Software Development

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.

(Photo by Ushahidi)

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!

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.

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.

24Feb

OSM needs you: join the OSM Hack Weekend

At Toronto’s International Open Data Hackathon event this past weekend, it struck me how many folks would love to know how to use and how to build tools to support the OpenStreetMap community. Conversation after conversation folks mentioned that they wanted to learn more, do more.

Well, this is your chance Toronto.

The Toronto OSM community is a dedicated group hosting their second Developer Hack Weekend from March 8 – 10, 2013. An OpenStreetMap “Hack Weekend” is a local event for technical work to improve OpenStreetMap. They are holding intro sessions, socials and a developer focused hackathon.

Full details about OSM and this event can be found on the OSM wiki. If you haven’t created an account yet, anyone can join OSM. There are many ways to start contributing. Just join and start connecting.

(Photo from Toronto’s OSM 8th Birthday party. Cookies courtesy of Meg the awesome.)

Three ways you can get involved:

1. Join one or all of the events.
There is a great mix of learning, social and developer action events. OSM is supported by developer projects that make the mapping possible. I’ve added the links and some details below.

2. Help spread the word
“Support OSM globally and in Toronto. Join the OSM Hacker Weekend: March 9 – 10, 2013: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Toronto_Hack_Weekend_March_2013#Who.27s_coming.3F”

3. Help Sponsor
Like every hackathon, OSM could use a hand with food and drink. If you or your organization can lend a hand. The contact and event organizer is Richard Weait. Ping him:RWeait at Gmail dot com.

OSM Intro Session and OSM Social

There are monthly Toronto OSM casual mappy hours to meet and connect with other OSM users and fans. I’ve been attending for awhile and always learn something new. Getting an introduction to OSM is really the best place to start, so take a break on Friday afternoon and check out the session. If you can’t miss work for the sake of mapping, you can catch the Friday night Mappy Hour. It is my understanding that guest mappers and hackers are coming into town. This is a chance to learn about OSM plus get a deeper understanding of the Hack weekend opportunities.

Register for OSM Intro Session (Friday, March 8, 2013 14:00 pm EDT)
Register the OSM Evening Meet and Greet Mappy Hour (Friday, March 8, 2013 18:30pm EDT)

Your Weekend is better if you Hack for OSM

These are the core of the event and are cast from the same OSM Hack Weekend alloy that has lead to important advances in the OpenStreetMap infrastructure and tools. If you have wanted to know how to become a developer – contributor to OpenStreetMap, this is your best opportunity to learn from and share with the experts.

OSM Saturday and Sunday Code Sprints:

Join Saturday’s code sprint
Join Sunday’s code spring

There are many mapping projects that you can get involved in within the greater OSM community. It has been such a pleasure to get to know them via the Humanitarian OSM community. I’d encourage you to find your special niche and map away!

26Nov

We’re RHoKing Toronto and Vancouver

Random Hacks of Kindness season is here again! RHOK’s mission is to make the world a better place through a global community of innovation developing practical open technology. We are a global hackathon community holding events on December 1 – 2, 2012 in over 30 cities. (Personally, I’m very excited to see Sydney, Australia join us again. I had the honour of leading their first event in June 2010).

Canada has two cities participating: Toronto’s 6th event and Vancouver’s first. (Montreal previously held an event in December 2011 and June 2012.) TechVibes did a great post about the impact of RHOK and plans for December 2012.

RHOK is a truly special event connecting cities, subject matter experts and hackers. It started in November 2009 and has grown to a global community and movement. We all aim to use our tech and knowledge for good.

RHOK Toronto: Design Jam

On Saturday, November 24th, a few of us met to hammer out the problem set. The key is to have a subject matter owner in the house to help guide the hacks.

Stephen Sauder will be leading the charge on a Sanitation Hackathon - Toilet hack. Don’t laugh. Water issues are one of the top development needs worldwide. If we all hacked our toilets more, who knows how we might be able to help others. The plan is to collaborate with the Southhampton UK team on a Sanitation Dashboard.

Another hack will be the Invstg8.net: Micro-tasking Tool for Journalists. Saleem Khan has been leading the charge for this effort. What if Internet access did not preclude your access to information to be a journalist? This hack was brained on at the June 2012 RHOKTO and was also featured at the African News Innovation Challenge.

We are still working out the final 3 – 4 problem sets. Watch rhokto.ca for more details.

Support our Hackers

We have raised some kind funds and are being hosted by our friends at Mozilla. But, we need some last mile help to feed our hackers. There are over 49 folks registered.

How to help:
Buy the hackers lunch - approximately $500.00 (even in part)
Contribute some prizes – we’d love gift cards for tech or music
Snacks – homemade and healthy things are most welcome

To contribute, please drop us a line at rhokto at gmail dot com. Or, contact me: Hleson at ushahidi dot com.

RHOK Vancouver

Renee Black and the Peace Geeks team have been working for months to plan the first ever RHOK Vancouver. She is Rhoking the community with her excellent local sponsors and problem sets. Go Vancouver!!!

Come Hack with us, you don’t have to be a tech

Registration for RHOK Toronto

Registration for RHOK Vancouver

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Here’s to a great event.

Sadly, I am going to miss half of RHOK due to a prior work engagement. This will be the first time since June 2010 that I’ve missed a part of a RHOK Global event. Go RHOKstars!

Heather

14Nov

Anti-Corruption Fighting -15IACC

Anti-Corruption and Transparency activism is merging with hacks and maps. In the past year at Ushahidi, I’ve met a number of mappers who are using the open source tools to activate and organize around these topics.

As part of the 15th Annual International Anti-Corruption Conference in Brasilia, Brazil, I met these mappers and held an Online Tools Game Changers Session about their work. The Transparency Hackers movement in Brasil, lead by Daniela De Silva, held a simultaneous hackathon. Let no topic go unturned.

Here are some snippets on this work:

An Interview with the IACC team

An interview with BBC Brasil

“Por trás dessas ferramentas online que servem de “atalho” para se denunciar corrupção está uma multidão de jovens internautas.

“A juventude está mudando as táticas do ativismo anticorrupção. Eles trazem consigo um incrível entusiasmo por tecnologia móveis e novas mídias, como vídeos”, diz Heather Leson, uma das diretoras da Ushahidi, à BBC Brasil.

“Esses jovens ativistas agora atuam e compartilham, ininterruptamente, em suas redes sociais. E assim eles não precisam mais usar arquivos em PDF de 50 páginas para lutar contra a corrupção. Estão livres disso. ”

Some of the Corruption Mappers:

Around the Globe Corruption Mapping (part 1) from Ushahidi

Around the Globe Corruption Mapping (part 2) from Ushahidi

Heather

3May

Canada Rhoks!

This June four Canadian cities are hosting Random Hacks of Kindness (RHOK) this year: Vancouver (new), Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal.

Random Hacks of Kindness is a global hackathon that occurs in over 30 cities with over 2000 participants. What if your knowledge could change the world. This event is open to everyone. You do not need to be a software developer to contribute. The best solutions created use many different areas of knowledge. You’ll be amazed how much you can share.

“RHoK’s model is to start from identifying, defining and refining problem definitions provided by subject matter experts and local stakeholders. This ensures that volunteer time is focused on solving real problems for real people.” All the solutions are open source. It is a chance to be part of a global movement of tech for social good.

Why attend

What if your knowledge could collide with others to build solutions that solved real-world problems? This concept of using our intellect to affect change will take time, effort and multiple attempts, but if we build on each other’s efforts it is an honourable goal to set and meet.

Last night I attended a talk at Open Bar about “Giving Back and Getting Involved” by James Walker, open source advocate and lifer. James summarized the top reasons to get involved in Open Source projects:

get involved to learn

gain experience

to get hired

to hire

meet new friends and like-minds

These are exactly the reasons why RHOK is magic. Being connected to ideas and doers around the world. These people inspire in every way possible.

Toronto RHOK needs you

Lead by Melanie Gorka, RHOK Toronto will hack on local and international problems.

RHok Toronto seeks sponsors to assist food, tools, services, prizes and funds which help make the event a success. Sponsorship for the event provides for a pre-event reception, meals for participants during the weekend and prizes for the top 3 innovative solutions or ‘hacks’. If you and your organization can help, Contact Melanie Gorka (melanie.gorka AT gmail DOT com).
RHoK Toronto Idea Jam is confirmed for May 15th at Bento Miso from 7-10pm. Join Toronto’s Idea Jam to submit your ideas for local and international hacks. Come prepared to pitch your idea. Your hack must meet the RHOK criteria.
Register for the RHOK Global hackathon on June 1-3rd
Join the next volunteer meeting on May 17th. Contact Melanie Gorka (melanie.gorka AT gmail DOT com) for more details

Join an RHOK event in Canada

Toronto

If you are in Vancouver, the event will be posted soon.

Host an event

If you want to host a RHOK event in another city, here is the application. Please also drop me a note so that I can join your fan club. If there is not a local event, you can still get involved virtually.

The RHoK community is amazing. I’ve done 5 hackathons so far. The good news is that Geeks without Bounds is now working with RHOK on sustainability for projects. By taking some of the best hacks/prototypes and incubating them, their goal is to have the best projects be activated, tested and used to affect change.

Global hacker friends

We’re looking for some guest hackers for Toronto. I’ve slept on your floor and ate at your tables. Or, we’ve just connected at the many online events. Toronto needs you to join and inspire our local community. Please contact me if you would like to have a place to stay, food, no sleep and be part of Toronto’s vibrant tech for social good community for one weekend.

Let’s do this!

Heather

21Apr

Intl Space Apps Challenge – Global tour!

Morning Space Hackers! The Internet is buzzing with your great activities. I’ll be writing a few global updates on my blog to give you an overview. Magic is connecting us:

I’m in Toronto, Canada watching CJ Hendrix present via ustream about Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL) in Lausanne and chatting on IRC with Alp who is in Istanbul and Herr Flupke (of the virtual coordinator ops team- vops).

What is the Space Apps Challenge

The International Space Apps Challenge is a global event hosted by NASA.

Check out this summary video including Space Stars like Clay Ellis on the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica and Unity Node’s Ron Garan.

Big Picture

ISS is live on Ustream (@panggi thanks for the pic):

How can you watch online?

Global collaboration is always a rush. Here are some of the components to help:

Ustream channel (all the cities have a separate channel connected. There is a ustream scroll bar below the main window complete with all the city ustream links.

Twitter #spaceapps

We have a global IRC live chat. You can dive into projects like the Open Data API lead by Sean Herron. Each of the projects have their own window. Running commentary is brilliant. I’m participating with Herr_Flupke as a global dispatch coordinator aka Human API.

I set up a live blog to aggregate social media content. Thanks to the folks at ScribbleLive for the great software!

International participants

Here is a summary of how to get engaged online as International virtual participants. Ping me on IRC or anyone and ask for help to be connected.

Gov 2.0 interviews

Here are some amazing audio interviews by the Gov 2.0 team with SpaceApp leaders, including Simeon Oriko of my homebase ihub Nairobi and Ali Llewellyn of NASA.

Also see this article from the BBC.

The Global International Space Apps Tour….so far

Jakarta by @adllewellyn

Adelaide by @sumenrai79

Melbourne from @auspaceapps

Sydney via @auspaceapps

Outreach by Nasa

Japan via @isacjp

Nairobi by @whiteafrican

23Feb

Pods: ISN Podcast & Podcamp Toronto

Two pods in one week! Valerie Sticher of ISN: International Relations and Security Network interviewed me for the ISN podcast on “Crowdsourcing for Change“. And, I’ll host a Podcamp Toronto 2012 session on Sunday, February 26, 2012 focused on “Dispatches of Disruption“.

ISN podcast: Crowdsourcing for Change

In this 12 minute chat, we discuss Crisismapping, CrisisMappers Network, Ushahidi, Security and Hackathons (specifically Random Hacks of Kindness).

“In today’s podcast, Ushahidi’s Heather Leson discusses her organization’s use of crisis mapping techniques and outlines how non-state actors are increasingly collaborating online to tackle issues traditionally managed by governments.”

I highly recommend that you follow the full podcast.

Podcamp Toronto 2012: Dispatches of Disruption

Sunday morning early sessions at Podcamp Toronto are sometimes quiet. Here’s to having a good discussion about Digital Activism and the power of the Internet.

Description

Date: Sunday, February 26, 2012 11:00 ET
Location: Ryerson RCC203 (map)
Every day someone uses the power of the Internet to change their world. What does it mean to be a disrupter? an innovator? a volunteer? What lessons can you activate at home? at work?

I’ll share some examples of disruption aimed at corruption, elections, violence, potholes, agriculture, burgers, #futurewewant, and emergency response.

Some additional thoughts:

Digital activism from volunteering to hacking to mapping is changing institutions and governments.
We are just a mouse click away from change. Or, are we?

Hope you can join this chat. If you are only attending on Saturday, look for me at the registration desk.

21Feb

YYZ to NBO

YYZ to NBO: Why luring start-ups to Nairobi is a good thing. Josh Erratt’s article in Now Magazine focuses on how technical start-ups from Canada can connect with the Canadian Government and the SFO technical community.

For years I, too, yearned for the opportunity to work in Silicon Valley. Employed with Internet organizations since 2000 (backbone to registrar = OSI career), my first Internet access was via Carleton University’s Freenet in 1992 and I created my first website in 1995 at library school. SFO has been completely entrenched throughout my career as the tech golden bridge. When the Dot Com busted in 2001, I held on hope for a career in Internet and to someday work in SFO. With one foot in communications and one in technology as a Technical Incident Communications Lead, I began to apply to the big organizations who had their own data centers and technical crisis communication teams.

The 280 is a beautiful drive, dinner in Chinatown (amazing), gazing at the Bay Bridge is awesome and attending events with Internet leaders is thought-provoking. There is no doubt that SFO is worth visiting and, perhaps, heeding the call to move your start-up there. To be honest, how anyone gets work down with those views is beyond me!

Ihub photo by Erik Hersman

Location, Location

Now, these aspirations seem so myopic. The explosion of great technology worldwide shows that it is time to rethink “location plus Internet” start-ups and your career. Digital activism and volunteering after the Haiti earthquake took me on a journey into other global ecosystems. Random Hacks of Kindness (RHOK), a global hackathon which I have lead in a few cities, takes place in Internet hubs around the world. By participating, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with Internet leaders and various start-ups. Learning about their technical communities is inspiring. But, one does not need to look only to hackathons to see where the pulse is. Read the economic reports about the rise of mobile and beyond the BRIC to emerging economies.

Why NBO?

Nairobi, Kenya’s technical community is red-hot. Disclosure: I work for Ushahidi, a Nairobi-based start-up. The ihub is brimming with start-ups, events, bright savvy entrepreneurs and amazing ideas. Every time I go to the Ihub, I am overwhelmed by the pulse of start-ups, collaboration, and new technology.

David Talbot and I had coffee in the ihub while he was researching his Technology Review article: ” Kenya’s Startup Boom.” On the ihub:

The incubator opened in 2010 and now counts more than 6,000 members, with an average of 1,000 new applications a year. Most members are merely part of iHub’s online community, but more than 250 of them use the space. Some 40 companies have launched from iHub, and 10 have received seed funding from venture capitalists. The most successful so far is Kopo Kopo, which helps merchants manage payments from M-Pesa and similar services. One key to iHub’s growth is that Kenya’s IT infrastructure has improved significantly. The first Internet fiber connection landed at the Kenyan coast in 2009 (previous service had come through satellite dishes in the Rift Valley), and the country’s first truly mass-market Android smart phone went on sale in 2010, for $80. Safaricom now counts 600,000 smart phones of all kinds on its network and expects them to make up 80 percent of the market by 2014.

What if your Internet start-up ….

Some of the brightest Internet minds and start-ups are based in Toronto. I work for a global dispersed team and have one foot in Kenya and one in Canada. While I cannot speak directly to what it takes to be a start-up, I am left with more questions? Why not Toronto and why can’t the ecosystem be changed here to keep our best and brightest here?

Why recreate the beaten path to SFO? The technical spirit of “doing” and “innovation” is happening around the world. There are mountains of technical and start-ups hubs worldwide. I encourage you to think beyond SFO to build your start-up or your Internet career. Buy a plane ticket to NBO or Malaysia.

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

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