit jealous of your adventures.

Thank you all and see you on the interwebs!

29Aug

The Interviews: Heather Leson & social good on the internet

[Cross-posted from Michael Goldberg's Blog]

How can we use the Internet as a force for good has been a question that many in the tech community have asked. Heather Leson is the Director of Community Engagement at Ushahidi, and is working on that exact problem. Ushahidi allows users to compile maps to track anything they want. Collating data from text messages, social media, e-mails, sensors, and more Ushahidi is trying to aid those that want to help fix the world.

Websites, and programs mentioned by Heather:
Great Lakes Commons Map
Trash Wag Matching artists to trash.
Brck
Brck specs
Brck’s Kickstarter Campaign
Social Coding for Good
Random Hacks of Kindness
Public Lab
Open Knowledge Foundation
Ushahidi Wiki
OpenStreetMap
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Social Tech Census
Learn OSM
Map Box

Audio recording can be found on Michael’s blog

9Jul

Decamping to Open Source

It is July, which means OSCON is around the corner. OSCON is the largest Open Source Convention run by the folks from O’Reilly. (Portland, July 22 – 26, 2013) It is bootcamp to learn and meet others who work in this wide field.

OSCON

One of my major life goals is to get people more involved in their world. Sometimes I call it “Brain Sharing” and other times “Brains Colliding” – all in an effort to do good with our collective knowledge, especially our technical know-how. On this journey, I’ve volunteered and worked with a number of Humanitarian Free and Open Source Projects (HFOSS).

This year I’m honoured to speak this year at OSCON with a group of rockstar Maps, Hacks and Data leaders: Become a Digital Humanitarian Open Data and Open Source for Good.

We will be share stories from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, Random Hacks of Kindness, Sahana Software Foundation, Geeks without Bounds, and Change Assembly.

Speakers are given a discount code. Ping me if you’d like it.

The Community Leadership Summit (FREE) is right before OSCON. It was a huge infusion to my brain and work at Ushahidi. If you can’t attend OSCON but volunteer or work with communities in HFOSS or regular technical communities, then consider joining us.

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